Overcooked is a cooking sim/action game by Ghost Town Games Ltd., and published by Team17 Digital Ltd. It’s described as co-op. Couch co-op. That was an instant red flag.
See, I’m Mr. Forever Alone, man. I couldn’t get one person to play this with me; let alone three. Which is a problem, since the game is clearly meant to have you and at least one other person running around like maniacs fulfilling orders and doing kitchen tasks. I don’t have that, so I have two unappealing options.
I either control one chef at a time and switch with a shoulder button, which is slow and guarantees I won’t get top marks in a stage. Or, I can split the controller, and try to wrap my brain around controlling two characters independently at once; a dicey proposition in any game, compounded here by a few other issues. Either way, you’re never going to be fast enough on your own.
The game literally starts with a food apocalypse. I’m not kidding. The salad orders this food titan demands of you are impossible to fill; but then again, the mission is a gimme. You hop through a time portal the Onion King just happened to have the entire time, winding up in the year 1993. Which tells me the Onion King is a moron. Why a time before the internet was widespread? They could be getting recipes that would blow the Spaghetti Titan’s freaking mind online if they Quantum Leaped back to, say, 2009 or so.
The game just requires more precision and speed than a single player can provide. And I mean precision; this game has a problem with that. Every bit of counter space has a tile, and getting things on the tile you want them to be on is like landing a rocket propelled squirrel with ADHD on top of the end of a wooden pole in heavy weather. It’s probably less of a big deal if you aren’t doing everything yourself, possibly adding to the hectic nature the game seems to try to foster. The problem being that doing this one at a time wastes a lot of time, and controlling two characters at once ~poorly~ helps even less. You have a time limit on each level, and you will watch orders pile up.
The graphics in the game are nice enough. They seem to evoke a mixture of weird children’s programs and European animation. Also, half the chefs seem to have tumblr nose; they either have a horrific cold or they’ve really been cooking with wine. Neither scenario is too far fetched. Either way, the game looks decent for this sort of game, and it doesn’t seem to chug as far as I can tell.
The soundtrack seems nice enough. Not that I was really able to pay attention to it mid-game, mind. But it was pleasant; I’d almost be interested in hearing some of the music outside the game just to know for sure. The sound effects are exactly what you expect in a cooking game; the standard array of chopping sounds and the like.
Overall, I can’t really recommend Overcooked if you, like me, have absolutely no friends to call on to play a cooking game. But If you have at least one, it may well be worth it to you. I can easily imagine it getting that sort of hectic fun with 4 players that makes for a memorable game. I still can’t help but feel, though, that the game would have benefited from at least basic online connectivity, if only to make the game easier to play.
Pros:
+Probably really fun to play with friends
+Cartoonish aesthetic
Cons:
-You, you know, actually need friends to actually have that fun
-The controls can be a bit squirrely
*We were provided a copy of this game for review*
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