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Sometimes a game isn't a game - or it's more than a game. It might not even try to be a game, like "Korg DS-10 Synthesizer" (first look coming soon on here) or it might be like "What's Cooking? with Jamie Oliver" - a DS title that acts more like PDA functionality on your DS aimed at home cooks than a cooking game, though it incorporates some of the latter.

"What's Cooking?" has three modes to it. You have an interactive cookbook, with 100+ recipes, a timed game mode, and a PDA-like shopping list mode. In addition, you can not only input your own recipes but share them with other people who happen to have the same game.

If you just want to cook in real life, you can view any of the recipes. As mentioned, there are over 100 of them, and you can write down using an on-screen keyboard the ingredients in the shopping list mode to take with you when you go to the store. Via wi-fi you can share these, also, so if you see someone else in the store with a Nintendo DS ask them if they want to share recipes (note: I do not actually condone talking to strangers unless they have delicious candy).

But this is a gaming site, so let's talk about the gaming. It's actually surprisingly detailed given the fact that the emphasis seems to be towards the recipes and shopping list parts.

Basically you've got several areas in the kitchen, such as an oven, stove top, cutting board, fridge, etc. While cooking the recipe, you'll have to use the stylus to chop up ingredients, stir and combine them, add things at the right level (not too much), and use up to four different timers to keep track of what will be done when, then plate them all and present them.

As the game goes on, you'll unlock more and more recipes, all of them more and more difficult to make.

Thus, there's a surprising amount of gameplay in this cooking program - or, to look at it in a different way, there's a surprising amount of reference material in this cooking game.