Overcooked

Co-op games are still pretty popular with gamers all over the world, especially those that feature local multiplayer, because it allows friends to gather on a couch and have fun like in the good old days. Although it’s not easy to come up with a good formula in the genre, many things can be ignored if the gameplay is fun and enjoyable, because players can just have a laugh and get over many inconveniences as a group. On the other hand, the mechanics must be spot on, otherwise frustration kicks in and ruins the mood for everyone.

Overcooked is a local co-op time management game in which your goal is to work together with other players in order to cook various recipes and serve them to hungry customers. The mechanics are about as simple as they sound, in theory, but the actual gameplay requires a great deal of concentration and some quick thinking if you are shooting for the maximum rating. Hence, it’s a great couch party game that shines at its brightest when a couple of friends get together for a gaming session.

In short, the goal of each round is for you to serve the next customer as quickly as possible, and in order to do that you have to get the ingredients, chop them up, boil/fry them, and then put the final product on a plate and serve it. There’s always a time limit, on the other hand, which means that you have to move as quickly as possible at all times in order to make sure that you get enough points to unlock the next stage.

Although the game was obviously designed with multiplayer in mind, a single player campaign is available as well, which is where you can find out more about the story and the world in which all of this takes place. As such, the culinary quest takes you to The Onion Kingdom, which is attacked by all sorts of monsters. You cannot deal with them at first, which is why you are sent back in time to start from the bottom and learn how to deal with the demanding task of cooking under pressure.

The stages are pretty simple at first, given the fact that most recipes require a single ingredient and pretty basic preparations beforehand. However, they get more complex later on, and so do the actual stages, because all sorts of obstacles make an appearance. Whether you have to cook on the street and avoid a sea of pedestrians, or you have to pay attention to the moving furniture around the kitchen, timing is incredibly important past a certain point. Naturally, this is much harder to achieve in single player where you control two cooks at once.

Overcooked does a wonderful job when it comes to gameplay mechanics, because you are always running from one place to the other with no time to think or get bored. There’s always something that needs taking care of, not to mention the fact that all players must synchronize their moves to keep up with the changing environment. Frustration can kick in sometimes, but it all depends on whether you are working toward the highest rating or you are just trying to pass the level.

The controls are not bad either, and the developers managed to achieve an awful lot with very little buttons. Thus, there are only a handful of keys/buttons you need to use, which makes it easy to use either a keyboard or a gamepad. Granted, it’s recommended to use a gamepad most of the time, if only because it’s easier to move quickly if you have to control two cooks at the same time. You might stumble onto a bit of delay every now and again, but the overall controls are pretty smooth and responsive.

Lastly, Overcooked’s biggest flaw is the fact that it gets repetitive after you manage to finish it once, mainly because the levels are not very replayable. The challenge is always the same, so the only reason you might want to replay them is to achieve a better rating. On the other hand, there are enough stages to last you for a while, so the game certainly deserves most of the money you pay for it.

Hence, Overcooked is bound to become a classic in certain households, especially since it’s easy to learn and very difficult to master. You really have to work as a team to achieve victory, and as long as spirits don’t get too riled up, the game maintains its appeal from start to finish, and it’s also nicely optimized to run on most computers.