Review: Overcooked

The Onion Kingdom is under attack, and the end of days is vastly approaching. The only hope to save humanity is to appease the hunger of a… giant meatball. Before you can rescue the Onion Kingdom, you must travel through space and time, perfecting your culinary skills in kitchens located on busy city streets, icebergs, and even volcanoes. Overcooked is a frantically-fun couch co-op adventure that can bring family and friends closer to together with teamwork, or have you yelling at them until you are blue in the face like Gordon Ramsey.

The concept of Overcooked is simple: Much like working at any ordinary restaurant, your goal is to prepare the best quality meal in the most efficient time possible. What isn’t so ordinary about Overcooked is you’re thrown into kitchens with various wacky layouts and obstacles, and are only given a few minutes to cook as many of the recipes you are given as possible. By completing each order as fast as possible, you will rack up gold, plus tips, and earn a star rating. Each level of Overcooked is sprawled out across a world map, and are grouped together by each theme. Much like a Super Mario game, each level requires a certain number of stars, so there is plenty of going back and replaying previous levels to try and upgrade your star ratings.

There are a few basic steps to preparing each recipe: chopping ingredients, cooking ingredients, combining the ingredients to make a meal, and then handing the recipe in after it is prepared. Depending on the level you’ll also need to do some clean-up and wash dishes before you run out of clean plates. New recipes are added into the mix as the levels progress, and eventually you’re tasked to create a plethora of different cuisines that all require their own separate ingredients.

Overcooked has an extremely easy, three-button control layout for completing these tasks, which players of any age can pick up quickly. If you have a shortage of controllers, or you just have a flair for making things a little extra crazy, there is a split controller option that allows two players to use the same controller.

One of the best aspects of Overcooked is its amazing soundtrack, from the calm harmonica tune played during the level selection screen, to the various upbeat background music for each of the different themed levels. The goofy visual style for the character avatars also suits the game’s overall feel really well.

The major downfall of Overcooked is the lack of online play. Having as many cooks in the kitchen as possible is beneficial for success in the game, and having to rely on playing with friends or family in your household is a letdown for such a co-op oriented game. The solo play of Overcooked while still enjoyable, requires much more micromanaging, and sometimes can become confusing in the later levels of the game. When playing single player mode, you are given two cooks during each level. You must switch between the two cooks to prepare and pass ingredients to each other in order to make each meal. It’s easy to get flustered, as you try and keep both cooks constantly doing a task so you don’t fall behind and run out of time on your recipes. Simply put: Overcooked just isn’t as fun if you’re flying solo.

Overcooked‘s lack of online multiplayer and tedious solo play may be a bit of a downer for some players, but the game’s overall experience is one not to be missed. With couch co-op games being particularly scarce in the video game industry as of late, Overcooked is a breath of fresh air with its addicting teamwork mechanics, and easy to learn control scheme. Whether it’s playing with a group of friends, or a family game night, Overcooked is an addicting culinary adventure for all ages.

 

Playstation 4 Overcooked code was provided by Team17.