Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!

CSD 2 is a more polished looking game experience than CSD 1 in the graphics department. It also comes with a lot more foods to prepare, and a large chunk of "challenges" where you work in different restaurants with their own menu. To those who aren't familiar with Cook Serve Delicious. The game has you as a chef in a restaurant cooking food, serving it and hoping it is delicious. When someone comes in you tap the corresponding order, put together the meal by hitting keys or buttons corresponding to the required ingredients, maybe wait for it to cook and try to keep up with the onslaught of peckish patrons pursuing your menu. Sadly the CSD mode feels more like an afterthought (upgrades, buzz modifiers and such were added after the initial Steam release). That is not to say this is a bad game. It is most certainly not. Just the progression is more based around you completing the cook for hire levels and gaining medals there over slowly saving up for that new dish you wanted. Speaking of dishes. CSD2 has a ton of them, each with a bit of text about the foods. They might end up feeling a bit samey. Very few, if any, has the repeated tapping of the wine from CSD1, or the arrow slicing of fish. Most all things are relegated to hitting a key or button directly. Also, CSD2 introduces holding stations which will let you (or require, depending on the dish) prepare food for quick serving, or as something to avoid having to wait for cooking during rush hour. This adds another bit of depth for you to keep track of, generally it feels like a good inclusion. The restaurant designer is nice, though only cosmetic and only has an effect when you play with your custom menu. In all I rather like the game. It's good for a quick game while listening to a podcast or just to challenge yourself to wake up. If you did not like CSD1, this likely won't change your mind. But if you like mini-games, this should keep you sated for a good while

I picked up both CSD and the sequel on sale recently, and started with the first. It was a good enough concept, I liked the management aspects and the gameplay was good. I got a bit tired of it pretty quick, due to the fairly tedious grind involved in levelling up your restaurant... something like 5 hours to gain a star, and no gameplay variety to be found anywhere in those 5 hours. So I thought, I'll just switch over to CSD2, they probably fixed all the things about the first that I have gripes with. And while the overall presentation is slicker, they seem to have completely stripped out all of the management and simulation aspects, the only thing I really liked about the first one. It's just the grindy arcadey gameplay distilled with no thinking whatsoever, boring.

I bought the first game mostly for the coop experience and in this game you can't play that type of coop where one player does the cooking and the other the expediting. Both of you HAVE to be cooks, which is fine for those who wanted that, but for me, that means less casual fun and less co-operation between players required. It's like two people playing CSD2 on two computers at the same time, instead of working together to win. All the while the actual expediting has gotten more complex and interesting with holding stations, so the lack of the original coop experience is just sad. If the dev ever makes a 4th game in the series, please bring back the original coop. The settings are oddly frustrating. For example you can't choose to play with key+mouse as player1 while p2 uses the gamepad, while in the previous game you could and the button prompt settings are less conveniently placed in the options when they used to be in the co-op menu. The selection for what your cook looks like is made worse, instead of seeing all the options in one window you have to slowly scroll through every option. During gameplay if a key corresponding to a ingredient is pressed it only activates if it is currently visible, while in the previous game you could memorize what the keybinding was and press it without opening the extended ingredients menu. This is very annoying. In general I feel more lost with the interface design and feels like there are more unnecessary clicks involved. Hard to find things I'm looking for and inconsistent menu design, in one menu you can go forwards and backwards in your selection while in another menu you can only go forwards. There is a lot to like in this game, but all of these negative changes just make me want to play the first game instead.

The sequel to the smash hit Cook Serve Delicious, this continues the fast-paced typing game with a twist of exploring different restaurants while making your own. One major caveat: You can furnish your restaurant but it does not add anything to the gameplay. No bets, no personal challenges or any battles in this game. This game might be for you if you want anything different but if you're expecting some of the same features you'll be disappointed. It does run well on older graphic cards and some of the restaurant dishes look very good,