Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop is looking to be a robust upgrade to the successful series. There will be over 200 mini-games and 80 recipes to work through when the game launches on October 27. The third DS entry in the series also has new gameplay modes, one of which I was able to try out.

The new shopping mode is a bit crazy. Controlling a Mama-operated shopping cart, you roam through the dangerous aisles of a shopping market trying to collect ingredients, or possibly just some tomatoes, while avoiding belligerent shoppers that run on fixed paths. If you crash into one, you go into a mini-game where you have to rush to collect all the items that are being knocked out of the carts, or do some weirder things like rock a baby back to sleep. It seems like a fun distraction, and I'm curious to see how it fits into the overall gameplay.

The shopping mini-game isn't the only new part of the game, though. You now have the ability to attempt to create your own dishes using steps and ingredients from other ones, and you can also import ingredients from Gardening Mama, which came out earlier this year. With these additions, Mama will have a more varied palette this time around.