Better but also a bit worse
I bought the first game mostly for the coop experience and in this game you can't play that type of coop where one player does the cooking and the other the expediting. Both of you HAVE to be cooks, which is fine for those who wanted that, but for me, that means less casual fun and less co-operation between players required.
It's like two people playing CSD2 on two computers at the same time, instead of working together to win. All the while the actual expediting has gotten more complex and interesting with holding stations, so the lack of the original coop experience is just sad. If the dev ever makes a 4th game in the series, please bring back the original coop.
The settings are oddly frustrating. For example you can't choose to play with key+mouse as player1 while p2 uses the gamepad, while in the previous game you could and the button prompt settings are less conveniently placed in the options when they used to be in the co-op menu.
The selection for what your cook looks like is made worse, instead of seeing all the options in one window you have to slowly scroll through every option.
During gameplay if a key corresponding to a ingredient is pressed it only activates if it is currently visible, while in the previous game you could memorize what the keybinding was and press it without opening the extended ingredients menu. This is very annoying.
In general I feel more lost with the interface design and feels like there are more unnecessary clicks involved. Hard to find things I'm looking for and inconsistent menu design, in one menu you can go forwards and backwards in your selection while in another menu you can only go forwards.
There is a lot to like in this game, but all of these negative changes just make me want to play the first game instead.
4 gamers found this review helpful