Cook serve delicious is what Cooking Mama could be if it was made into a huge game. While the recipes are a bit simpler, and the repetition is far greater, Cook Serve Delicious has a bit of a similar feel and a similar grading system.
There’s a minor story here, but it’s safe to ignore it. You run a restaurant, you serve people, and build your restaurant your way. One thing that is kind of nice about this game is the game doesn’t really stray from that. You have all the choices to make your restaurant.
The game starts with getting a restaurant in a prestigious building. Then buying three foods (or four), serving them, and dealing with the rush of customers. The thing with the new systems this game throws at the player is that it can be overwhelming, depending on which food choices and “chores” come up.
Each dish has different rules. A corn dog has a mustard button, a ketchup button, a combo (hitting both buttons), or “nothing on it’ where you serve it as is. Whereas, steak has to be properly seasoned with different button presses or directions from the controller and then wait until it’s done cooking.
Almost every food has different rules and prices, and most items are interesting to serve. While Steak sells for more, it is more complicated. While chicken, which sells for almost as much, is hit one button six times, press another once and wait.
There are some issues where food has different positives and negatives. If you want a really high “buzz”, you’ll have to carefully curate your menu so you can maximize buzz, and that’s interesting. After a while, you kind of skip this as buzz only has minimal impact on the restaurant. By the end of the game, I was just serving what I wanted and changing the menu when “rot” happened, some food get a negative from being on the menu for two days.
The thing is the buzz system isn’t that necessary. The game really lets you make whatever food you want and there are only a few systems that try to steer you towards certain food. The higher value foods are usually what you are steered towards so you’re free to make your own restaurant.
Even the negatives aren’t that bad. If you have a lot of negative buzz, it only lowers the numbers of customers that come by a small amount. That sounds bad but it makes it easier to get a perfect day, which is worth 250 dollars. When the difference between a busy day or a dull day is only a couple of hundred dollars, the perfect day bonus makes the negatives not as painful.
A perfect day is basically hitting every dish perfectly, doing every chore, and that’s it. You have to balance orders, speed, and everything but if everything is done “perfectly” you nab a nice payday. Early on in the game, it’s somewhat easy, I got it on the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth day in a row. Later on (much later) it’s almost impossible but it’s a nice feat to aim for.
So as I mentioned some food before, the food is the star of the game, there are 30 dishes to make. Some of them are really great, some are weak, and some are awful. I love to fillet the fish, the chicken is a lot of money for monotony, soup is a total pain in the butt, and wine is button mashing. You will find some choices you prefer, and that’s what the game is about. Finding what you want to make or playing with new food types.
Food can also be upgraded and this is the big piece of the game. Not only can you cook steak but you can cook a more valuable steak. But again the upgrades are unbalanced. Steak has a ton of new recipes and additives. It’s a good example of a solid upgrade, as are soups. When they add optional pieces to the food the upgrade feels like a big change.
For examples of the bad upgrades, there are fish, wine, lobster, and chicken. Most of them are just worth more. Fish has 5 upgrades, only one changes anything (potentially add lemon to the fish fillet). The wine has a variable cost and they select a bottle (one of five), the bottle chosen is the price of the wine. The chicken has just a price upgrade. You just get more money for chicken.
The thing is the upgrades are good, some need more explanation (particularly bananas foster which adds a potential flambe). I’d have liked to try out a recipe upgrade similar to how you can try out the recipes in the first place. You can’t sadly, so it’s mostly a blind buy.
The game has another issue. The restaurant will have long empty times. Even when my restaurant is super busy and people are coming in droves, they mostly come at rush hour. Half the day is cooking for one or two people each hour. You can’t prep for later meals, you just gotta wait around and hope you get the chores during the slow time instead of during the rush hour.
In addition, when you are cooking a dish if you add tomatoes to a pizza, you can’t remove them. If you add a lemon wedge to a fish, you can’t take it off. Any mistake is an error that keeps you from perfect. I get the idea of “perfection” but it’s annoying to ruin a perfect day when you catch it in the first second. You can’t restart an order, you’re done.
Some food will give you a bad rating for any mistake, like sushi, and some food can take a few mistakes before it’s “Bad”. Bad food gives negative buzz, and no money “ok” orders just break a streak and mean no tip. It’s variable for what causes a “bad” order.
Progression in this game is a big issue. It’s going to be the make or break part of this game for almost anyone. There are 5 (or really 6 as there are final goals) stars you can earn in the game. And I can give a full list of the requirements but there are only three worth talking about. You have to cook for 20 days, you have to pass food inspections, and sometimes you have to pass a certain challenge. There are others like buy enough equipment or cook enough perfects in a day, but by the time you do the first 20 days worth of play, you’ll have almost all these done. They’re not hard.
What that means is that the game is grindy. And honestly, I didn’t feel challenged until the final star’s challenge. But I did have to spend 20 days on each level, and at about 6 minutes a day, that’s 2 hours of just play time to get the next star and open up stuff.
Once you pass the first star, the game gets interesting. There’s catering, an Iron Chef game show (just doing a bunch of orders) and a secret ninja training (make every dish perfectly) at the end of the game. But for the most part, you’re just grinding out days in the restaurant.
If you don’t mind the grind, this game is quite fun. If you do mind grinding, this might be torture. The game doesn’t change much except having few more daily customers. Most upgrades can be bought before you’re at two or three stars, and for your favorite food, will definitely be maxed. There are changes at the higher level but there is a lot of time to get there as well.
Finally, there’s co-op and… it’s not a great co-op, one person cooks, the other expedites, but the expediter is not a great job. On the other hand, Cook Serve Delicious 2 has a dual chef version of co-op, and it’s a better system.
And ultimately the same can be said for the review. Cook Serve Delicious is a lot of fun, but Cook Serve Delicious 2 is a superior game. I recommend this game, but I think most people should buy the sequel instead. It’s 3 bucks more and worth every cent. Ultimately either game is going to be enjoyable though.
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3.0