Cake Mania 3
From Majesco Sales Inc.

As Jill Evans nervously prepares for her big wedding day, disaster strikes when a mysterious "timebender" crashes to the floor. As her friends and family rush to pick up the shattered pieces, her loved ones suddenly vanish. Now, in order to rescue them and get back before the ceremony begins, Jill must travel through time and work her cake-making magic on everyone she meets in this all-new adventure based on the best-selling PC title from Sandlot Games.
Amazon Sales Rank: #1093 in Video Games Brand: Majesco Model: 01606 Published on: 2009-10 Released on: 2009-10-13 ESRB Rating: Everyone Number of discs: 1 Platform: Nintendo DS Number of items: 1 Dimensions: .64" h x 5.44" w x 5.38" l, .25 pounds
Cake Mania 3 is the third release in the beloved PC baking simulation game franchise to make its way on to the Nintendo DS platform. Continuing the adventures of Jill Evans, the game is packed with the frantic gameplay that players have come to expect over the years, as well as new features like a time-altering storyline, all-new bakeries, bakery upgrades, kitchen customization, customers and mini-games. .caption { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica neue, Arial, serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; } ul.indent { list-style: inside disc; text-indent: -15px; } table.callout { font-family: verdana; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1. 3em; } td.vgoverview { height: 125px; background: #9DC4D8 url(http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/electronics/detail-page/callout-bg.png) repeat-x; border-left: 1px solid #999999; border-right: 1px solid #999999; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; padding-bottom: 10px; width: 250px; font-family: verdana; font-size: 12px; }
Things are too small I love Cake Mania 1 & 2 so don't get me wrong. I was so looking forward to 3. What a big dissappointment. The machines are smaller which means she now stands in front of some of the buttons so you can't see them. Picking the cake up and making the next doesn't go as smooth. When it comes to layer cakes the top layer is so small it is hard to see. I haven't yet figured out how to see the rest of the discriptions on the power ups. The machine that makes the drinks is small so it is hard to hit the refill button if you have a drink in your hand, she wants put that drink back. For example, this has happened a lot, I place the cake on the froster hit the button quick and I come back and my unfrosted cake is sittng there. I never had that problem in 1 & 2. I'll wait and read user reviews on the next Cake Mania before I buy it. I'm not sure how to rate this game. I've played over half of it so far and I keep liking it less and less. Just wish it was more like the first two. Prepare to repeat yourself Everything the first reviewer of this game said is right on. Everything is wee small and Jill is constantly confused. You have to be PRECISE with the stylus to get Jill to do what you want. In addition to the cramped controls these are my biggest gripes: - You can only have 2 ovens and 2 frosters, unlike the previous editions where you can have 3 of each. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but I missed that 3rd oven and froster. - The cake toppers are tiny and hard to see, let alone select. In the upper levels when they start ordering double layers with a topper it is extremely hard to tell just what the top cake is. The blue and purple frosted cakes are very hard to differentiate in that little bubble over the customer's head. Cake shape is hard to make out too. - It is really easy to cancel an action. For example, if I choose a cake to bake, frost, or top and then accidentally tap anything else before that process has a chance to start then that action will cancel out. This is how you end up walking away only to come back and find that the cake is still unfrosted, hasn't been baked, or is still waiting on the topper. In the other games I always thought that it was a little too easy to screw up because there was zero lag time between the screen tap and the action happening which resulted in more than one erroneous cake, but it turns out that the other (older) versions had it right. - Upgrades on equipment are too expensive and there isn't enough of them. You can't go back and replay levels to build up cash so I struggled through until I upgraded her shoes, the ovens, the frosters all the way and bought the cheapest cake topper. After that it got a little easier to make the super bakery goals, but now I am in the last "area" with enough money to buy every upgrade there is and nothing to spend it on because I have already fully upgraded everything. - The mini games should be optional. I have found myself stuck on a cake matching mini game that is stupid hard. I am too old (mid 30's) to have video games pissing me off. I wouldn't mind if it were an issue of skill. But the best you can hope for is luck because the cakes basically look like blobs with toppers. I only got through the last mini game like this one because I started clicking on every cake that had a topper like one in the picture (you'll see what I mean when you get there). - The drink machine is slow and you can't upgrade it to make it faster. Once you've bought the drink machine the only upgrade is to go from a one-drink machine to a two-drink machine with no appreciable difference in speed. Okay, so that's the annoying stuff. One neat new thing is that you can upgrade the cake display stand so that you can leave a cake in it "overnight". Before I pick up the last customer's money I make the most expensive cake I can and put in the cake display for the next level. Customers in the game are a lot quicker to buy a displayed cake than they ever have been before and the one I start with is usually requested by customer #2 of the day. Overall I feel like the game merits 4 stars. I give it two just for being Cake Mania, one for being long enough that I couldn't complete it in one day, and one because I feel like it is $20 well spent. I would like to give it 5 stars but the dismal display and it's limited re-playability just won't let me mislead you that way. Bottom line: flawed but entertaining. I've spend $20 bucks on dumber stuff. I just hope the next installment is more like the first two. Waste of Money and Time It is as though the game designers didn't have the time to make this game work at all. I'm a huge fan of Cake Mania, but this one is the worst out of all three in my opinion. Here's why: 1. There are only six levels (worlds) that Jill goes to. And once you've gone through those, there's nothing left.Done. You've finished the game. If you recall in the 2nd game, there were three sub-levels in each world. 2. The mini games are dumb and they are incorporated into the actual levels. For example, instead of making cakes for demanding customers,you're playing Cakey Makey. 3. In order to move on from one of these stages, you must complete the impossibly difficult task of playing Cake Match (or something like that...I forgot the actual name of the game). I actually had to have another person use his stylus and help me beat the level because it was that incredibly difficult to beat. The point of the game was to find the three cakes from the top screen and match them to a myriad of impossibly similar looking cakes on the bottom of the screen. Each cake at the top has a time limit and once you've identified the correct cake, another cake comes sliding down. It's a neverending, impossibly difficult task and it actually made me HATE THIS GAME. It stopped being fun and started making me really angry that I spent money on it. 4. Colors are too similar and it's easy to make a blue cake when you were supposed to make a violet one. And no, I'm not color blind, but I think the game designers might have been. Also, brown and red look very similar as well. 5.Shapes are also hard to discern in this game. Hearts and rounds look deceptively similar when they are so small that you need a magnifying glass to see them. 6.You can buy upgrades for the big-screen T.V., but it won't do you any good. The T.V. shuts off 5 seconds after you put it on. Very annoying. 7.The vocal components are not funny---they're just plain irritating. I'm talking about the things that people say when they walk into the bakery. Okay, they've always been a little on the annoying side, like in other CM games, but this one "takes the cake." Having to listen to very whiny pseudo-Asian riffs got on my nerves after about 5 minutes. And the executioner in France stating, "cake or death," in his daft, doofy voice made me really regret buying this game. 8.The cake shapes were really difficult to discern like I stated above and they were also lacking in imagination. I think each world/theme should have had cakes to match it. A police-badge-shaped-cake in a world filled with wizards and fairies? That makes no sense! What about leaves, flowers, stars, moons, and other fantastical things? 9. The mini games, while a great idea were, for a lack of a better word, dumb. The only reason I didn't give this game a 1 star rating is because the graphics were amazing. The art is truly beautiful. At least they did one thing right... This is just my opinion.