Overcooked! All You Can Eat Review

Honestly, it’s a real shame that local multiplayer games seem to be becoming thinner on the ground. Online multiplayer is good and all, but when it comes to party games you can play in a group, or with your partner, there’s nothing better than a competitive videogame like Overcooked!. And that’s why I was excited about the All You Can Eat edition, remastered for the new generation of consoles.

For those who have never played an Overcooked! game before, the concept is simple: you are placed in a kitchen, with orders coming at you. Instructions on how to cook each meal are given to you with the use of symbols under each order, so it’s up to you to decide which order to complete them in, and how many you do at a time. For example, a salad might just require some lettuce chopping and chucking into a bowl, but a pizza will need dough kneading, cheese and tomato adding and then baking. To add further challenges, you are usually restricted by space, moving objects, or simple poor multitasking abilities like this game appears to have highlighted in myself…

This new collection includes both the original Overcooked! and Overcooked! 2, with the original game re-built with the engine from the sequel. Unfortunately, you can’t toss food around your kitchen, but it now feels just as good as its sequel, which is excellent. The visuals have been upgraded to 4K and run at a nice 60 frames per second for the entirety of the chaos. As you might imagine, they also make good use of the SSDs in the new systems, meaning those pesky loading times you would have sat through before have now all but disappeared. All of the DLC stages are now built-in too, much easier to locate than before.

The levels themselves are much the same, as you would expect with a remaster. There are some new accessibility options though, which will be appreciated by those who need them. Score thresholds though have been tweaked slightly for some levels, meaning those stages (particularly in the sequel) that seemed almost impossible to gain three stars in sit at a more achievable level. Four stars are still difficult to earn though, so there will still be something to go back for once you’ve finished.

Aside from the visual upgrades, the other big feature is online support for the original game. It also implements cross-platform multiplayer (although this is to be enabled later in 2021 in an update between PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles) for owners of this remaster – you can’t go back and play with anyone who owns the original games, unfortunately. Specifically for PS5, it’s a little disappointing that support for the DualSense features are essentially non-existent, although that's more or less to be expected at this point from third party studios.

The increased resolution is fantastic here though. It’s now much easier to discern where each ingredient is, especially on the more chaotic stages as you get further into the campaigns. The frame-rate never slows, even when I decided to throw as many bars of chocolate around the kitchen as I could. All that happened is I failed my orders and angered a lot of customers.

The inclusion of seven new levels separate to the other two games is a nice addition too, though they definitely don’t serve as an introduction to the series. Definitely play the others first to either refresh or get used to how to operate the Overcooked! kitchen before jumping in, or you’ll find yourself lost, running around the kitchen like a headless chicken.

All You Can Eat is the definitive edition of what is one of the best multiplayer games available on current platforms. It rewards good communication and provides a fantastic feeling of accomplishment whenever you deliver a three or four star catering service.