Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! is one of my favorite games of all time. It’s my fave of the series so far, but only in front of the original by a hair. The dev is David Galindo, also known as Chubigans on Twitter, and his company is Vertigo Gaming. Or that’s the publisher? At any rate, most people see him as the sole dev. The third game is my least favorite of the series, but it was still fun and ate up a lot of my time. It was released in early access at the beginning of the pandemic, so it was a good way to keep my mind off *waves at the world in general*.
I ended up really not liking the final act of the third game, which deeply disappointed me. The premise of the game was America had been destroyed and we were post-apocalyptic (which, a bit on the nose for the time, looking back at it). You as the main character were found by two robots who revived you and then the three of you take a food truck around the country, cooking food for people on the road.
It’s an interesting take on the formula, and I dug it–until the end. There was a competition among all the food trucks. Which, fine. But the part that turned me off the game was that all the perks you bought throughout the game to deter the attacks from other food trucks were disabled for the competition–and that was the last straw for me. It felt as if the whole game was pointless if they were all gone like that.
Chubigans did fine-tune that because of the vast protests, but it still wasn’t that enjoyable to me. But I appreciate that he was trying to do something differet because the second game was basically an iteration of the first game.
When the fourth game was announced, I was immediately into it. I assume it’s the last because the name is different. The three existing games are Cook, Serve, Delicious!; Cook, Serve, Delcious! 2!!; and, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!. This one is Cook, Serve Forever–which to me means it’s the last one. Or maybe the start of a new series? But I wouldn’t think so because it’s the same basic premise.
In this case, though, you’re the daughter of a woman who loved to cook. She teaches you how to cook, and that’s how you get put on your journey as a chef. Fastforward, and you’re living with your Asian girlfriend (yay!) with tats. You’re barely eking buy, and you have a food truck. You have to move, and you want to enter a prestigious cooking contest. That’s in every game, by the way. Well, one and three at any rate.
Here’s the shocker right up front. The basics of the previous games are that you have to use the keyboard to type a letter for each ingredient. So like carrot is C, meat is M, etc. Depending on the recipe, it can be a different letter. Like avocado can be A or V, depending on the dish. That’s how all three of the games are. So that’s what I expected for this game.
Nope! It’s only the arrow keys this time, and each recipe has a combo of the arrow keys. Ian theorized that it was to make it easier to play on a controller, which makes a lot of sense. You have to press an arrow key as many times as they tell you and as long as they tell you. Then, there are added directions like NOT (so not plus the right arrow key means any of the other three arrow keys). There is a repeat, too, and you can get a NOT repeat. There migt be a question mark in any part of the instruction, so that means you don’t know which arrow or how long you press it or how many times. I’m sure it’ll get harder as I go on, too.
At first, I was not down with it. At all. I really liked the rhythm of banging out the ingredients. It was very soothing (even though it was also stressful). I felt like it was simplifying the game in a way I didn’t like. But. I will say that after playing for a few hours, I’m more into it.
I will say that I’m a bit meh about how the progress is marked in this game. In the other games, I only accepted perfect days because that’s how you got gold days. You could only get a gold by getting a perfect score. I thought that was too hard when I played those games. Truly. I thought you should have been allowed to make a mistake or two and get a gold. Because the days are long and grueling. Making one mistake made it feel like the entire day is wasted.
But, on the other hand, it doesn’t feel like it matters at all in this game. How well you do, I mean. Apparently, there will be a harder difficulty mode later, but it’s pretty basic right now. Plus, the game has crashed on me several times. And you can’t stop the cutscenes without making the game mad at you.
I think they should have called it something else because it’s not CSD. People who are fans of the series have not been liking this game (from the Steam reviews), and it’s because they were expecting CSD 4. I get it because I was, too. I will be honest that I was, too. Disappointed, I mean. At first. Now, though, I’m more in the ‘wait and see’ mode. I’m disappointed by the fact that you don’t even have to look at what you are making because it’s the same QTEs for every dish, though. One of the best things about the first three games was that you learned the recipes and knew them by heart after making them dozens of times. At least the basic recipes. With this game, I can’t tell you wahat the buttons are for any of the recipes. And it doesn’t matter because the indicators can change everything.
In addition, the tutorial is sketchy.Rather, there really isn’t one. they don’t explain the XP or the perks to any degree. I’m going to give it a chance, though, because I love Chubigans and this is just the first day it’s in Early Access on Steam.