Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! is the latest title by Vertigo Gaming in their long-running Cook, Serve, Delicious! Franchise. Switching from the restaurant to a road setting, the game surely takes the franchise into a brand new direction and we are glad to report that the developer has done an astounding job in making the game better than its predecessors. This is our review of Cook Serve Delicious 3 on PC in which we cook some delicious meals while shooting at rival food trucks.
The story of Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! is set right after the previous game however war has now broken across the world and the USA is under attack. Your restaurant is doing fine but, in the war, it gets blown up and you barely survive with your life. You are rescued by two robots Cleaver and Whisk who offer you their truck to use as a food truck and travel across the roads of the USA. You accept the offer and thus begin your very own food truck business roaming around the roads of the USA. The game marks the return of many old features along with plenty of new features thrown in the mix as well.
You have your main campaign along with the options to upgrade and customize your truck and a healthy recipe book. Most of the higher tier recipes are locked however the game offers you two different currencies. One is gold coins or as the game likes to call them CrumbCoin and then you have Upgrade parts. You unlock new recipes with CrumbCoin whereas all truck upgrades are purchased with Upgrade Parts. Completing missions allow you to get more CrumbCoins and Upgrade Parts for all your needs. After completing a short tutorial, you begin your days on your food truck by selecting your main courses and side orders for the day.
What sets Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! different from the previous titles is that this cooking game is on the road. While cooking the dishes and preparing meals, your truck is thundering down on highways at high speeds. You do not get small tasks this time around such as cleaning or exterminating rats but the road comes with its own challenges such as rival food trucks that will attack you or the police that continuously monitors highways across the USA. Your truck is pretty good by default, but you can further upgrade it and customize it using unlocked parts and upgrade parts to make it better and efficient.
Despite being on a truck this time around, the core gameplay of the game remains the same. You have your regular cooking stations and prep stations where you can cook food quickly and prepare some dishes in advance so that you are ready to serve your customers when you arrive at your destination. While on the road, cooking is pretty easy, and you get plenty of space to prepare meals and dishes before reaching the stops where you will serve the food. Upon arriving at your destinations, you can quickly serve all of the ready food with a single click of the button where your robot sidekicks will deliver them for you.
This quick delivery is actually a very handy feature in the game because it eliminates the need to click on every order to deliver them. Even if you have all of the orders ready, simply press control and your robot sidekicks will deliver all of them in a flash opening up new orders for you and building up a massive combo at the same time. While you are standing at a stop, the gameplay is pretty much like in the previous titles where orders keep swarming in and you have to quickly preparer all of the dishes and serve them and try not to have any angry customers leave the building so that you can have the best possible medal in the game.
The main campaign is spread all over the USA as you start with a few routes and then continue to unlock more and more routes as you play the game. These routes serve as your campaign levels where you have multiple levels on the same route. These get tougher and tougher as you progress in the game. Certain levels will have a particular food recipe level as well which means that you will need to choose higher-level food recipes which are not only challenging to cook but also require more ingredients in the game than lower-level recipes. However, serving them also gives you more money and experience. If you want a more relaxed experience, you can also enter the chill mode of the campaign where you do not have to worry about truck attacks or impatient customers.
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! Also comes with its iconic UI that the franchise is known for and it looks just like the same as that of previous games in the franchise. I like how the newest game sticks to the same UI style and it might be because of the fact that the developer is following the rule ‘if it is not broken, do not fix it, but I think the UI of the game requires a little overhaul at this point or it will become FIFA eventually. The current UI is extremely functional and presents all tasks in a very effective way but some of the recipes that require more steps for cooking and some recipes that come with a large number of ingredients in the game do not sit too well with the current UI.
Sometimes, it will keep you searching for the ingredient and you would accidentally just scroll past it 2, 3 times making you lose valuable time and making you burn those lovely buns sitting in the oven at the back. I had the most trouble while serving ice creams because they come in a lot of flavors and despite their flavors color-coded to pages, I was having such a bad experience with them that I stopped adding them to the menu and after that, I did the same thing with many other complex recipes as well. It was not because I was too slow with my cooking, but it was because of the factor that the UI is not that helpful when it comes to cooking items with a lot of ingredients in them. For this reason, the ingredients section particularly should get an overhaul in the next title.
I have been playing and reviewing Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! since the second title in the franchise and I have played the game both on PC and a console. I absolutely love this franchise however sometimes you have to move on and leave some of the problematic elements behind. The UI overhaul will certainly give the franchise a fresh breath of life and will ensure that the players feel like the developer is actually working towards making the game better and better. Sticking to the same UI and game mechanics will eventually make the game stale and boring. I enjoyed my time with Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! and the whole idea of being on the road while cooking some of the best dishes from around the world is really good however I feel that for the future titles, a refreshed UI will be great.
Final Verdict:
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! brings an interesting twist to the whole franchise however even in the fast-moving food truck, the game does not lose its competitive edge at any point. The gameplay is still solid, challenging, and completely reflex testing. I like how the developer of the game stuck with the same, iconic visual style of the game for the third-entry as well which clearly shows that they are following the rule that ‘if it is not broken, do not fix it’ but I think that it is now time that certain UI elements of the franchise get a little overhaul. Cook, Serve, Delicious, 3?! Is in no way a bad-looking game but everything eventually requires an overhaul so the franchise would do good with a more refined UI for the future. For the time being, Cook, Serve, Delicious, 3?! is here with tons of delicious new recipes and challenging gameplay that defines the franchise and we love it. If you are a fan of intense cooking games, I will highly recommend that you play it.
Final Score: 8.5/10
