Usually, the mealtime rush is one of the intense sensations that you could feel in any dining establishment, one of the few things that game’s like the Cook Serve Delicious series replicated quite well within their three games in the series.
And while this one, their first story-based spinoff, doesn’t really have the intensity of their previous games, it does have some changes that I do like and also dislike for the first early access.
All in the whisk
One of the key features of the “Cook, Serve” series is their very rhythm-game-like controls that uses the keyboards as a way to convey the hectic nature of cooking during restaurant hours, but for this edition, it feels like a more relaxing sort of pace with the controls going to simpler controls for both gamepad and keyboard stuff, which might be familiar to those who have played the Miku or even DJ Respect games.
And while I do miss trying to memorize the original style of gameplay, this feels much more relaxing and easier to make the big combos go up as you deal with the orders as you go to more places. They also added a token challenge which you can pick during a shift that levels up your location points towards those harder levels.
One other thing that feels like a sad departure from the previous games is the lack of food variety, perhaps due to your character, Nori, can cook only casually, but the variation feels smaller than when compared to our previous food trucking adventure.
Although, there’s no doubt there will be more food (and their respective ways to create via combo) added when this Early Access goes on.
But the new music is a bit of a miss in my opinion. It does have the feel of music that you might hear at a roadside cafe, but does not really speak to me during time of focusing to nail that combo and get a better score. It’s nice to listen to but when compared to the music in the previous games, but in short,it does not really have the same vibes.
Closing Thoughts
While the reviews on its Steam page so far are quite mixed right now, I do feel that Vertigo could bounce back with all of their planned updates for the rest of the year and they do keep patching the game to be the best version possible at all times.
It might need some getting used to but I have no doubt that CSF could be a pretty good spinoff, It just needs more Early Access time, because I think even new fans would enjoy this cooking rhythm formula.
Played on PC. Review key provided by the developer. Early Access impressions based on release Patch v0.1.35.