As a dad of international children growing up in the US the message of this game hits close to home. My kids are still small but I've definitely worried about them being ashamed of their international heritage and I've grown up meeting all sorts of international people with similar and very differing experiences to what happened in this game. I definitely felt for the mom when her son didn't come home on his birthday even after she cooked all that food.
But to get to why I have this rated 3 stars and not 5 it's mainly the cooking minigames that drove me crazy. Yes the food looks delicious. Yes it made me hungry. However trial and error guessing gameplay is not ever fun in my opinion and this is already on top of my low tolerance for "swish your mouse around!" minigames. Why would I assume that you can use an empty bowl on a full pot of chicken? Why don't you auto fail me for putting in the tomatoes early? Why do I have to redo this long batter spreading segment every time even if I got everything up to that point right? I just constantly got stuck on the cooking and even when I had to use the hints it's basically just a long version of simon says. Really this game should've been a short film or something. I get that using the video game medium you can reach a certain audience but this just didn't feel like it warranted a game. Or maybe I will just never like cooking simulators? I don't know. I enjoy cooking in real life for the most part though I'm not a fanatic by any means.
Back to the story though the way Kavin goes about living his life and the circumstances around it were frustrating to me as well. Why doesn't he ever have some of his friends over? They could try some Tamil food that they might like which I think would make him less afraid to eat at school. Why doesn't Venba have any non-Indian friends? This is maybe a reflection of a time where people were less tolerant of different cultures I guess, but c'mon there had to be someone, right? Why did Kaavlan get beat up after work? Doesn't he work with Suresh who I presume is also Indian? It was just frustrating to see Kavin grow up and completely shun his family's culture and not realize that he was being stupid until his dad died and his mom moved back to India. It also frustrated me that he quit his job instead of working on a TV show that could've helped more people around the world (or at least Canada) learn about the Tamil people and tell people who are shy and ashamed of their cultures that they don't need to be ashamed? I think this detail frustrated me the most.
But to get to why I have this rated 3 stars and not 5 it's mainly the cooking minigames that drove me crazy. Yes the food looks delicious. Yes it made me hungry. However trial and error guessing gameplay is not ever fun in my opinion and this is already on top of my low tolerance for "swish your mouse around!" minigames. Why would I assume that you can use an empty bowl on a full pot of chicken? Why don't you auto fail me for putting in the tomatoes early? Why do I have to redo this long batter spreading segment every time even if I got everything up to that point right? I just constantly got stuck on the cooking and even when I had to use the hints it's basically just a long version of simon says. Really this game should've been a short film or something. I get that using the video game medium you can reach a certain audience but this just didn't feel like it warranted a game. Or maybe I will just never like cooking simulators? I don't know. I enjoy cooking in real life for the most part though I'm not a fanatic by any means.
Back to the story though the way Kavin goes about living his life and the circumstances around it were frustrating to me as well. Why doesn't he ever have some of his friends over? They could try some Tamil food that they might like which I think would make him less afraid to eat at school. Why doesn't Venba have any non-Indian friends? This is maybe a reflection of a time where people were less tolerant of different cultures I guess, but c'mon there had to be someone, right? Why did Kaavlan get beat up after work? Doesn't he work with Suresh who I presume is also Indian? It was just frustrating to see Kavin grow up and completely shun his family's culture and not realize that he was being stupid until his dad died and his mom moved back to India. It also frustrated me that he quit his job instead of working on a TV show that could've helped more people around the world (or at least Canada) learn about the Tamil people and tell people who are shy and ashamed of their cultures that they don't need to be ashamed? I think this detail frustrated me the most.
2 Comments
@Poet I think it controls fine for the most part other than the part I had to spin my mouse forever to spread batter on a pan. I just kind of wish it was more transparent when you could do certain things that aren't obvious, like use an empty bowl to remove half of the contents of another bowl etc.
Poet
4 months ago