“a rhythmic, chaotic catastrophe of cooking!”

February 24, 2020 7:04 AM

Cook, Serve, Delicious 3 Is A Chaotic Cooking Game Set In The Back Of A Food Truck Driven By Cyborgs [YouTube][Game Trailer] “Cooking food can be a relaxing or even therapeutic activity. But not in Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! That’s because you are cooking in the back of a moving food truck driven by two cyborgs in a dystopian future. In that case, things are a bit more...chaotic. CSD3 is the third entry in the Cook, Serve, Delicious series and it released earlier this week. These games are all about cooking lots of quality food, quickly and accurately. [...] Each day in CSD3 starts with you crafting a menu of different foods and snacks to serve and then you head out to three stops, where hungry people await. On the way to each stop, you can prep food to help make your life easier. ou use various keyboard keys to slap together food. For example, simple food like chicken nuggets has you hit the “N” key a few times to place raw chicken nuggets into your deep-frying baskets. Then you hit the “D” key to dunk the food into the burner and finally, you hit enter to close that window and let the nugs cook.” [via: Kotaku]

• Cook, Serve, Delicious 3: More Cooking, More Serving, More Deliciousness [Paste Magazine]

“Cook Serve Delicious is the perfect cooking simulator series. It so faithfully recreates the harrowing experience of working in the food service industry, it will destroy all culinary aspirations you may have ever had. [...] Players are on a trip across the country in their newly acquired food truck, a fresh premise that fits perfectly with the games’ signature frenzied pacing. As you make your way across the United States, you’ll be placed in individual regions with a number of routes. Each route is comprised of a few levels with different themes, which dictate the recipes you’re able to put on your menu for that round. The player prepares to-go orders and holding station foods by pressing in the correct sequence of keyboard buttons at the prompt, while managing their temperature, pick-up times and freshness. Successful completion awards medals based on performance, which are then used to move on through each location. Whereas the previous games threw you into the deep end without a lot of warm-up, it has both a tutorial and a way to practice each dish individually. Before each level, the player must select their menu from a list of available recipes, which are assigned a number indicating its difficulty. From the recipes’ card, you can both purchase and practice it, giving you a chance to get familiar with the basic keyboard sequences before the chaos.”

• Cook, Serve, Delicious 3 Is A Crazy Delight [Kotaku AU]

“It's absolute nonsense in the best possible way, although you can choose to ignore all of that if you want. The two robots, Whisk and Cleaver, who pull you from the wreckage and drive you across the United States have voice overs and cut scenes of their own. It's a nice trimming on what is principally a rhythm game about cooking. Most people take one of two sides with a game like Cook, Serve, Delicious. Either the constant pace and lack of time to think helps you relax, or its unbearably stressful. I'm in the former camp. There's a satisfaction to holding down the left trigger on a controller and rolling your fingers across all the face buttons, watching a tasty piece of bread get buttered, slathered, fried and butter again before being left to cook. (It's especially good when you get a control setup that suits you perfectly. Rather than using the default keys when playing on a keyboard, I customised the controls to have universal keys, so all ingredients would be bound to QWER/ASDF, similar to how the bindings work on a gamepad.)”

• 'Cook, Serve, Delicious 3' Has the Right Recipe for a Distractible Mind [Vice Gaming]

“Cook, Serve, Delicious 3 is only so much fun for me because it's so stressful. When I play the fast paced restaurant management game, I need to devote all of my brain power to the thing it asks of me—filling my holding stations, taking orders, pressing the corresponding keys to cook my dishes correctly and quickly, keeping an eye on all my timers so nothing burns. It reminds me of the way I used to shut out all distractions when I read as a child, to the frustrations of my mom who would call me for dinner over and over. I just couldn't hear her because I was concentrating so hard. As an adult, I now know that was a symptom of my recently diagnosed ADHD, called hyperfocusing. I was never a disruptive kid, I just got bored very easily and had to make up little games for myself to stay conscious during the school day. When it came to reading, I almost never got bored, so I would focus way too intently and forget about other tasks. All these are symptoms of ADHD, and now I'm taking medication to help manage them alongside my regular coping mechanisms. But the thing about hyperfocusing is that it feels really good to light up all the blinking lights that ADHD is constantly signaling in your brain.”

posted by Fizz (9 comments total)

Wowza! Did the older games also have this kind of apocalyptic/dystopia theme to them? I've played them briefly, but never enough to glean any story, if any. Found them too stressful and reminded me too much of working in a restaurant. This dystopia hook, though, kind of elevates it for me. I'm definitely interested now, great concept!
posted by GoblinHoney at 7:52 AM on February 24, 2020

The apocalyptic/dystopia theme is new to the most recent game in this series. I'm considering picking up Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2 for the Switch, it seems like a fun game to have on the go. Though I might just wait for the third to become available later this year, right now it's only available on early access on PC and while I think this is a game that benefits from keyboard mapping. It also would benefit from being portable and in my hand, so I'm torn on which medium to purchase this through.
posted by Fizz at 7:57 AM on February 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

I stress enough over whether I've made the bacon the right crispiness or the eggs wet enough but not too wet when making breakfast for grumpybearbride. I don't need a game what adds artillery and a huge crowd of angry people to the mix.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:19 AM on February 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

No thanks, I already know how to touch-type at high speeds (thanks PvP MUD and dial up internet in the 90s!) and do not want this foodie, hipster, post-apocalyptic Mavis Beacon in my life/game queue.

I kid, I've never played it but watching the video was fun. I am sure lots of folks would love this.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:20 AM on February 24, 2020

I have a vivid memory of this Atari 2600 game called "pressure cooker" being equally unrelaxing. As is working in the food service industry, which you know of course if you've ever done it for even a day. So some points for that. But why I'd voluntarily return to this particular state of mind is beyond me... Also I don't get why the (delicious!) raspberry gelato looks 100% like chocolate... or why a single food truck would serve both bibimbap AND poutine? And also this croque-monsieur kind of thing that I guarantee the other truck two over will also do, but better? Probably deep fried, and definitely with bacon? Is it because apocalypse? It must be. I like to hear that after the a. I'll still be able to get some bibimbap though.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 8:33 AM on February 24, 2020

How does this compare to Overcooked? Anyone who has played both have any insights there?
posted by Grither at 8:34 AM on February 24, 2020

Overcooked is very different. You have to worry about where your character is and it's mostly a couch co-op thing (right?). With CSD you're focused on the food prep right in front of you, you don't even see yourself or have to move anything. At least the first one. I haven't tried the 3rd yet, but I think it's similar.

Here is a Giant Bomb Quick Look of the first Cook, Serve, Delicious! with Jeff Gerstmann and the late Ryan Davis. David Galindo, creator of the CSD games, credits this video, and Ryan specifically, with much of the success of his first game in this heartfelt blog post after he learned of Ryan's passing.
posted by ODiV at 8:50 AM on February 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

why a single food truck would serve both bibimbap AND poutine

"La poutine bibimbap" just won Montreal's annual Poutine Week contest...
posted by oulipian at 11:02 AM on February 24, 2020 [3 favorites]

Coming as a CSD 1 veteran and CSD 2 dabbler, the bibimbap dish looks INSANE for how many different toppings it's got.
posted by coolname at 9:44 AM on February 25, 2020