Cook, Serve, Delicious! Review by Atarun

Description

Cook, Serve, Delicious! is a hardcore restaurant management simulator. You do all the cooking and serving (and the delicious *wink* *wink*) in your humble restaurant and, with the money you earn, you unlock new recipes and a variety of features to make your restaurant manager life easier.

Warning: I'm not kidding when I say "hardcore". This is not a relaxing strategy/management game. It is more a "get into flow mode" kind of game. More like Tetris level 15 than Cooking Mama. ;)

Pros

+ Fair learning curve in normal difficulty (and all the punishment masochists could wish for in challenges and harder modes)
+ Great variety of recipes
+ Surprisingly deep game for the genre
+ No F2P "pay to play right now or wait" dirty tricks

Cons

- Arbitrary number (20) of games to complete before you can upgrade your restaurant feels way too long
- Unbalanced recipes (soups require superhuman memory whereas fish is the easiest thing in the world)
- Gameplay sometimes gets so frantic it is stressful in a bad way (in rush hour, even in normal mode)

Verdict

Cook, Serve, Delicious! is an amazing game that, in a way, redefines management games. Instead of a casual linear experience with a series of short levels, you're given a lot of freedom over how to manage your venture. It does require coordination, reflexes, strategic thinking and some trial-and-error guesswork.

If you love cooking games, try it.
If you're sick of casual management games and are ready for the next level, try it.
If you like a challenge, try it.
If you like games that push you all the way to a "flow", try it.

If you hate playing with strict timing or frantic situations, stay away.
If you like your games easy to master, stay away.

Overall, I think most people could love this game if they gave it a good try (knowingly getting into it)... and I cannot wait for the sequel.