Overcooked is just about everything that someone could want in a couch co-op game, gamers and non-gamers alike. The series combines pick-up-and-play gameplay with easily readable and communicable objectives. Anyone can pick up an Overcooked title and have a grasp of the controls and the objective in one or two rounds.
In other words, it deserves every bit of success it’s found. Overcooked earned itself a sequel. The latest release is Overcooked! All You Can Eat, a compilation pack of the games so far. It’s much easier to get everyone playing the 200 plus stages with only one purchase than separate ones, and also lets people enjoy the different features and gameplay found across both titles.
Released on the PS5 and Xbox Series X last year, All You Can Eat has a few differences from the individual base versions.
7 Graphical Updates
This is a big one for anyone trying to justify a new monitor or television purchase. Overcooked’s cartoon style has always looked nice, even without AAA polish, but the 4k update breathes new life into the kitchens.
From game-wide graphical touch-ups to minor aesthetic tweaks, few players are going to complain about higher fidelity. It looks great. Hard to find any complaint here.
More important than high resolutions is a consistently high frame rate. Now, having 4k graphics and 60 fps gameplay, despite how much fire is currently burning down your kitchen? Well, that’s just gravy.
6 Faster Loading Times
One thing that’s been lost as games increase in graphic and audio quality is load times. Many older generations of games, particularly those on cartridges, boast blisteringly fast load times that get you into the game right after you press the Start Button.
Indie games often take advantage of their lower hardware requirements and provide swift load times. While not egregious, the original Overcooked releases did have noticeable load times. All You Can Eat promises quicker load times that get you into the kitchen right on time for you to get all those orders out.
More importantly, it gets you and your friends back into the game to try again when you’re hunting for those three-star completions.
5 New Chefs
In a game as cute as Overcooked, everyone likes ample character options to choose from. You can play as a variety of different animals, limbless humanoids, someone who somehow cooks with a box over their head. Blast around in a wheelchair, be a grandma. The kitchen welcomes all.
There were already a ton to choose from and now they even added an axolotl. Ghost Town Games eased the character selection process by adding in a fighting games-esque character select screen, instead of the previous clunky method of scrolling through them one at a time, to go along with new skins for every existing character.
Thanks to a recent update, you can also be the Swedish Chef from The Muppets. A match made in heaven.
4 New Kitchens
The real meat of the game is the stages, or the kitchens. Overcooked doesn’t have you working in traditional restaurant environments for long. You’re quickly placed in a kitchen bisected by a busy sidewalk, on a kitchen that’s inside two speeding trucks, a kitchen inside a hot air balloon, and the list goes on.
The challenge (and the fun) of Overcooked comes from navigating the absurd and wacky environments that you’re placed within. Optimizing not only how food is delivered, but how individual chefs navigate, how you get food to the necessary stations, and how you keep the rats away is all integral for fully completing the game and getting all the stars.
3 Online Multiplayer
While it’s always nice to see the game still catering to couch co-op, one of the things that held the original Overcooked back was that it lacked online multiplayer. Overcooked 2 had online multiplayer but many fans still wanted to play the original levels with their digital buddies.
Thanks to All You Can Eat edition, players can now team up and enjoy the original Overcooked’s excellent levels with anyone through the Internet. Not only can you invite your friends, a new Arcade feature means that anyone can match with anyone via a matchmaking system. Players can also take multiple local players online to flesh out a light party.
However, the Arcade doesn’t cater to the campaign. To play through that online, you’ll need to invite (or make) some friends.
2 New Achievements and Trophies
While it’s not for everyone, some gamers truly live and die by the achievements and trophies added to games. They appeal to completionists, to players who enjoy that rush of accomplishing another task, or enjoy being rewarded with some points for spending more time in a title that they love.
All You Can Eat unites both titles with a smattering of new achievements. Save the Onion Kingdom and then do it again. Complete the new The Ever Peckish Rises campaign. Some even encourage you to take advantage of the new features like the Arcade.
Get out there and get that Platinum Trophy.
1 Assist Features
This is maybe the least-discussed part of the All You Can Eat bundle but maybe the most important. Accessibility options in-game have been lacking for a long time but growing awareness has increased developer attention to them. The same goes for this release. All You Can Eat brings a ton of new accessibility features to make the game easier to interact with and play.
The new accessibility options include gameplay options, like lengthening the time to complete a level, stopping all orders from expiring and boosting the points received for each delivered meal.
All You Can Eat also brings dyslexia-friendly text and a scalable UI to make it more readable for all potential players. It also brings colorblind support in the form of colorblind-friendly chef indicators to make them easier to pick out in the kitchens.
Overall, the new options are geared around reducing the chaos for new players or to make it more accessible for everyone. In the words of the great Chef Gusteau, “Everyone can cook.”
