Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 Review - A Tasty Treat

Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 spices things up with new features and gorgeous food graphics. 

The original Cook, Serve, Delicious was a surprisingly fun and engaging cooking sim that combined mechanics found in typing games. To prepare and serve food, you’d need to enter the correct keyboard commands. For example, putting three meat patties on the grill would require you to tap the “M” key three times before hitting enter.

Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 follows the same basic principles of the first game, while expanding upon them with new features and foods. One new feature is the Holding Station, which makes things both easier and harder all at once. Certain foods are required to be prepared via Holding Station, meaning you’re unable to click on the customer’s corresponding number to prep the food individually.

This can make things particularly tricky when Rush Hour comes and you’re scrambling to serve a giant mob of customers. However, the Holding Station can be a great way to help you prepare for said Rush Hour if you manage to prepare enough of the right type of food ahead of time.

The next change in Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 centers around the food inputs themselves. In the first title, even complex food items could be completed with minimal page flipping. Now, even basic foods require you to do a bit of flipping to find the necessary ingredients. This makes it harder for you to remember food commands, as page flipping is actually a command in and of itself.

For example, on the first page you may need to tap the “N” key for basic onions. However, the customer also wants sauteed onions, which can be found by flipping the page and hitting “N” yet again. The command for onions is the same, yet you’ll need to flip the page in order to successfully put both types of onions on their order.

While it will take you longer to remember food commands, orders will eventually become second nature. When that happens, you’ll be able to kick back and enjoy your restaurant’s natural ebb and flow. Your reward mastering the delicate arts of keyboard cooking? Unlockable items to help you upgrade your restaurant.

This differs from the first game’s automatic restaurant improvements after reaching a new star level. As such, you’re given more control over how your restaurant looks in Cook, Serve, Delicious 2. Want to decorate your restaurant wall with bizarre pictures? Go for it. There are hundreds of items to unlock as you progress through the game.

In fact, I found that after only a few hours in the game, I’d unlocked a substantial amount of restaurant cosmetics including unique countertops and overhead lighting.

Meanwhile, the chance to unlock new foods to prepare is a treat thanks to the game's improved graphics. Seriously, we wish we could reach into our monitors and pull out one of Cook, Serve, Delicious 2's gorgeous looking cheeseburgers.

The only negatives I can find are the lack of competitive challenges found in the first game, and the lack of ongoing story narrative via in-game email. I really enjoyed seeing how my prep time compared to that of other Cook, Serve, Delicious players, and I loved reading the quirky emails.

As of right now, the developer is still implementing regular updates to the game, so we may see a competitive add-on and a narrative update come to Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 in the near future. Until then, there are 30 different restaurant challenges to keep you busy.

If you’re a fan of the original, you’ll love what Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 has to offer. For newcomers to the series, you can play the sequel as a standalone. However, we still recommend buying both and completing the first game’s campaign before working through Cook, Serve, Delicious 2.

Review

80%

Pros

  • Challenging new mechanics.
  • 30 different restaurants to explore.
  • Delicious looking food.

Cons

  • Lack of competitive challenges and leaderboards.
  • Lack of narrative email updates.

Morgan is a writer, indie game lover, and socially awkward coffee addict. Need something? Morgan can be reached at morgan.shaver@allgamers.com or if you like, you can say hello using GIFs on Twitter.

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