Overcooked 2 – Xbox One

You will not be ready for the emotional mayhem that this game causes!

Overcooked! 2 is recipe making game that can be played solo or cooperatively with friends while sitting on your couch (or online).

This is these second game from the Overcooked series bringing you back to the Onion Kingdom, King Onion and his dog Kevin. You will now be facing the Unbread (cue scary music) and as a chef you must help save the kingdom taking King Onion’s bus on your adventures.

The game has added a few more mechanics from the first game such as throwing and the online mode to play with friends. Overcooked! 2 has updated graphics and a whole new set of levels for you to play on.

At first Overcooked! 2 looks like a cute cooking game where you can pick from a variety of characters each donned with a chef hat and an apron, ready for the kitchen and prepare and cook easy recipes ready to serve.

What could go wrong with players helping each other to make food to score points? All you have to do is get the food ready, chop it, cook and prepare it, then serve it. That sounds easy enough right?

You would be wrong…

Gameplay

From first looking at the Overcooked! 2 you would expect it to be quite easy to play and the first few levels make you and your co-op players feel like sous-chefs in the kitchen working together to prepare the food, cook it then serve it to the customers -some of which who want variations of the meal which you need to pay attention to.

You pick your stations (cutting, cooking, serving and washing) and make tons of dishes that get served to get you the three stars you need for each level. You don’t even care about the time limit it gives you because everyone is doing their bit to run this virtual kitchen.

You all focus on the orders and make sure you serve them correctly to get more points.

You compliment each other on the skills your brought and how well you did to get the three stars and how everyone worked together efficiently making the dishes.

Some levels even put players on different sides of the kitchen so you can only do the preparation or the cooking so you really need to work efficiently to get everything done. But still you all work together to get that food to the tables, scoring points and getting tips for the timely and correct orders.

Then the game starts changing the levels so you move from a kitchen to a hot air balloon or a wizardry school. Why not have a kitchen in the sky or in a mine or even rafts going down a steady flowing river or better still on two sides of the a busy road where cars speed through? The dishes that you make also start to get more complex as well meaning there are more steps to the process before serving. Now you have to make the dough, start steaming and adding more ingredients to each dish. Still you persist and pick your stations, start talking to each other about what needs to be done and get ready to play as you know the expectations of the game.

Enter mayhem!

Overcooked! 2 brings in a lot of unexpected surprises to the game as the further you get into the game, you find levels where the whole kitchen moves; the stairs disappear and reappear stranding players away from the rice that is about to boil over or the pizza that is about to burn and wasting precious time not being able to serve the dishes.

Your team work abilities go out the window and you start to panic; and run around trying to get the ingredients you need for the next customer before the time runs out. You throw a raw fish at another player, forgetting to chop it or pick up a plate and serve it missing an ingredient meaning that those vital points you need to get the three stars are slowing fading away. You start pressing the wrong buttons and throw a plate in the disposal unit or leaving food to burn going from a fully functional team to a disorderly group of newbies in the kitchen.

You start leaving your station to help at others and then the kitchen changes again and the food starts to burn setting the kitchen alight and one player has to go around and tackle the fires with an extinguisher and the burnt food needs to go in the disposal for you to get back to cooking and get back to an orderly kitchen.

The timer starts to count down and you need that food to be served to get the points so you start just making any of the orders to get those points.

After the blind panic, you watch the way the level works and adjust to the changes in the best way possible with each level taking you all on an emotional rollercoaster as you don’t know what to expect, so your start to expect the unexpected and analyse the situation on your first attempt and then chop and change the way you play as you now know the game will throw you off guard at any point.

Final Thoughts

Overcooked! 2 is a lot of fun to play, the more stars you get, the more characters you unlock and you can even unlock some bonus levels along the way (which will really test your skills). The fun comes from how well you can work as a team to prepare the dishes and serve them and the mayhem players can cause in the kitchen whilst inadvertently delaying the serving process.

This game is very much suited to play co-op with friends or as a party game with family that will make you laugh from the start, whilst testing your culinary skills and how you work as a team. The fact that you can pick your chef choosing from humans, to a dog or even a mouse in the kitchen just adds to the fun.

It would be more difficult to play this game on your own especially with the complexity of some of the levels where you cannot move from where you are and have limited access to the ingredients and preparation stations.

We’d recommend this game if you like to multiplayer games where team work is the major factor as Overcooked! 2 does require thought and effort and trial and error when you move towards the harder levels. It is also fun to play with people who are newer to playing games as the controls are not complex and you will enjoy the wacky fun kitchens you get to explore and play on whilst creating a variety of dishes and saving the Onion Kingdom from impending doom!