I was recently introduced to Cook, Serve, Delicious! franchise when I reviewed the console release of the previous title in the series Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! I really loved how the game made cooking so challenging and in a good way. Normally, challenging games are really difficult to play like Dark Souls but Cook, Serve, Delicious, 3?! is a very unique type of challenging. It is not hard to play but it really wants you to be at your best as well. The latest title in the franchise is Cook Serve Delicious 3 and it is entering Early Access today and this is our Early Access review of this brilliant cooking sim.
Cook Serve Delicious 3 takes a brand new direction for the franchise as we move away from the normal restaurant setting and move to a more mobile food truck setting. The game is set in the post-war USA where everything is destroyed including your huge restaurant plaza. You barely make it out alive but thanks to two robot sidekicks named Cleaver and Whisk, you live to see another day and start your own mobile food truck. With the trend of normal food restaurants now gone, food trucks are everything and you start your own journey across the USA with Cleaver and Whisk at your side.
Since its post-war America, rules have changed apart from the cooking ones. Cleaver is a Guardian while Whisk is your driver of the van. You have the whole of America to travel in your food truck. While starting a new day, you can choose any of the unlocked territories and pick your location from them where you want to drive and serve food. After that, the game plays pretty much the same across the board. You pick your menu from the Food Catalog. Just like before, dishes come in various tiers and with each new tier, dishes get more and more complicated. Apart from the starting dishes, you have to spend gold to purchase new and better dishes.
One of the new features in the game is the Truck Updates. Since you are continuously on the move and your food truck will get attacked often because the game is set in a post-war setting. You will need to upgrade your truck to make it better and these upgrades will allow you to cope up with many situations in better ways. You will earn money, experience and parts based on your performance at the end of every day. The main goal of the campaign is to reach the new capital of USA Nashville in Tennessee and take part in the Iron Cook Foodtruck Championships and prove that you are the best chef in the world.
Cook Serve Delicious 3 currently uses the same engine as that of Cook Serve Delicious 2 but it is greatly improved and polish to implement some brand new mechanics in the game. Apart from the Normal mode, you have a ‘Chill’ mode this time around which removes the customer patience levels completely giving you a more relaxed experience of the game allowing you to play it at your own pace. However, you can only earn a Silver medal at the best in this mode. Gold medals can only be achieved in the Normal mode and when I say achieve, I really mean achieve.
Cook Serve Delicious franchise is known for its super-fast, tense and challenging gameplay and this one is no different. Every day in your food truck is difficult and full of challenges. As you move to more and more territories, you unlock much more difficult recipes and then the going gets even tougher. You have all the prep and holding stations at your disposal where you can prep your food in advance but you also need to make sure that the food does not go stale. While you are in transit, you can cook meals and side orders and have everything ready. In the previous game, you had normal times and rush hours, here, you have traveling time during which you must prepare for the destinations where all hell breaks loose and you have to cook and deliver all orders extremely quickly. You can also use the help of your robotic friends to help you with different tasks if you want to this time around. At the end of the day, you get a medal based on your performance and also earn money.
YUM or Your Universal Mastery is your level which determines how good you are at your cooking. As you increase your YUM level, you get access to more areas and additional features such as upgrading your food truck. YUM is simply a fancy and food-related term to XP or experience of any other title so it is nothing to worry about too much. As you continue to deliver better, you will earn experience and money which increases your YUM and you get access to better dishes, location, and features.
Cook Serve Delicious 3 also comes with a co-op feature and your local friend can join at any time. The game supports drop-in and drop-out gameplay with local co-op which is extremely convenient. Having another set of hands is always useful and your co-op player will greatly assist you in different tasks as you both barrel down the highways looking for your next destination full of hungry people. However, once thing to note here is that even in co-op mode, the game is pretty challenging and does not really let you get away easily.
Cook Serve Delicious 3 is currently in Early Access so new options, features, and modes will continue to arrive in the game in regular updates. At the time of writing this Early Access review, the update 0.5 arrived for the title and it brought with it a brand new Territory for us to roam and serve our delicious meals. Another feature Trinkets is currently locked in the game as the developers plan to add it to the game in a later update. The developers have done a solid job until now in preparing the Early Access versions. The Food Catalog is pretty big but not as big as Cook Serve Delicious 2 at this point but we are expecting that more dishes will be added in the coming days.
Final Verdict:
I understand that a lot of fans will be a little skeptical to move to Cook Serve Delicious 3 at this point because of the Early Access tag at this point. I was too at the start. However, after playing I’ve moved to Cook Serve Delicious 3 permanently because it is just too good. It takes the original formula of challenging and fun gameplay, adds in some brand new mechanics and makes the game even better than before. The game is extremely stable as well. There are no performance glitches or hiccups in the game and it runs perfectly even though it is currently under development. Cook Serve Delicious 3 Offers plenty of content even at this stage and the gameplay, while maintaining the core challenge, further improves upon it and makes it even better. It is the best title in the franchise so far and I will highly recommend fans and even new players to try it out in its current form.
