PlateUp! Review (Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch & PC)

If you think it’s possible to learn all there is to know about the culinary arts from Cooking Simulator, then boy, are you about to have your dreams dashed and peppered into a million pieces. It’s a fine starting point, for sure, but if you’re really keen to master the process of prepping, cooking, and maintaining a healthy business environment, then you might want to consider skimming through a new cookbook—a meaty manual that just so happens to serve under the guise of a co-op game called PlateUp!

For the record, the chances of you actually learning a thing or two about the culinary world in PlateUp! is slim to nonexistent. Truth is, while you will have the opportunity to gaze beyond the veil and witness the wacky side of the culinary industry, you won’t—I repeat, won’t—waltz away with enough knowledge to be able to chalk up a dissertation on the tricks of the trade and all of its steamy secrets. So, apologies in advance.

At it’s core, PlateUp! is a one-to-four-player party and business management simulation game in which fledgling culinary giants thrash it out over a series of procedurally-generated episodes and create total havoc. Like Overcooked? Well, sort of. With that said, before we delve any deeper into the finer details of Yogscast Games’ latest entrée, let’s rewind the clock and brush over the box, in general. Let’s talk about PlateUp, and how it aims to add its own flavors to a recipe that, in all fairness, has been dissected and thrown from the serving hatch more times than we’d like to imagine.

Ready, Steady, Burn

Starting out in the world of PlateUp is as simple as picking a blueprint from a relatively small basket of procedurally selected maps, and setting out to build on its strengths in order to reach more clients and obtain a higher revenue. To begin, your goal is to rustle up a few steaks, and serve them to four, maybe five hungry customers per shift, all whilst keeping on top of several other duties, such as mopping up spills, cleaning dishes, and taking stock of your ingredients and other items. Sounds all rather straightforward on paper, for sure, but if you aren’t careful, those clients of yours will begin to lose their patience, and if just one customer decides to call it quits and leave with the cheque unpaid, then you’ll have to start from scratch — without the upgrades and all of the luxuries that you found along the way.

The ultimate goal, really, is to “survive” enough shifts in order to evolve your culinary empire — to the point of being able to serve dozens of customers each day, as well as prepare multiple dishes from a lavish kitchen. In order to actually do this, you first need to make it through a single week—a task that involves having to keep on top of customers’ needs and the daily kitchen maintenance with only the bare essentials to hand. It isn’t an easy process by any means — but it’s certainly a whole lot easier than the latter portions of the journey, that’s for sure.

As you begin to make a small dent in the campaign, you’ll have the opportunity to unlock new appliances, and in turn, better recipes to serve to your ravenous clientele. However, if you so much as make one wrong move, it’s game over.

Entrées For Days

PlateUp! describes itself as a roguelike cooking sim — and understandably so. As you begin your quest to become the world’s leading titan in the art, you will start out with only a couple of recipes, after which you’ll need to unlock additional recipes and stations to start making a substantial amount of coin. With each new turn that you take and shift that you start, a new set of items and ingredients will become available, allowing you to both evolve your restaurant, and branch out to exciting new cuisines at the same time.

There is a drawback to all of this: your kitchen — it doesn’t want you to succeed. Matter of fact, it does all in its power to prevent you from actually earning a living, which means you’ll need to devote just enough time to keeping fires at bay, and the spills from shrouding the floor in gunk and grime. And so, while cooking is, at least for the most part, the primary objective of the game, it isn’t the only thing that you’ll be doing as you commence your rags-to-riches conquest of the trade.

While I can’t say that PlateUp! is a difficult game, I can say that it does have its fair share of curveballs to overcome. Like Overcooked, it bathes in the idea of letting you run rampant over and over again until you’ve reached your limit and clocked out, if not out of frustration, then out of pure rage. Is this a bad thing? Absolutely not. Having said that, the chaos of it all isn’t going to be for everyone — so it’s better to take it with a grain of salt, if anything.

Two Stoves Are Better Than One

As much fun as I had during my short time as a fledgling connoisseur of infinite flavors, it was only very rarely that I actually wanted to progress in the single-player campaign, for my inner child often wanted to play elsewhere—in a slightly more ravenous circle, where I’d have the opportunity to rustle up thrice as much chaos. Like a lot of multiplayer games, PlateUp! is best served as a dish that’s inclusive of several other players. Sure, the anarchy is still there in the single-player mode, but the fact is, it only ever truly shines when witnessed by a squad of four like-minded chefs who share an undying thirst for pandemonium.

Multiplayer in PlateUp! isn’t all that different from the bread-and-butter offline campaign, in the case that your objectives still revolve around the building of a culinary beacon and having it serve the general public. The only real difference here, however, is that it isn’t just the one of you who’s doing all of the work; four of you have to work together in order to uphold the business’s core principles. And believe me when I say, it’s so, so much easier to have four sous chefs in the kitchen than one.

Full House

I’m not going to beat around the bush with this one, but the truth is, the single-player mode can be friggin’ disastrous—a recipe that even the most talented Overcooked fans won’t be able to replicate. For starters, there’s the prep work—a task that involves baking, cooking, and prepping raw ingredients. Aside from that, there’s also front-of-house duties, which involves seeing to customers, taking orders, and running meals back and forth between the kitchen and the restaurant. And then, of course, there are the other, slightly less interesting jobs, such as pot washing, and cleaning the spills that the customers leave behind. Now, imagine having to do all of that on your own, and in a timely manner, no less. It isn’t an easy task by any stretch, and so, if you are looking to boot up the campaign and run it solo, then be ready!

Of course, the heart and soul of the game is nestled within the antics that get brewed from the team members themselves. Sure enough, it’s still a little tricky to figure out, what with all four players constantly bumping into one another and deciding who does what and what have you — but that’s half the fun of it. It’s chaotic, unpredictable, and oh so entertaining — three things that make up just about every successful co-op cooking sim.

Verdict

It goes without saying at this point, but if you have been longing to slip into another banquet hall that’s bursting at the seams with an infinite wealth of co-op-based shenanigans, then you’re probably going to get a kick out of PlateUp. It isn’t quite on the same wavelength as Overcooked, but then, it doesn’t need to be, either, as it brings its own form of identity into the mix and captures its own signature elements, too.

The good news is, PlateUp runs without so much as a hitch; it doesn’t have any technical issues, nor does it prevent you from jumping into one game to the next, either. It’s simple fun, and definitely something that fans of the genre will want to experience for themselves just as soon as they find the opportunity to whip out the cutlery and dice up a few veggies. It won’t teach anyone anything about food, but it’ll certainly leave you feeling satisfied and, dare I say, a little hungry for seconds.