One of my favorite co-op party games from this past console generation was the Overcooked! series from publisher Team17 and developer Ghost Town Games. We reviewed the first and second game and thought very highly of them with only a few minor issues holding them back. Now the developer has bundled these meals together on the next generation consoles, added some extra trimmings, and topped it off with some tasty improvements. How did the finish dish turn out?
Overcooked! All You Can Eat is the name of the new game and I got to play it on PlayStation 5 for this review. You get both Overcooked and Overcooked 2 here along with every piece of downloadable content and free content that was released for those two games. What that means is that you are going to have plenty on your plate to play through here which will be very exciting for anyone who missed out on the first two games originally. If you already played them then this meal may not be as appetizing to you but worry not as there is some new content and features here that may make you want to dig in again. Now since we reviewed these games before I’m not going to go really in-depth on the old content here as you can go to our review links that I included above to learn more about them.
The game can be played with one to four players either locally or online. When playing by yourself you’ll control both chefs with your DualSense controller which is harder but still doable. When you jump into the campaigns, you’ll play through a variety of kitchens with the goal being to deliver as many meals to the customers as you can before time expires. The requested meals are displayed across the top of the screen and you have to work to put them together quickly before the order expires. You don’t have to fulfill the orders in the correct order but you’ll want to in order to keep your score streak going and to avoid getting penalized for delivering an order late. Every level grades you at the end with 1-3 stars so getting as many points from each delivered meal is critical to earning the best rating.
The game is far from easy and the franchise has been known to generate laughs and anger especially when playing with others. The kitchens only get harder and more complex as you go so while you’ll start off with simple layouts pretty soon, you’ll be moving between rafts going down a river, moving between sky-high balloons, and much more. While it can be difficult to get three stars on each one the sense of accomplishment you feel when you do pull it off is great.
So what exactly is new in this version of Overcooked!? To start you get a brand-new series of levels called The Ever Peckish Rises. This adds 7 new levels to the game along with a few new chefs to play as. Much like any new set of levels there will be new recipes and challenges to overcome. I enjoyed them but I do wish there was more new content here for players like me who already played these games in the past. The chef selection menu has seen an overhaul and now it displays all 50+ playable chefs on-screen much like a fighting game instead of you just having to scroll through them one by one to find the one you want to play as.
Ghost Town Games has also gone in and added some features to make the game more accessible to players. You can turn on an assist mode which makes completing levels much easier by not failing your orders and increasing how much time you have in the level. This reduces the stress some might’ve felt while playing and again is entirely optional. They’ve also added some options to adjust the UI and make the game more friendly towards dyslexic and colour blind players. On the graphics side both games have been updated to display at 4K resolution and run at 60fps so they’ve never played better until now. Another major improvement is the load times which are near non-existent now. It took me less than 10 seconds to boot the game up on PlayStation 5 and going in and out of a level takes 1-2 seconds at the most. It’s funny because I could see a load screen start to pop up only for it to vanish before it fully could. When I reviewed Overcooked! 2 one of my only issues was the fact that you had to suffer through the load times to get back the world map and go back into a level if you failed it. That issue has been completely erased in All You Can Eat.
When playing online you now have full cross-play and cross-chat support so you can play with players on Xbox with no issue. This is also the first time that the original Overcooked has supported online multiplayer so that’s a nice bonus as well. The game also makes use of the DualSense controller on the PlayStation 5 in a few different ways. Audio cues will play through the controller letting you know things like when your time is almost up or when a pot needs to be removed from the stove before it catches on fire. I always appreciate when developers use that speaker so I was glad to see it supported. Swiping on the touchpad allows you to perform emotes while the haptic feedback can let you know the direction of something in the kitchen that needs your attention. None of these features are game changing but they helped to make the game just a bit more immersive to me. The last thing I’ll touch on is the trophy list which consists of 43 trophies in total including a Platinum. It’s a very easy list compared to the prior two games because you aren’t required to get three stars in every level. Some players may not like that but if you have ever wanted a Platinum in this franchise before this will be your easiest way to get one.
Overcooked! All You Can Eat has never been better than it is on the freshly released consoles. If you’ve yet to play this chaotic, co-op cooking party game then you absolutely should pick this up as you get every serving of previously released content from both games along with some new content and features. As someone who fully completed the prior two games, I must say that while I enjoyed every improvement that was made here, there might not be enough for every veteran to want to jump back into the Onion Kingdom right away.
*Overcooked: All You Can Eat is available now on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series. Reviewed on PlayStation 5. Review copy provided by the publisher for this review.