Overcooked! All You Can Eat Review (Xbox, PlayStation, Switch & PC)

Overcooked is one of “those” guilty pleasures that I will happily take a big ‘ol bite out of whenever time permits me to indulge in dopamine-fueled culinary cookouts with a few friends who are as equally incompetent and as incapable of dicing lettuce as I am. It’s the sort of banquet that I will merrily waffle down for a couple of hours before looking for another, slightly meatier delicacy that’s a little higher in carbs and saturated fats to satisfy “that” other craving. But, for whenever I’m in dire need of a quick sugar rush, I’ll always look to Overcooked like a chocolatier looks to a caramel truffle on a hot day. It might not always fill the pit at the bottom of my stomach, but more often than not it fools me into believing that I need more of it. Like a piece of cake, then, but with fewer layers and thrice the toppings.

Overcooked can only truly be described as a hot mess on a silver plate—a recreational banquet where sous chefs desperately thrash it out in the hopes of finding culinary inspiration amongst volatile dishes and hazardous kitchens. It’s a place where you don’t learn to cook, but rather, where you wish for something that might be deemed edible to the common guest. I guess, in short, it’s a kitchen for kindergartners—an eatery where questionable ingredients wax nonsensical recipes and rampant chefs fail to comprehend the notion that cooking can be awfully dangerous if not approached with utmost care. But in Overcooked, nobody could care less about the consequences, nor the quality of the dish, weirdly. Because as it turns out, if you can meet a tight quota against the clock, then you can earn a pretty good review and appease even the most ravenous of fine diners.

All You Can Eat is, in short, the full menu—the à la carte of Overcooked’s most esteemed courses. As the definitive edition of the series, it comes fully stocked with hundreds of levels, dozens of chefs, thousands of set pieces and ingredients, and a fully-fledged 4K resolution to make each wafer and crumb look both stupendously crisp and thematically pleasing to the ravenous eye. It’s still the same ‘ol Overcooked, but with all of the content from the first two chapters, and not to mention a visual overhaul that glosses over all of the original features. So, a complete menu, then.

The core gameplay loop remains the same: duke it out in an absurdly volatile kitchen environment with the hopes of being able to serve quick meals in a timely and orderly fashion. The catch, too, remains the same: every kitchen has its own rules, and every course either comes with a caveat or a side of chaos. Again, the objective is simple: scoot around in confined spaces, operate cooking equipment, and collect ingredients before presenting a banquet of dishes at a serving hatch. If you’re new to Overcooked, then this won’t sound all that bad. But, if you’re something of a sous chef in the art of Overcooked’s bizarre cooking style, then you’ll know that nothing here is simple.

With over two hundred levels to work through across a plethora of different kitchens and themed rooms, Overcooked! All You Can Eat ensures that you have more than enough to gauge chunks out of. From the flailing objects to the lava-riddled platforms, the sinking appliances to the frequent explosions, All You Can Eat brings just about everything from the original menu to a much, much larger set menu. It’s chaotic, ridiculous, and above all, a perfect appetizer for those in dire need of an excuse to bash heads with their fellow connoisseurs for a handful of hours.

Although Overcooked falls into a rather niche market, the series as a whole does make for a brilliant couch co-op experience—a field that, unfortunately, lacks the heart and vigor that most alternate multiplayer titles have the power to flaunt. Thankfully, where a lot of local party games fail to foster an inclusive culture and a versatile experience that’s both easy to learn and annoyingly addictive, Overcooked hits the nail on the head and does more than enough to cater to the whole cookie. With simple mechanics and settings that allow for creative interpretation, Overcooked brings out all of the perfect features of a comically enhanced culinary staple. Again, it’s a niche concept — but one that’s also annoyingly appealing and oh-so-more-ish, to the point where you’ll want to come back to the buffet cart to load up plate after plate.

Suffice it to say that, with stacks upon stacks of creative levels that will test both your patience and your fine dining etiquette, All You Can Eat will more than likely keep you busy for dozens of hours, more so if you’re in the mood to run the kitchen with a handful of friends who are as equally hell-bent on wreaking havoc across an enormous spectrum of weird and wacky restaurants. It’s a little pricey I’ll admit, but for the amount of content that it serves on a silver plate, I’d say that it justifies the cost of admission.

Verdict

Overcooked! All You Can Eat crafts the ideal banquet of all of your favorite party-based appetizers to bring you deeper into the rhythmic world of culinary chaos and absurdly unorthodox collaboration. Billed with a generously sized collection of themed stages and all of the meat juices and cabbage leaves of both entrees’ platters plus the DLC, this handsomely refined á la carte delivers just about everything that you could ever want and more from the original set menu and, with the aid of a sprinkling of salt, makes it that much easier to digest. It’s still the same Overcooked, but bigger, better, and more bonkers than ever before. In other words, it’s the definitive edition that you need to lather all over your silver spoon, and not just some generic rehash of the original recipe.

Of course, if you’re already taking full advantage of the original dishes in the catalog, then you might not see the benefit of upgrading to the All You Can Eat edition. For the 4K overhaul and a complete package, though, it might be worth considering the next time you’re hungry for a proper feast and not, say, the breadcrumbs that are few and far between both of the mainline entrees. Decisions, decisions.