Can I Take Your Order? Review (PC)

According to the general public, restaurants are one of the few workplaces that people—culinary alumni, in this case—couldn’t fathom working in for any longer than absolutely necessary. It seems that, among the countless industries, cooking is the one job that often culminates in headaches, trauma, and, apparently, the loss of a sous chef who can’t toss a bowl of salad to save their own skin. Spoiler alert: I am the sous chef in this case, and in my defense, I truly thought that it would be perfectly acceptable to frisbee a plate at the forehead of a passing cowboy. As it turns out, that sort of behavior will get you fired on the spot. Go figure.

The general consensus is clear: restaurants are a pain in the backside to work in — especially with friends who are as equally incompetent. Overcooked was one of the first to illuminate us with its approach to the culinary arts. And then, of course, along came another á la carte of chaos to broaden the scope, and then another, and then another, naturally. Can I Take Your Order?, too, looks to paint the restaurant business as a chargrilled hellhole—a place where etiquette and pompous behavior are unspoken, and high-strung guests and blazing infernos are the new norm.

If you’ve played an Overcooked-inspired co-op game before, then Can I Take Your Order? will likely strike you as being a word-for-word replica that leans on almost all of the same basic tropes. It isn’t a cooking sim, but rather, an utterly bonkers party game in which aspiring waiters work together to serve guests in a timely manner, juggle environmental curveballs, and prevent the odd alien abduction or spontaneous shootout from diminishing the business’s reputation. Think Goat Simulator or, at a push, Rubber Bandits, complete with the floppy animations and half-baked mechanics, and you should have a vague idea of what we’re talking about here.

The goal of Can I Take Your Order? is simple: wait on various customers, deliver their food as quickly as possible, and earn cash tips to unlock equipment that can aid you on your quest to satisfy the masses across several stages. A fire extinguisher, for example, can give you an additional safety net for when things go wrong and the world goes up in flames. But of course, that’s an unavoidable outcome that Can I Take Your Order? provides in spades: unhinged chaos — and a lot of it. Everything breaks, and alien abductions are as common as a two-for-one à la carte.

Can I Take Your Order? isn’t a serious game. On the contrary, it’s a self-contained sandbox of floating deli meats, unruly patrons, and, as a result of all of this, a game that is fully aware of its own stupidity. In fact, it takes less than three minutes to read the bottom line here. The characters, for example, are irritatingly incompetent, and anything that isn’t bolted down can burst into flames at the touch of a button. Add the aliens, cowboys, and robots to the mixing bowl, and you have quite the moronic co-op game on your hands. But it works, and it knows it all too well.

If you were hoping for a six-course banquet with a cocktail of ingredients, challenges, and story-driven activities, then you might want to consider hanging your apron in a different kitchen. Can I Take Your Order?, while in receipt of several biomes, disasters, and procedurally generated curveballs, is still a small game with a rather short shelf life. Concept-wise, it delivers a perfectly serviceable co-op experience that can keep you engaged for several hours. After the initial cooling off period, though, it can begin to lose its appeal. It becomes increasingly predictable, and the humor eventually falls on deaf ears.

As with most co-op games, Can I Take Your Order? is a game that is far better suited for larger schools of like-minded waiters. While it can be played alone, at no point does it ever find the same rhythm; the jokes are less impactful, and the absence of camaraderie often leads to some rather dull, albeit slightly more challenging sessions. As a multiplayer experience, however, it finds a good pace to work with, with some entertaining gameplay and a sizable sandbox of gig work to keep you chuckling for the long haul.

It’s easier to treat Can I Take Your Order? as an entry-level love letter to the indie scene rather than a full-fledged multiplayer game with genre-altering elements. As enjoyable as it is to play in short bursts, it is still a pretty messy game that relies a little too heavily on elasticity and physics to construct its world. Of course, this isn’t a bad thing. That said, it does make it rather difficult for you to tell the difference between what is broken and what isn’t. The game could be falling apart around you — but you never truly know if it’s intentional or if it’s, well, breaking.

For the asking price, Can I Take Your Order? offers a solid chunk of material for you and your friends to unpack. With several restaurants to unlock, character cosmetics to choose from, and a variety of unnatural disasters to tackle across an infinite supply of shifts, it all makes for an enjoyable, albeit slightly sloppy time-wasting culinary adventure. It might not be a feast for the soul, but it is a thoroughly satisfying snack that should be able to curb the cravings for a short period of time, at least.

Verdict

Can I Take Your Order? might be a little on the cheap side of the culinary field, but where it lacks in genre-defining assets and flavorful ingredients, it makes up for in its ability to weave hilarious conundrums out of repetitive sequences. With thanks to its vast collection of restaurants, cosmetics, and curveballs, it all makes for an entertaining, though far from enthralling chore core sim. You just need a good group of friends to help you make the most of it.