Now, this all may sound stressful, and it is, BUT that is part of what makes Overcooked! 2 so bloody fun! Racking up the points by working together to finish as many dishes as possible as fast as possible (note that there is no end to the orders, they will keep coming indefinitely), and doing so under ridiculous circumstances, one kitchen is more absurd than the other. The game also has a rather steep difficulty curve, in my opinion, holding your hand for the first couple of levels, then quickly turning on the heat and dropping you in the deep end without wings… or maybe I am just bad, there is that possibility too. So it is very much also a strategic game of priority. If later orders in the line are simpler and therefore faster to complete, you may be tempted to take those first, but beware that what you make on those, might not make up for what you lose if the first orders in line a dropped. Yes, speed is important, as you will lose points if an order is ”dropped” which it will if you take too long to complete it. In case you are a new chef in the business though, and didn’t play the original, the idea of Overcooked! is that you and a buddy or buddies, go from stage to stage arcade style, where you get 3 minutes to get as many orders as possible done, while having to maintain everything from getting the ingredients ready and chopped, cook if needed, combine the ingredients, ship the order, wash dirty plates, lather rinse repeat as fast as you can, to rack up the score. I mean Overcooked! 2 would be a pretty lame sequel if you just played through the same stages of the original, right? But that is not the case, Overcooked! 2 does what any good and self respecting sequel should do keep the core gameplay that people loved about the first one while adding new stages and stage hazards for people to overcome. Now don’t get me wrong, that is not a bad thing! What I mean by that, is that the core gameplay, of getting increasingly difficult orders done, while frantically stressing around the kitchen trying to multitask, with various stage hazards and gimmicks making life hard for you, is the same.
If you came here just looking for more chaotic fun alike the first game, then you are in luck, because Overcooked! 2 is exactly that.
The intro level then sees you and your partner serving the hungry zombies food, in order to keep them at bay, after which the king, seeing that you ”still have much to learn”, sends you on a quest to better your cooking and co-operation skills, so that you can prevent the undead from spreading. Overcooked! 2 has a story sort of, but it also doesn’t, what I mean by that is that you get this comically dark and ominous opening cinematic, of an Onion King who has gotten hold of a mysterious book, that he believes will bestow upon him eternal fertility or something… when in reality, he accidentally awakens a horde of evil undead bread zombies in a nearby graveyard.