Overcooked! All You Can Eat (Nintendo Switch) Review

For those not familiar with Overcooked!'s core gameplay loop, the gist is simple: play alone, team up online or gather your friends for couch co-op to slice, dice, cook, and serve your way through a plethora of unique kitchens, racking up a score based on your efficiency in filling orders and serving them on time. The variety comes from the team dynamics created when multiple players work together. Communication is key. This can cause it to eventually become repetitive when playing solo, which is worth bearing in mind for those looking for a single-player experience. The difficulty does scale according to the number of players involved, though, meaning there are multiple viable ways to play.

Overcooked!, Overcooked! 2 and all previously released DLC are very well presented in this collection. The mainline campaigns are grouped by title in the main menu, while all the DLC across both entries is given a separate section that's appropriately titled "Extra Trimmings". Each and every campaign has its own save data, making it easy to bite into whichever morsel of the experience you fancy at any given time. Accessibility options have also been added, with some welcome tweaks for players with dyslexia, colour-blindness, or even for those desiring a more relaxed experience with diminished difficulty options. Other quality of life improvements, including the ability to select cross-platform play when playing online, are satisfyingly present. This is certainly a remaster in the graphics department with the first Overcooked! being the most notable recipient of a welcome performance boost to raise it to its sequel's visual level.

To encourage returning players to pick up this collection, the new features are twofold: firstly, there's a brand new campaign exclusive to the All You Can Eat edition. Titled "The Ever Peckish Rises", this horror-themed experience adds additional kitchens and locales to an already staggering catalogue that includes beaches, apocalyptic rooftops, spaceships, arctic icebergs, hot-air balloons and more. Visual variety goes a long way in keeping things fresh, as do the mechanics unique to some of the DLC pack's levels. Secondly, Overcooked! is playable online in the same fashion as its sequel for the first time, so those who can't rely on a consistent group of friends can opt to take the original levels online should they so desire.

Overcooked! 2 leverages the breakthroughs made in the original Overcooked!'s party-focused gameplay to double down on the outlandish action and provide even more thrills. When it first released, it was a true sequel with some welcome advancements like the ability to throw ingredients to fellow chefs from across the kitchen. When it comes to the graphics, level scoring, and the overall flow of the experience, many of these improvements have been transposed onto the first title's efforts in All You Can Eat. This makes for a well-rounded experience that brings the quality of both titles to parity - a great (and arguably necessary) addition.

The only noteworthy pitfall is that the ingredient-tossing ability of Overcooked! 2 has not made its way to the first Overcooked! here. Granted, this mechanic was made necessary in Overcooked! 2 due to the sequel's larger and more compartmentalised levels, but adding it to the earlier title and adjusting the scoring system to allow for this would have gone a long way to preserve continuity throughout this collection. Nevertheless, both titles shine by dint of being placed alongside each other with consistent graphics, scoring and performance.

Speaking of performance, All You Can Eat runs a treat on the Nintendo Switch, thanks no doubt to years of optimisation for both mainline titles. This is truly the definitive way to satisfy yourself with a slice of co-op cookery mayhem - unless you have already experienced both (or either) of these titles singularly. For new players and fans avid enough to experience what's on offer with a new coat of paint, this is a must-buy at the fantastic price of £29.99 / $39.99. For the sheer volume of content on offer, this is a steal.