Developer: Vertigo Gaming, Vertigo Games
Publisher: Vertigo Gaming
Platforms: Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tested on: PC
Cook, Serve, Delicious 3?! – Preview
The Cook, Serve, Delicious series is something special. It surprised a lot of people with a combination of unique mechanics and enticing graphics to deliver on something that players could agree on with: ”This is more fun and addicting than it should be.” The first part in the series basically graduated cum laude, after which the second part was solid but got some criticism as well. Now, there’s a third part available in Early Access, which is enough reason for us to hurry the heck back to the kitchen and get the stove heated up.
And we’re off! Cook, Serve, Delicious already had a tendency of not taking itself too seriously in its story with some cooking humor in-between, though the third game knows how to take it one step further. The story starts with recapping a little bit of what happened in the last games. The tall Cook, Serve, Delicious tower-restaurant has been doing well up to the year 2041, where you are right now. Sadly, it got blown to bits while other restaurants are creating large brand chains. To search the rubble, two androids, Whisk the driver and Cleaver the guardian, arrive with a search and recovery truck. Nothing is kept whole except one grumpy-looking chef. Which is you.
The androids turn out to be fans of your work, and instead of leaving you there to, well, heal from your injuries among other things, they decide to give a make-over to their search and recovery truck to turn it into a food truck! So this time, Cook, Serve, Delicious is hitting the road and it will have to stop at multiple points on each trip to give people the best food in the world.
One of the best aspects of this series must be the food and how it looks. The crisp graphics (that got improved a lot since the original game) have been of major importance in the success formula of the game. For each dish you create in mere seconds, a recipe has multiple phases. If you only have to fry some food it will just be putting food in the fryer and dunking it in fat, but a burger might quickly be topped with a variety of ingredients before it can be served. It can be tempting to slack off in your focus to look at the food and how it falls together, and luckily the game also added a ”chill” mode where you can still mess things up but all timers are removed so you can enjoy the graphics. Cook, Serve, Delicious 3?! has a major log of recipes with tons of culturally different recipes that you will get to choose from as you get further in the game, so eat your heart out, famous chefs. Haha. Ha. Seriously though, it’s impressive and very well done how much there is to be explored.
The music in Cook, Serve, Delicious is something between jazzy and vocals, though it feels there are more abstract vocals present than in other parts. A nice addition are the androids that sometimes have a line to tell you, and sounds of the road which include a police siren and others. They make the game more alive in a good way together with the regular frying, baking, and cooking sounds.
The most important question to ask is how the third installment differs from its predecessors. The game is still a restaurant simulator and something that you could call a ”reflex arcade”. This means that recipes will pop up and as you press the corresponding number which they popped up at, you can start preparing this recipe. You do so by quickly following the instructions at the bottom of the screen and pressing the letters corresponding with each ingredient. Putting cheese on your burger might be the letter ”C”, tomatoes ”T”, but also avocado might be ”V” since some other word already starts with the letter ”A” and claimed this hotkey. So you need to properly get familiar with each recipe and what they need to become a master chef.
Where normally you would have your own restaurant, you now go along with a food truck. This means that you start preparing food BEFORE you arrive at a stop AND while at a stop. The game divides itself in two preparation parts. On the upper side of the screen, there are some recipes that you will prepare and keep heated before you arrive as well as on-site, serving them in portions. On the left side are often more elaborate recipes that you make once on the road to give on location that you only create before you arrive. It’s up to you to find the right balance. The game has some currencies such as special coins to buy new recipes (you will quickly have loads of those), upgrade parts for your truck to i.e. get more preparation stations, and cash that seemingly does nothing in Early Access so far except being traded automatically for those recipe coins.
Each road trip you do has as an ultimate goal to get a gold medal (flawless run) while you progress from continent to continent as the story progresses as well. Where in the second Cook, Serve, Delicious you got to choose between basically every recipe available, the third game is a bit more nuanced and has a selection for you to choose from on each trip. If you take harder recipes with you, you earn more cash, but it might be too much to handle. Yet it’s still not as rewarding as unlocking single recipes by playing as in the first part, which is something gamers generally loved the most.
Conclusion
Cook, Serve, Delicious looks as promising as you could expect from these games. There is something to be found in the enticing graphics and the huge amount of recipes that you will get to discover while playing, and the game seems to have improved compared to the second installment. However, with a small adjustment here and there, it could have just that little bit extra fan service that players are hoping for. We are curious to see the final result!
Cook, Serve, Delicious 3?! - Preview,
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