Overcooked 2: A Rehashed Menu

Time to Beat: 11 Hours

Time Played of DLC: 7 Hours

In 2020, during the height of the ever present pandemic, my wife and I played Overcooked.

My sons, then 3 and 5, loved watching. Now, 5 and 7 they insisted on playing the sequel. Team17 doesn't write any new recipes in this game. It's a solid stand alone expansion that repeats the performance of its predecessor.

The kingdom is overrun by Unbread, and King Onion asks the team to cook up a solution. Like the original Overcooked, the players control cartoony chefs in hectic kitchens, serving up common dishes.

The players prepare pizza, serve sushi, and fry fish. A handful of new dishes debut, with a number of repeat recipes. The player prepares meals, plates them, serves them on time, and cleans up.

Overcooked 2 only introduces a few new techniques. Most recipes involve one or two chopped items, one or two cooked items, and putting them together on a plate. Overcooked 2 adds bamboo steamers, along with combining meat and flour in a mixer. These are not new techniques. They are cosmetically different combinations of ingredients in cosmetically different cooking techniques. The mechanics are the same as those in Overcooked.

The same is true of the levels. In Overcooked every level had a unique set up, and an obstacle. Cars would drive through the kitchen, rats would steal unattended food, or falling in water would reset the player for five seconds. Overcooked 2 doesn't stand out for its obstacle design. It has a few new ideas; mini volcanoes which spout fire to be extinguished, portals that teleport the player to another part of the kitchen, and vanishing stairs.

Most of the levels of Overcooked 2 could be interspersed with levels from Overcooked original recipe, and the player wouldn't be able to tell the difference. It's the difference between Coca-Cola and Diet Coke, different but similar. That's good, because Overcooked was so delicious, but bad, because Overcooked 2 feels stale in comparison.

One element that stood out was the scoring. My wife and I played a few levels without the kids and they were too easy. In both Overcooked 1 and 2 players earn points by serving orders on time. Serving them faster earns tips, while failing to serve on time deducts a large chunk of points. The team can earn zero, one, two, or three stars depending on their score. Together my wife and I earned 1232 points on the first level, when it needed 400 to earn 3 stars, or 1216 on level 1-2, when we only needed 460.

The addition of my 5 and 7 year old increased the difficulty. The 5 year old particularly was an obstacle in our kitchen. But I imagine with my wife and I alone, we would have won easily. With the children it often took two or three attempts to earn three stars on the later levels.

Overcooked 2 has six worlds with six levels apiece, and a collection of bonus and hidden areas.

Through these levels we worked out a general strategy.

My youngest was in charge of extinguishing fires (if there were any of those mini-volcanos) and washing dishes. My wife and seven year old worked as sous chefs, chopping and cooking. I served as head chef and host, calling out new orders, jumping in to dice ingredients, bake, flip burgers, plating, and serving finished products.

The final level was unique, but much easier than the original. It took only two tries. It required the players to recook one of every order they had made previously, and it went well.

After I wrote this article we played one free DLC. We liked it enough to purchase the Night Of The Hangry Horde DLC. In the DLCs we found superior variety in recipe design, level layout, and obstacles. If the player is looking for a fresh experience, sadly it is in these DLCs.

Everyone enjoyed Overcooked 2. It's a fun family experience that four players can enjoy together. But it doesn't feel significantly different than its predecessor.

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