The Onion Kingdom is once again in grave danger and in need of a band of culinary crusaders in Team 17’s Overcooked! 2. Overcooked! 2 stays pretty close to its predecessor’s recipe for success while adding in a few new ingredients to spice things up. Just like the original game, one to four players are plopped down into a kitchen filled with quirks and asked to work together to get dishes out the door without burning everything down.
Aesthetically, Overcooked! 2 is almost indistinguishable from the 2016 original. Cutesy chefs mill about in brightly colored kitchens to a (mostly) gentle soundtrack that does its best to keep the mood mellow. This isn’t necessarily bad, of course, but I do feel like Overcooked! 2 doesn’t do enough to set itself apart. A stage from Overcooked! 2 would look right at home as part of the original title, and vice versa. Some minor HUD changes are all that can distinguish a screenshot of an Overcooked! 2 level from one in Overcooked!.
One look at gameplay, however, will show you just how much different Overcooked! 2 is from its predecessor. Kitchens in Overcooked! 2 have more moving parts and change more drastically over the course of a play session. Disappearing staircases, moving portals, rolling mine carts, and drifting rafts keep players engaged and alert. The most extreme example of this design philosophy involves a stage that begins in a hot air balloon but ends in a smoldering sushi restaurant after the balloon comes crashing down.
Unfortunately, one of Overcooked! 2’s new level mechanics doesn’t work as well as the others: movable platforms. These platforms require players to stop whatever they are doing to hold on to a joystick and slowly move platforms from place to place. In a two player game this means periods of time where neither player is actually cooking while one moves the platform the other is riding on. This mechanic shatters the natural flow of gameplay by requiring lengthy repeated stops.
Overcooked! 2‘s biggest innovation is the addition of throwing, allowing players to chuck raw ingredients over gaps. Most of Overcooked! 2 is built around the throwing mechanic, and it works beautifully most of the time. Time spent waiting for kitchens to re-align is a thing of the past, now you can just toss things to your fellow chefs and keep things moving. I did encounter situations where something thrown would land somewhere weird and nobody could pick it back up, but these were rare. Throwing something directly into a waiting pot or frying pan feels so good, any technical issues are a small price to pay.
For the first time in the series, all of Overcooked! 2‘s modes can be played online. Online play is a poor substitute for couch gaming, but bring a voice chat application into the mix and it feels pretty darn close. The only snag in Overcooked! 2‘s online play is that any story mode progress made is only credited to the host. The moment-to-moment gameplay works just fine, and I experienced no technical issues while playing online.
As polished as Overcooked! 2 is, it does still suffer from some rough edges. My wife and I stopped having fun for a solid two worlds of story mode due to a series of frustratingly-designed levels. A lack of new recipes made those two worlds feel even worse. Arcade Mode is nothing more than a new wrapper for the story stages. Arcade Mode doesn’t even allow you to choose a stage you want, instead giving you a random stage based on a chosen aesthetic.
Overall, Overcooked! 2 is a good sequel, and is well worth your time if you love co-op games and have the friends to play it with. I really can’t recommend Overcooked! 2 for solo players, however. My complaints about the story mode were almost entirely forgotten thanks to an excellent closing chapter, and I can’t wait to dive into new game plus when it comes to consoles.
Score: 4/5
