Turn the stove back on and sharpen your knives: the videogame saga of craziest cuisine there is She is back! We are talking about the opera omnia Overcooked! All you can eat, which, after debuting on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in the last months of 2021, has now also landed on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Steam and Nintendo Switch. The game is proposed as the complete, definitive and improved collection of all previous chapters of the independent series developed by Ghost Town Games: will it really be like this?
A good dish ...
Let's start from the heart of Overcooked! All You Can Eat: the game itself. In the various titles collected in the anthology, we will play the role of wacky chefs whose task will be to save the world from hordes of very hungry enemies, trying not to disappoint the expectations of demanding customers. Traveling the world and the chaotic kitchens of a myriad of restaurants, our aim will be, level after level, to prepare the dishes ordered by the patrons in a limited time. But obviously ours will not prove to be such an easy task: kitchens are full of pitfalls and obstacles, without considering that the risk of forgetting a pot on the stove and causing a fire is really around the corner ... in short, you have to keepfire extinguisher handy!
This well-established formula from previous titles is re-proposed in this collection, which includes Overcooked!, Overcooked! 2 and all DLC in version remastered at 60 fps (30 fps on Nintendo Switch). The novelties of the All You Can Eat version are many: new levels, new cooks and related new selectable skins, a system of trophies and achievements and the assisted mode, which lowers the difficulty of the game. In addition, the levels of the first title are also available for the first time for the multiplayer online, Also in cross-platform.
… For a heated meal
Overcooked! All You Can Eat is what on paper would seem a perfect party game for an evening with friends: it promises weird levels and lots of laughs, but the Arcade mode it is not suitable for those unfamiliar with the dynamics of the game. Need practice and carefully explain the rules of the game to those who have never played it, which basically ruins the party game atmosphere. It is also possible to play the Local multiplayer campaign and this is certainly the most effective way to train together and get familiar with the maps; pity then that the same are repeated in Arcade mode with one unbalanced difficulty compared to the levels of the Campaign mode. In addition, the introduction of the maps of the first Overcooked! even in multiplayer modes it is not a winning choice: the first title, in fact, has a much less refined game design of its sequel.
What if you don't have anyone to play with? Overcooked! All You Can Eat promises a sector online courses which includes co-op and vs modes in both private and public sessions; 0 pity the servers are deserted. Despite the cross-platform between six consoles, the waiting times to find opponents are endless and rarely have a positive outcome. Certainly, the game suffers its age: we are talking about a saga whose first title was released in 2018; a remastered collection with marginal and not very innovative additions are not enough to relaunch everything. Added to this is an uneven localization in Spanish, with typos and inaccuracies in translation and punctuation (especially in the first title). More was expected.
Despite the flaws, it should be noted that Overcooked! All You Can Eat offers a huge amount of content to one all in all low price: the Nintendo Switch version costs € 39,99, a much less expensive figure than the sum of the first chapter (€ 19,99) and the second (€ 24,99), without considering the DLC. Among the numerous platforms on which it is available, Overcooked! All You Can Eat is particularly recommended on Nintendo Switch: although the technical inferiority compared to all the other counterparts, the presence of Joy-Con clearly favors local multiplayer, allowing two players to have fun on the same console without using additional controllers.
