There’s no doubt that the Overcooked! franchise has been a truly beloved series of games for the past few years. Unfortunately, I never seemed to put aside the time to try them out for myself as I was always chasing the latest multiplayer FPS game. As I’ve grown older and wiser I’ve learned to make more time for me to experiment with more genres as I did when I was younger. With Overcooked!: All You Can Eat making its debut on next-gen hardware it seemed that there was no time like the present to give it a whirl. What I found was one of the brightest, cutest, and hardest games I’ve played in years and I loved it!

Story

In each Overcooked! story, it begins with the world being taken over by a monster or monsters of some kind. Each time, the Onion King commands his two best chefs to cook their greatest dishes to appease these beings so that they leave us alone. The stories are pretty silly and do a great job of making the end of the world as light and child-friendly as they possibly could. Quirky characters and dad-jokes a-plenty are what you can expect from start to finish.

Gameplay

Admittedly, I knew what Overcooked!’s gameplay style was but I didn’t really expect to be as blown away and challenged as I was. As with most cooking games, you assemble plates together using a variety of different ingredients at the request of your patrons. One may order a burger plain while another may want the works. It’s your job to manage your time wisely and get as many plates out of the kitchen so that you can keep your patrons happy while earning as much cash as possible. It’s a theme we’ve all come to know in these types of games but Overcooked! ups the ante and makes it a game set in its own sub-genre.

Instead of handling just one chef, you have to handle two. It’s not as easy as just moving both sticks throughout the kitchen and doing everything simultaneously. You have to switch between each chef independently and perfectly set them to do something, rinse and repeat in order to manage your time correctly and efficiently. If that isn’t tricky enough, a lot of the levels are also specifically centered around making this as difficult as possible by putting integral cooking supplies in tight areas or by setting obstacles around the kitchen. I never thought I’d be so worried about burning soup.

As a lover of food management games, I instantly fell in love with what the Overcooked! series does differently to progress what we should expect out of games from this genre. The core gameplay is simple enough but the extra layers added just take what may be a bicycle and turn it into a suped-up motorcycle. The levels each have a distinct flow that extremely shakes up the gameplay so that it never feels like retreading the same ground. It all works together perfectly because of the great attention to detail that Ghost Town Games and Team17 put into their work.

This is further evident in how playing with more than one player is carried out. It’s a completely new experience for more than one reason. Playing with a second player may free player-1 of controlling a second character but they now have the added difficulty of communicating every movement with the second player. Teamwork is key and when the time is low and the obstacles are up against you there’s the constant anxiety of having everything fall apart.

Of course, All You Can Eat is more than just the base versions of Overcooked! 1 and 2. It’s packed full like a double-stuffed Oreo with content to further the longevity of its gameplay. There are dozens of awesome chefs to choose from and you better believe I nabbed that Swedish Chef pack while I could. The main meat and potatoes of the added DLC content though is its huge list of mini-stories that offer their own themed kitchens that add even more time and challenge to the fold.

There are some other really great additions besides the gameplay elements and these are the assist mode and the accessibility features. The assist mode allows you to change the gameplay and parameters of the levels to make it a more enjoyable experience for any kind of gamer. Just because I like the tight gameplay doesn’t mean I want to be stressed about burning steaks all of the time. It’s also nice to have this for parents that want to play with kids, newbie gamers, or for folks that may just need more time to get used to the game itself.

The accessibility features, while I may not use them, are extremely valuable to me. The fact that developers are learning to implement these for those who need them is very admirable. For too long there has been a part of the gaming community that has had to learn to adapt in order to play the games they love. It’s high time that those gamers are being recognized and for developers to adapt their games for them instead. Games are supposed to be a means for players to escape the real world for a bit and that idea is starting to become real for everyone, in every part of the community.

Visuals

The visuals that Overcooked!: All You Can Eat presents are beautiful in every sense of the word. The art style is great, the colors are great, and the animation is great. I couldn’t think of a more fitting look and feel for this series than what it is. It’s perfect for kids and those that want a break from the realistic or gloomy looks of the more mature action-heavy games.

Audio

As with everything else in the game, the audio is spot-on. The sounds are cartoony and the music is fantastic. I think my favorite audio comes when the timer is almost up. The music gets louder and faster while the clock just keeps ticking. It’s very anxiety-inducing but in the best way.

Replayability

All You Can Eat offers a huge amount of replayability. Whether it be through its two full campaigns, its many smaller bite-sized campaigns, arcade mode, its new content, or multiplayer, there’s no reason why any fan or new player wouldn’t enjoy what’s being offered. Even people who may have already played all of this content may want to jump back in solely for its upgraded graphics. There’s also the adage of the assist mode and accessibility options as well. It’s truly the definitive way to play this series.

Verdict

As you may have concluded, I absolutely adore Overcooked!: All You Can Eat. It not only gives you two really fantastic titles but all of the DLC content and improved visuals that make this incredible experience full. These games are so fun to play and I think that they’re something that anyone would enjoy. They’re also extremely clean in the optimization area which is hard to find in a lot of games releasing these days. It makes me eager to see what Ghost Town Games and Team17 have in store for the franchise going forward. All I know is, I’m hungry for more!