Cook in all sorts of eating establishments and run your own restaurant in Cook, Serve, Delicious 2!!.  It’s a downloadable restaurant time management sim for nearly all current game consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.  I’ve never played the first game, though, so I don’t know what’s been added or improved in the sequel.

The game recommends that you start with the tutorial, which is a very good idea.  They give you the basics of gameplay here, but once you start the campaign, they kind of throw you to the lions as it gets tough right from the very first level.  You can choose to cook in established fictional restaurants in a food court on a high rise building.  These include fast food places all the way to swanky restaurants.  You’ll have to get good enough ratings to move onto the next one.  You can also play co-op or design your own restaurant and choose what it’ll look like and what you’ll serve, although they don’t explain how to do that part very well.

But the main problem I had was the controls were just too complicated and they don’t give you any wiggle room.  Here’s how the game works.  Customers come in and you have a limited amount of time to serve them their order before they get impatient and leave, lowering your score.  You can cook certain foods right away with the square button or put it on reserve to cook later with the triangle button.  To cook foods, you must hold down the L2 button while pressing another button to add ingredients to the food.  Sometimes you must cycle through pages of toppings before finding the right one.  All the while you must make sure you press the right button for the ingredient, and all the icons for this are on opposite sides of the screen.  This isn’t even taking into account that you can play mini-games to make side dishes, drinks, and do other cleaning chores.  Because of all this going on at once, I couldn’t get past the very first level.  The learning curve is way too steep, and could use some simplicity to make it fun.

Kid Factor:

Cook, Serve, Delicious 2!! is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Mild Violence, Mild Language, and Use of Alcohol.  You can serve drinks and use alcohol in food, but the violence and language is just in the text only.  Reading skill is a must, and younger gamers may find this game too difficult.

Tags: Game Reviews