Overcooked is a party game where you and a friend work together to prepare and cook meals. On the surface this game-play sounds like a really simple boring game, but in reality it's fast, hectic, you'll be yelling at your friend, meanwhile thinking that it is impossible to get a three star rank.
The story is that the apocalypse is taking place thanks to the and I'm not kidding the Spaghetti Monster. You have to appease the monster by making him enough salad, the Onion King notices that you suck and uses a time machine that way you and your friend can get good. The story isn't meant to be taken seriously and is just used to have you get to the game-play, but the story is so ridiculous that I ended up enjoying it a lot.
Now to the main meat the game-play (pun intended), each level places you in a different restaurant where you have to make food with the help of your partner. There are different stations placed through out the level, some give you basic ingredients, some are cutting stations, and you have stove stations, each station is placed around in the level making you run to each really fast to get cooking done. I'm going to explain the cooking process of a burger, you get the meat, you cut the meat, you then, cook the meat, you then place it in a bun, and then if the customer wants lettuce and/or tomatoes then you have to cut that up and place it in a burger. I just explained one of the longer cooking processes now imagine doing that under a timer and the more you do the better rank you get, that's how this game is hetic. Most of the time a restaurant is split into two section with you on one and your partner on the other one, for example you have food stations so you pick up food then pass it to your partner, then he cuts it, then you cook it, then your partner puts it on a plate, and you have to do it fast. Because of this the game revolves around you waiting on your partner to get some stuff done, meanwhile you have to make sure you don't mess something up, this ends up with lots of yelling like "Why did you put the tomato there now I have to go around the whole restaurant!", "Why are you cutting mushrooms we need onions!",and "What are you doing the food is burning put it of the stove NOW!!!", now this sounds horrible but me or my brother were never really mad at each other and we had a lot of fun playing. After the game does all of this to make you tense what else can it do, it has level gimmicks like your in a ship with it leaning so every thirty seconds you and your partner are switching positions, or having super narrow pathways making it hard to run through, or even having half the restaurant split in half and go upwards making it impossible to serve food. The level variety is great and always keeps you on your toes.
The graphics are really simple but that's to be expected with an indie game, but they don't look bad it has a very appealing look to it. The music is alright it does the job well with music in the mood of cooking until your almost out of time making it faster, making you panic, the music is good but it's not really that catchy.
I have some gripes with this game but none are really that big. First of all and I want to make this very clear DO NOT PLAY SINGLE-PLAYER, let me explain there is a mode for single player where you switch between two chefs with the shoulder buttons, the problem with this is that this game is made to have two chefs running around at the same time, meaning you get stuff done really slowly especially since stuff, like cutting is twice as slow, and switching between chefs is a nightmare as there is no indicator which chef your controlling getting yourself very confused at points, you may be able to play single-player but I quitted after the first level. Another gripe I have is that after a few levels you are usually tired so take my advice and play this game in short bursts. There is also no online for Overcooked so you have to have friends, but that isn't too much of a bad thing as the main fun of this game is getting mad at them.
With all of this in mind my final rating is 7.5/10. The game is really fun to play with friends and is really fun to bring out in a party, but if you don't have friends you are kind of screwed as the single player can be very frustrating.