Platform: Switch
Publisher: Team 17
Developer: Ghost Town Games
Genre: Communication, Strategy/Tactics, Party, Simulation
Series: Overcooked
Players: 4
Release Date: August 07, 2018
The Switch’s ethos of playing together with friends and family at any time and any place fits perfectly with what the Overcooked series does best: provide insanely enjoyable and rewarding moments of co-op chaos. Despite some significant performance issues at launch, Overcooked: Special Edition was my favorite version of the title to play thanks to the portable nature of the Switch combined with the fact that it is always two-player ready.
I fully expected the sequel to improve on its predecessor, but I was delightfully surprised to see that Overcooked 2 features new chefs, new recipes, more ways to cook, dynamic stages, and the ability to play all modes locally, wirelessly, and online. Ghost Town Games and Team17 went above and beyond to make Overcooked 2 a must-own title for all fans of cooperative multiplayer games.
The Onion Kingdom’s Unbread Nightmare
Overcooked 2 sees the return of the mustachioed Onion King and his resolute dog companion, Kevin. The game opens up in a very Frankenstein-esque way as a violent thunderstorm rages in the background while the Onion King maniacally cheers the success of obtaining a book titled the “NECRO-NOMNOM-ICON.” At first glance, it seems to be a simple recipe book but Kevin barks repeatedly to tell the Onion King about its dangerous potential. Ignoring his warnings, the Onion King reads a recipe that mysteriously causes an army of half-bitten pieces of toast to rise from underground. Better known as the Unbread, these pieces of toast are hungry, and their insatiable appetite poses a threat to the inhabitants of the Onion Kingdom. The Onion King tasks you and your friends to enhance your cooking talents to eliminate this Unbread nightmare.
The idea of zombie pieces of bread coming to life to eat everything in sight is so utterly absurd that I find it hard not to find enjoyment in the madness. While the Ever Peckish from the first title itself was pretty ridiculous, that spaghetti and meatball monster posed the same threat as the newly established Unbread. No one is playing Overcooked 2 for an incredibly engaging narrative, but its silly premise is delightful and charming enough to motivate players to see the end.
More Polished Than a Clean Plate
There are still some things about Overcooked 2 that are similar to the first game like characters and chefs being adorably plump, stages being relatively simple in their designs, and the overworld being delightfully cute in its bright and colorful charm. Overcooked 2 has improved on these aspects with a distinguished level of polish that highlight Ghost Town Games’ growth as a development studio.
The addition of brand new chefs like the Platypus and Walrus, who are distinct in their characteristics so that players don’t lose sight of them in the hectic chaos of the levels, provide an endearing method of personalization in the game. Chef selection is made in a fully rendered food truck on the main menu of the title. This type of stylized selection shows to me that Ghost Town Games is confident in their development style and want to make something as simple as character and mode selection its own experience.
This type of experience carries over to the stage selection overworld map as well. In the original game, you and your fellow chefs would roam around the onion kingdom in an adorable little food bus moving from kitchen to kitchen. In Overcooked 2, the bus has been upgraded to a food truck with a complete suite of terrain modes. This food truck can drive through the land, swim through oceans and lakes, and fly in the clouds with no trouble whatsoever. The overworld map is made even more interactive by hiding buttons that when pressed give you access to the next level or to special “Kevin” levels, which are a lot more challenging than the standard levels of the story.
After playing Overcooked 2 for some time, I felt like going back to the original to see how much things have changed on the presentation front. Kitchens in the first Overcooked were very simple in their designs, layouts, and themes. Overcooked 2 manages to keep this simplicity while also making kitchens unique and exciting at every turn. The presentation never hinders gameplay as ingredient boxes are marked boldly with the ingredients they contain, chopping stations are clearly distinguished with the knife and board, and other cooking tools are characterized by their usage (ovens burn, blenders stir, etc.). There is more that goes on in kitchens in Overcooked 2 that make stages unique. Air balloon levels are characterized by floating platforms and blue skies, cave levels are identified by minecarts and minerals, and castle stages are full of magical elements like teleporters and cute little wizard students eating in a mess hall. These small thematic additions make levels feel inventive, unique, and entertaining.
Even with all these presentation elements going on, Overcooked 2 performs at a reliable and stable 30 frames per second. I rarely saw the game stutter or dip below this performance level. Overall, the presentation is bright, sharp, and so delightfully colorful that Overcooked 2 feels like an excellent improvement over its predecessor.
Creating More Chaos In The Kitchen
The core gameplay of Overcooked 2 is mostly unchanged from its predecessor, but it features several additions that enhance the experience significantly. New recipes, more ways to cook, dynamic stages, and online functionality keep the core formula of Overcooked feeling innovative and exciting for those familiar with the series and newcomers alike.
The gameplay loop of Overcooked has several core components; grabbing ingredients, preparing them, cooking them, plating them, and serving them following the orders that appear at the top left. Once the plate is served, you’re rewarded with points and a tip multiplier that increases as orders are served consecutively. To beat a level you only need to achieve one star, but it’s astonishingly addicting to play levels over and over again to meet the highest score. Overcooked 2 still uses this core formula because it works well, encourages cooperation, and fosters vast amounts of fun.
Overcooked 2 keeps the formula feeling inventive thanks to a handful of new additions. The game features several new recipes like pasta, dumplings, and my absolute favorite, cakes! Along with some of the new recipes also come new ways to cook and prepare foods. For example, making a cake requires players to mix all the ingredients in a blender and then take the mixture to the oven where it bakes. The blender, steamer, and oven allow for exciting (and sometimes overwhelming) new ways to prepare the new recipes that have been added to the game.
The stages in the first Overcooked could get pretty hectic at some points, but they are nothing compared to the levels that exist in Overcooked 2. I remember the first time I played a level in the first Overcooked where the kitchen was split in between two trucks on a moving road. You’d have to wait for the vehicles to come together to prepare food and serve plates on one side. At the time, I remember being impressed by the challenge of playing on a continually moving stage because it made the game more interesting.
Overcooked 2 takes that idea and amplifies it to create stages that are not just interactive, but dynamic as well. Some stages have interactive changes like rotating ingredient boxes, disappearing staircases, and teleporters. In addition to this, kitchens are dynamic in that they can change entirely to provide a whole new slew of recipes and layouts. The earliest and most notable example of this is in one of the air balloon kitchens. As you and your fellow chefs cook in the sky, the weather progresses from sunny to stormy. Eventually, the air balloon crash lands onto a restaurant where the orders change from salads to sushi rolls. These sorts of changes catch you by surprise and create exciting moments of chaos within your cooking party as your whole strategy for a level would need to change on the fly.
Speaking of flying, Overcooked 2 has added a small mechanic that considerably increases the flow of the kitchen; the ability to throw uncooked ingredients. It truly is a tiny addition, but it makes all the difference when one of your partners needs chopped cheese for a burger on the other side of the room as the timer is about to run out. Some kitchens are built around this mechanic as they force players to stay on one side and pass ingredients to each other for chopping and then have them toss it back for cooking and serving. It’s always rewarding when you throw a pile of rice in a pot to have it cook without having to walk over to it.
One of the most significant issues with the first Overcooked was that the multiplayer was limited to local couch co-op only. This was a problem for solo players because playing this game by yourself is just not fun. Switching between two chefs is tedious, slow, and frustrating at difficult stages. To rectify this issue, Ghost Town Games and Team17 have added an online multiplayer component to Overcooked 2 complete with an emote wheel for quick callouts and communication.
The emote wheel is no replacement for verbal or in-person communication, however, and playing online with people can become difficult when there’s just no way to organize a strategy. Even though story mode is limited to friends only, you can play arcade and versus mode online with friends and randoms. Arcade has you playing through a collection of themed levels at a random order. Versus has you competing against friends or randoms to see who can fulfill the most orders within the time limit. Being able to play these modes with friends and randoms ensure that your time playing the game alone isn’t the only option when there’s no one to share a controller with.
Final Thoughts
Ghost Town Games and Team17 have improved on everything about the first Overcooked and added a ton of new chefs, recipes, ways to cook, and a whole online multiplayer mode to prove that Overcooked 2 is indeed a brand new, and better, game. I’ve had so much fun playing this game with friends and family in person, playing with them online, and playing with randoms at 2 in the morning. This is one of those games that will consistently be played with whenever family and friends come over, or when I’m feeling like playing something online that is non-competitive.
Overcooked 2 is a refreshing, enjoyable, and completely compelling cooperative multiplayer experience that absolutely deserves to be experienced by old fans, newcomers, and anyone who even remotely enjoys playing games with others. Overcooked 2 is available now on the Nintendo eShop for $19.99 and at retail for $39.99.
Review Copy Provided by Team17
