Mini Review: Overcooked: All You Can Eat - Remastered Culinary Co-Op Is Still a Tasty Treat

Republished on Wednesday 1st September 2021: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of September's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows.

Overcooked: All You Can Eat is like enjoying your favourite meal while wearing newly prescribed glasses. Sure, you've had this plenty of times before, but it tastes just as good, and it looks better than ever. This is a PlayStation 5 re-release that brings together all the content from the two games along with all the DLC. However, as we've alluded, it also refreshes the visuals with redone assets and more environmental detail.

It still has a very simple style, but it looks great running at 4K and a locked 60 frames-per-second. The gameplay, meanwhile, is unchanged: you and up to three others must work together to serve food orders in increasingly challenging kitchens. The main bulk of the game is about these brilliant co-op levels, but there are some competitive ones as well if you want to turn the heat up. The sheer volume of content included means this will keep you going for a very long time. This PS5 release also includes some DualSense support, though it's pretty limited; don't expect Astro's Playroom-style haptic feedback here.

Overcooked 1 stages are a little simpler as they don't include the ability to throw and catch. This was introduced in Overcooked 2, and it's not been retroactively added to the first game's stages. This can be slightly jarring if you're used to throwing ingredients around, but it's not a major issue. We'd also say that playing alone is still nowhere near as good an experience as playing with others. Thankfully, full online play should mean you'll have fellow chefs to cook with, although we struggled to find a game with public matchmaking. Apparently, cross-play with other platforms is coming in a future update, so that should improve matters.

Overall, this is very much just more of the same, but Overcooked remains a delightful co-op experience. Extremely accessible, surprisingly challenging, and fun for all ages.