Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!

Genre: Arcade / Simulation

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local Split-Screen)

.

Review:

(Note: Included in Cook, Serve, Delicious! 1/2 Bundle!! along with Cook, Serve, Delicious!, and also in Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2/3 Bundle!! along with Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!, and all above games are included in Cook, Serve, Delicious, Trilogy!)

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! is an Arcade-style game with Simulation elements where you work in multiple restaurants, while also building, working, and managing your own. However, the game’s focus isn’t really on its management stuff, instead the majority of the game has you making foods to order for customers in a fast-paced game of responding to each specific order with the corresponding series of simple commands. Kinda’ like Simon Says, but with food orders that can require multiple steps.

People might be put in mind of the Overcooked games, which have been a huge hit on the Switch, or the Cooking Mama series, which have been big on Nintendo platforms for generations, but Cook, Serve, Delicious doesn’t play much like either of those. For a typical order, you’re reading the order, and then opening up multiple menus and pressing the corresponding buttons for that order.

For a hot dog, as an example, you’ll be selecting the hot dog and placing it to be cooked, then when it’s done soon afterward, you must open the bun menu, selecting the correct bun and the correct toppings, all mapped to a combination of one of the trigger buttons and one of the face buttons. It takes some getting used to, but soon enough you’ll get the hang of it. Customers’ responses will depend on how accurate the order is, as well as how long it took for them to receive it, and at the end of each level your level of success will depend on how many of them you pleased and displeased.

The game adds other complications into the mix, as well. Some menu items must be prepared in batches beforehand, and assigned to a limited number of slots for that express purpose… but those pre-prepared foods have a shelf life and must be tossed if they get too old. Also, as you work you’ll have any number of tasks that crop up and must be resolved or your rating will suffer – anything from doing dishes and taking out the trash to fighting off armed robbers with a series of button commands. These issues give players some variety of activities, and challenge them to manage multiple problems at the same time.

The result is a really fast-paced, frantic experience that challenges your ability to follow commands while multitasking. Thankfully, the game fully supports split-screen local co-op, so if you have someone nearby wanting to help you fill orders or help with prep and cleanup, that’s always an option.

The game’s visuals are simple but decent enough. The characters are cartoony and the food looks like a decent but slightly cartoony representation of the real deal. Nothing phenomenal, but it works well enough.

I think the biggest problem I have with this game is that players aren’t given enough indication what things are that can be gleaned from a quick look. The orders on the side show pictures of the type of item being ordered, but don’t depict it as the customer wants it, items at the top don’t appear to show exactly what they are, only the type of food they are, and when you select an order to take it, the list of specific ingredients the customer wants are listed at the bottom of the screen in fine print, requiring you to drag your attention all the way away from the commands showing you which ingredient is matched to which key combination.

It would have been really nice if the game had characters actually audibly say what their order was, or at the very least if the game’s visuals better depicted what the specific demand was. This game is hectic enough without having to wrest your attention away from what you’re doing every time you’re trying to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing.

However, despite this frustration, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! is an excellent fast-paced game with some good co-op gameplay. Definitely worth a look.

tl;dr – Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! is an Arcade-style game with Simulation elements that doesn’t play much like Overcooked or Cooking Mama. It’s more like a food version of Simon Says, with multiple steps for some items. The game does a good job keeping things interesting by having you manage multiple things at once, and it makes for a good co-op experience, although it’s frustrating that it doesn’t do a better job to make important information immediately accessible to players in the chaos.

Grade: B

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}