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 Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! is a restaurant management game created by Vertigo Games (which is actually comprised of solo developer David "chubigans" Galindo) and the sequel to 2013's Cook, Serve, Delicious! In both games, you run the titular restaurant and your job is to keep up the hectic pace of juggling the various orders and chores (such as dishwashing, taking out the trash, etc) which you accomplish by via a succession of button presses/mouse clicks via a sometimes overwhelming amount of options. Now I created this thread because I have some complaints about this game and saw that on the Steam thread, many share these complaints. And yet I cannot stop playing this game.  Let's go over the changes to the formula: - The most notable one is that the campaign is completely changed from the previous mode and is simultaneously expanded and more stripped down: in CSD1, the campaign was completely linear yet you had side missions such as catering, the Iron Cook challenges and the end game Hungry Festivities. You could also upgrade your equipment, wager money on bets involving certain challenges, date, etc. In CSD2, all of that was swept aside by focusing purely on your restaurant and a variation on catering, now called "Chef For Hire". You can pretty much spend the entire campaign ignoring your own restaurant in favor of working for a large selection of other restaurants with themed menus. This has the confusing effect of adding starts to your "restaurant" even if you never actually work there, since the stars are now purely tied to your experience (though some foods can only be unlocked by playing inside your restaurant). The lack of any upgrades or sidequest can make the campaign feel utterly aimless. - Holding stations and side dishes are the best new addition and the reason I keep coming back: Depending on your level/the restaurant you have access to several Holding which can hold compatible foods. Food prepared in a Holding Station gets a set amount of charges that can be served instantly until the food spoils or runs out. Some foods require holding stations, others can either be prepared on the fly or in advance. Side dishes are a special category in that they are all prepared in Holding Stations but are served WITH a dish. Side dishes get you tips and increase the patience timer in your customers. This mechanic makes for fun strategic gameplay in where you can prepare for Rush Hour by setting up foods and balancing out their spoilage timers. - Food selection has been MASSIVELY expanded (according to the Steam page the original game had 30 foods, CSD2 has 180) but complexity has been quite reduced. Most notably a lot of the "tactile" feel of foods has been reduced. Soups in CSD1 for example made you chop vegetables by mashing the arrow keys. In CSD2 most foods are essentially sequential button presses, a lot of the times with no regards to order yet a few foods still require mashing. This can lead to most of the foods "feeling" the same. - You can now customize your restaurant. Unfortunately the UI for the designer is terrible and this has the side effect of every time you finish a working day, you're treated to a cheap looking "loot box" opening animation that you will mash your keyboard to try to skip. A lot of people are naturally complaining about the changes but chubigans claims to be taking the input into account. I just wish that if this was the case, he's have released this as Early Access, which is clearly what this game is (the first version didn't even let you use your MOUSE in the MENUS). Post your experiences with this game! What is your favorite/least favorite food/Chef For Hire restaurant? Personally, I will just say gently caress Chilly Bowl and Chinese Food. AceOfFlames fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Sep 20, 2017 22:42
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I was absolutely addicted to this game for about 2 weeks last Christmas. I heard the sequel had a rough launch - would you say it's worth buying now, or waiting for a few patches? Sad to see campaign mode got lame.
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Sep 20, 2017 22:48
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The Bramble posted:I was absolutely addicted to this game for about 2 weeks last Christmas. I heard the sequel had a rough launch - would you say it's worth buying now, or waiting for a few patches? I'd say wait for a while. It seems like chubigans is going to add a lot of the removed stuff like the emails and the bets (even though apparently according to the description of one of the restaurants Crazy Dave is DEAD. Seriously.) Like I said, despite not being sold as such, this is a de facto Early Acess game.
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Sep 20, 2017 22:53
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If you really love this developer the way I do (was a massive fan back when I first played The Oil Blue) just buy it now and show your support through constructive criticism on the Steam forum. It's a lot of fun as-is and way more hectic than the original (although, full disclosure, I admittedly only ever got a few hours into the original and didn't finish the campaign.) That said, I wouldn't blame you if you waited for some patches first. The fact that neither keybinds nor proper descriptions of Boosters and Detractors kinda makes the game seem slimmer and more opaque than it's supposed to be. Also worth mentioning that the dev is going to work on this thing for a while. He really seems to want it to be the definitive CSD game you can play for a long time.
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Sep 20, 2017 23:33
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The campaign mode just feels really weird... you can still play a day in your own restaurant, which you can decorate with all the crap you get every time you finish a day, but on the restaurant menu it's just one small entry next to 20 or 30 other restaurants, which really de-emphasizes it as an element of the campaign. To make matters worse, all the other restaurants have "challenges" (really just preset menus) and you can try to get bronze/silver/gold on each of them, while your own restaurant has none of that--so it almost feels like you're not making progress if you opt to play your own restaurant over earning medals in challenges. There are no restaurant upgrades aside from purchasing more recipes (which you don't need at all to play the challenges), and the recipes themselves don't have multiple unlockable tiers anymore. There are the aforementioned decorations, but they seem to be random, so even there you don't get the sense of moving from "cockroach-infested garbage dump" to "five-star fine dining establishment." I'm okay with waiting for the little things like emails to get re-added, but the fundamental progression in the game (or lack thereof) seems like it's a much bigger problem that will take a lot longer to fix. The frantic keyboard-mashing gameplay is still fun, and the added complexity of the holding stations helps to keep you on your toes, but CSD2 has become more of a "maybe I'll squeeze in a day or two right now" game instead of a "I'm going to fully upgrade my pizza recipe, and get to three-star status today" game to me.
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Sep 20, 2017 23:37
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If you want to hang out in the official discord where chubigans and the writers hang out, here: https://discord.gg/CNJk7RK
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Sep 20, 2017 23:52
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I know the buzz stuff got fixed/implemented already, but were emails enabled yet?
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Sep 21, 2017 00:27
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I know the buzz stuff got fixed/implemented already, but were emails enabled yet? Not yet. 
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Sep 21, 2017 00:29
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Darn, waiting on the emails getting turned on before I play.
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Sep 21, 2017 00:46
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This game LOOKS fantastic but sadly the changes in the campaign make me want to hold off on this to see if they ever do anything more to it. I was such a fan of the first game and was completely surprised by the release of the sequel but yeah I think I'm giving this one a pass for now.
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Sep 21, 2017 00:54
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Count me in the crew who like the way the new campaign works. I always felt limited by the campaign in CSD1. The continual day counter made me feel as though I had to play every day perfectly-to the point of restarting days during the dinner rush if I screwed up. I spent a lot of time re-hashing days I had already done. I feel much more freed by the campaign in that I can play much more loosely. I don't feel the pressure to get perfect on every day. I can play a non-ideal menu because it has a theme, or because it's fun, rather than constantly trying to maximize cash. The other restaurants also give me options to play menus I might not ever have come up with. While a 'breakfast' menu might work, I don't think I would have come up with 8 different breakfast-themed menus. I probably would not have thought to do 'dive bar' as my restaurant. The new campaign has many more options and is a better experience for it.
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Sep 21, 2017 02:18
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If I recall correctly, someone on the discord (a beta tester maybe?) said that emails are being put back in with the planned release that updates CSD mode. I have very mixed feelings about the campaign. I like that there aren't any tedious busywork roadblocks like the first game (the food upgrade system & the 'days completed' checklist item for leveling up), but it's really lacking a motivation to engage with that mode rather than just doing chef for hire levels. Note that since chef for hire gives money and xp, the only thing exclusive to CSD mode is the rewards for milestones, which seem to be entirely decor as best I can tell. This means that chef for hire is generally a superior method if you want food unlocks. I like that there's a broad range of possible self-expression in decorating your restaurant and coming up with a menu from the wide variety of possibilities, but at some point money becomes pretty much entirely pointless (i have like 40k lying around, not quite enough to buy everything for sale but enough to buy several full menus' worth). You can see how far you can push your Buzz level in CSD mode, but that lacks the feeling of reward you get for perfect days since you can and will get your buzz too high to handle (unless you put together a pretty degenerate menu). I can see why on paper the complete freedom is appealing to some, but in practice I just run into choice paralysis and decide to go back to chef for hire mode.
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Sep 21, 2017 02:49
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I bought this earlier today and refunded it. I'll buy the PS4 version unless he changes the ridiculous "feature" that you have to be on an ingredient's page before you press the key that corresponds to that ingredient. It already starts out harder than the ENDGAME of the first game and it's infuriating to have to press SPACE to get to the page that has "Beans" when I already know the key is B. It seems super clear that part was designed first, last and only for people who play with a controller (since it's NECESSARY to have multiple ingredient pages with a controller) and I refuse to relearn everything about CSD unless I absolutely have to. Chores now also pretty much suck. It's a shame because the Tower is a great idea and if it weren't ball-numbingly difficult out of the gate I probably wouldn't have refunded it, but getting thrown right into having 6 stations plus 4 prep stations PLUS not being able to just hit the letters for the poo poo if I already know them made it just terrible. It's almost like a smack in the face to people who remember all the dumb "N is for oNion" stuff. e: also, upgrading food was great and needs to come back, because it's another layer of unnecessary bullshit that Salad immediately has like 10 ingredients and there's no learning curve for the dishes. And yeah, I could tell that the emphasis on playing with a controller had also hurt the creative design of the dishes, like the mentioned way that Soup would have you chop the veggies in a way that was almost like a rhythm game. precision fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Sep 21, 2017 |
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Sep 21, 2017 08:59
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precision posted:I bought this earlier today and refunded it. I'll buy the PS4 version unless he changes the ridiculous "feature" that you have to be on an ingredient's page before you press the key that corresponds to that ingredient. It already starts out harder than the ENDGAME of the first game and it's infuriating to have to press SPACE to get to the page that has "Beans" when I already know the key is B. It seems super clear that part was designed first, last and only for people who play with a controller (since it's NECESSARY to have multiple ingredient pages with a controller) and I refuse to relearn everything about CSD unless I absolutely have to. I think the page thing is also to avoid an overload of "K is for chicken" type deals since it allows to have multiple ingredients bound to the same key but on different pages.
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Sep 21, 2017 09:25
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Oh yeah, I really miss the--tactility? skeuomorphism? there has to be a word for this--of the chores and certain recipes from the first game. Pressing FS, TS, TCS, LCS, DW-RUS just isn't the same as furiously scrubbing plates left and right, or having to lift and heave garbage bags into the dumpster. Not sure why he got rid of that part of the game. Was there something wrong with having the player reach over to use the arrow keys?
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Sep 21, 2017 09:39
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AceOfFlames posted:I think the page thing is also to avoid an overload of "K is for chicken" type deals since it allows to have multiple ingredients bound to the same key but on different pages. Admittedly I only played 30 minutes but are there foods where that's the case? I didn't see any food that used any letter more than once, and for example burgers still have Onion as N when nothing is bound to O. There was also a tool tip that said you can bind ingredients to keys universally, which I thought meant that you could make T always Tomato? I never had a problem using the arrow keys on the number pad, resting my pinkie on Enter, with my right hand, but I think some people did and also I'm pretty sure he's really hot on people using a controller instead of keyboard, but that only makes the decision to get rid of directional inputs stranger.
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Sep 21, 2017 09:52
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precision posted:Admittedly I only played 30 minutes but are there foods where that's the case? I didn't see any food that used any letter more than once, and for example burgers still have Onion as N when nothing is bound to O. There was also a tool tip that said you can bind ingredients to keys universally, which I thought meant that you could make T always Tomato? Some foods re-use letters. Like pizza has 'a' for alfredo sauce on the first page, but is 'a' for anchovies on the second page. I think the page system is much better because in CSD1 you got poo poo like 'y' for butter. Almost always in CSD2, it's either the first or second letter of each word. The exceptions are usually pretty unique, like 'k' for chicken which has a very distinct 'k' sound to it, or 'v' for olives, and v is a pretty uncommon letter. The pages make a lot of sense, and even though I've only been a keyboard player, I think the page system is for the better. I do miss the directional buttons from chores though, washing dishes was better with the left-right-left-right-up. Trash is similarish with the stomping. Washing dishes now is awful because it's just a timer.
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Sep 21, 2017 09:59
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Ah my bad then. Butter being Y is dumb but it's just as dumb that B is Beans for Nachos, but you can't just press B even though there's no other B for that dish. So it really seems like it's poorly designed in a way that's unnecessary. If there's no B on the page and B is only Beans for the dish, the requirement of switching pages should be disabled.
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Sep 21, 2017 10:13
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precision posted:Ah my bad then. Butter being Y is dumb but it's just as dumb that B is Beans for Nachos, but you can't just press B even though there's no other B for that dish. So it really seems like it's poorly designed in a way that's unnecessary. I won't disagree in that this situation does exist(for example, hotdogs, every key but 'R' is unique[regular bun pg1, relish pg2]). But which nachos? Both I can find (stadium nachos, deluxe nachos) don't have this situation. Stadium nachos only has 1 page, B is beans. Deluxe nachos has two pages, and B is (refried) beans on page one, and beef on page 2. Stadium Deluxe, pg 1 Deluxe, pg 2 e: I think you're just being theoretical but I already made the post so 
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Sep 21, 2017 10:31
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It's all good. I think what we all agree on is that he seemingly doesn't understand what made his own game fun, because all the changes to the actual dish-assembling are for the worse. Things now have way too many ingredients, which used to only be an issue if you chose to upgrade them, so it was a well-designed trade-off. Every dish is now just "type letters". Chicken Breast now makes you press T six times to Tenderize, and with the weird slight input lag it felt a lot worse than pressing Down 6 times. And again, like Soup, I hated Soup until I got it down and then it became one of my favorite dishes. There also seem to be a lot less mechanically "unique" dishes, eg Bananas Foster or Enchiladas or even the cool timing involved with Beer. Soda was also really fun. Man, the more I think about it the more let down I am. It even manages to look worse than the first game!
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Sep 21, 2017 10:48
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I hated the page-flipping at first, too, until I realized that the little bullet point next to every ingredient/step in the recipe is color coded to which page it's on. It makes it a lot easier than having to memorize the whole second page of CSD1 Soup, for example.
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Sep 21, 2017 13:30
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The difficulty is like teabagging a deep fryer. It might be good training for pro-level Starcraft play however.precision posted:Chores now also pretty much suck. Poil fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Sep 21, 2017 |
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Sep 21, 2017 14:01
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Getting robbed is hilarious now, though. I always dreaded getting robbed in CSD1, because I was *never* on the ball enough to complete that police sketch.
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Sep 21, 2017 14:03
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precision posted:It's infuriating to have to press SPACE to get to the page that has "Beans" when I already know the key is B. It seems super clear that part was designed first, last and only for people who play with a controller. As a controller user for both 1 and 2 I had no problem chopping veggies and using their page scrolling system in 1 and miss it a ton. It's interesting seeing how many people say the game is balls hard. On a controller it's ridiculously easy and kind of boring. Everything in the game follows the progression of "triangle -> square -> circle -> x." Things like chores and dishes like tirimisu or side rice that have steps that have to be completed in order literally always follow that exact button sequence. I'd say nearly half of the dishes in the game can be completed by going through that button progression in order until you run out of ingredients/steps. In the first game almost every dish was unique. Fish, I have to start on the analog stick and go left right up, now it's triangle -> square -> circle -> x. Lasagna, rotate analog stick three times, sometimes stopping to add a meat or veggie layer, now it's triangle -> square -> circle -> x. Soda used to be a mind game, left and right to choose the tap, make sure you have the right size, ice? Flavoring? Make sure you do all that before you pour with down. Now? triangle -> square -> circle. I feel the game has lost a ton of charm. Next gripe, nearly every food grays out entire sections of ingredients when you select one from it. This saves the player from themselves too often and makes almost every order feel the same. No more ice cream orders with three different scoops and all the toppings. Now every ice cream order is A) what scoop? B) what sauce? C) what topping? (singular) D) does it have whipped cream? And there are a ton of entrees that follow this same formula. I was so happy when I came across sushi, which has you slice it "exactly nine times." Finally, it felt like I was actually prepping food instead of playing button whack a mole. But then my wife found out that the slice option goes gray after nine slices so it went from a precise counting dish to a hack square as fast as you can until the game stops slicing for you. As I said, the game saves you from yourself. My hunch is with the crazy amount of art assets in the game he didn't want to go down the route of "how does a canolli with Gummy bears AND nuts get visually represented on the screen and how do we represent all the other possible combinations people could potentially come up with." The co-op in this game is very well done. My wife and I are very excited to be able to play together. I'll still easily put in 40 hours trying to gold the chef for hire restaurants with her. I love the developer and have no regrets buying on day one at full price, especially considering how much I got out of the first game after only paying a dollar. I'm excited for updates but I don't expect them to fix my issues with the game as I feel those are deeply rooted in the core of the game. There's definitely disappointment there. In the first game there was no way I could have bought a new food I'd never prepped before and expect to get a perfect day with it on my menu without learning its intricacies. Now I'm playing with my wife, who is nowhere near the game nerd I am, and we're going to New chef for hire restaurants with 6-7 dishes we've never seen and we're achieving perfect days.
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Sep 21, 2017 15:57
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ZIGfried posted:The co-op in this game is very well done. My wife and I are very excited to be able to play together. I'll still easily put in 40 hours trying to gold the chef for hire restaurants with her. I love the developer and have no regrets buying on day one at full price, especially considering how much I got out of the first game after only paying a dollar. I'm excited for updates but I don't expect them to fix my issues with the game as I feel those are deeply rooted in the core of the game. There's definitely disappointment there. Can you explain a bit how co-op works in this? Does each person get items to make that are only theirs?
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Sep 21, 2017 16:03
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My understanding is that coop means that both players have total control, except that they obviously can't use a station that another player is using. So one person could focus on holding stations and chores while the other does orders, for instance, or the labor could be divided evenly.ZIGfried posted:My hunch is with the crazy amount of art assets in the game he didn't want to go down the route of "how does a canolli with Gummy bears AND nuts get visually represented on the screen and how do we represent all the other possible combinations people could potentially come up with." I think is precisely the reason. I remember reading in a blog post that in the first game each dish was essentially using its own code, so there was a lot more room for special cases in general. This would be a nightmare to do manually for 150+ foods, so when a new engine was built from scratch, it was universal (so that the menu items were data instead of programs). This is also the reason why it feels that fewer items have totally unique gameplay mechanics, such as the slicing in the soup game (which I always hated since the optimal timing was weird), the fact that bananas foster had timing in the middle of the prep process, and the adjacency rules for kebabs. On the whole, however, I think that there is actually more mechanical diversity in the game. Some items still require timing (beer, crème brûlée), although it's a lot less than before mostly because fried foods were changed. The mashing has moved from wine to the trash minigame, which does have the wrinkle of involving less mashing at the start of the day. Steaks and filet mignons have variable cooking times. The biggest element that adds variety is the new options for HS required and HS optional foods. Of course, the fact that this diversity is spread out among so many foods means that things feel less special.
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Sep 21, 2017 16:49
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explosivo posted:Can you explain a bit how co-op works in this? Does each person get items to make that are only theirs? It's basically just single player with two people. The only restriction is player 2 can't touch a dish or chore as player 1 is actively making it and vice versa. You can delegate tasks as you see fit. In the case of my wife and I, she's a full time chef and I prioritize holding stations and help her out when they're in good shape. Loads of fun.
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Sep 21, 2017 16:54
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ZIGfried posted:It's interesting seeing how many people say the game is balls hard. On a controller it's ridiculously easy and kind of boring. Everything in the game follows the progression of "triangle -> square -> circle -> x." Things like chores and dishes like tirimisu or side rice that have steps that have to be completed in order literally always follow that exact button sequence. That's somewhere between hilarious and incredibly dumb. Jeez. quote:But then my wife found out that the slice option goes gray after nine slices That's weird, because on keyboard it lets you Tenderize too many times, is that different with a controller?
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Sep 21, 2017 17:00
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Nope tenderize can go over. It's impossible for sushi.
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Sep 21, 2017 17:35
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It's also kind of weird that you can overtenderize chicken breast but not veal marsala.
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Sep 21, 2017 18:54
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Looks like we'll be getting a "classic" mode with upgrades and stuff.
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Sep 21, 2017 20:51
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Preserving the existing game modes while adding separate game modes seems like a pretty reasonable way to address the various issues. I guess equipment upgrades are going to be the major cash sink in the new Classic campaign mode (emphasis mine) quote:Another feature is the addition of Equipment Upgrades. Like the preview pic above, you can upgrade your Toilet/Dishwasher/Trash/etc. by using the money earned in CSD or Chef for Hire modes to increase the amount of foods you can serve before triggering these chores, all the way up to level 10 on each piece of equipment. Some items allow you to add a base amount of patience, like a super cooling air conditioner, and others actually act as level modifiers, such as a scent booster that increases tips at the cost of patience. These kinds of upgrades can be toggled off and on, and all of the equipment upgrades are available in Classic or Stress Kitchen only.
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Sep 21, 2017 21:01
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I'm enjoying this game quite a bit as a way of practicing typing. More fun than Mavis Beacon, anyways.
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Sep 21, 2017 21:03
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Looks like we'll be getting a "classic" mode with upgrades and stuff.  I'm so glad he listened, and I'm eager to see what this game becomes in the coming weeks and months.
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Sep 21, 2017 21:05
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Mozi posted:I'm enjoying this game quite a bit as a way of practicing typing. More fun than Mavis Beacon, anyways. Words For Evil is way better and more fun for that and last I checked was like 2 dollars. Glad to hear about Classic Mode though, having food upgrades will help the "oh god everything on my menu has 15 ingredients from the start" issue. It can't really be overstated how much more fun the assembling in the first game was though. PSMCRPSMCRPSCR
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Sep 21, 2017 21:07
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Assembling lasagna in this game is almost the same, though? It's just PSMCRPSCRPSC instead of PSMCRPSMCRPSCR.
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Sep 21, 2017 21:13
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precision posted:PSMCRPSMCRPSCR
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Sep 21, 2017 21:15
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FreeKillB posted:Assembling lasagna in this game is almost the same, though? I meant the issue that there are so many foods that feel samey. I didn't get far before I refunded it so it's entirely possible I just didn't yet get to any of the fun foods but the ones I did see just felt kind of bland mostly. Also again I hate the page switching mechanic even with the color coding The Holding Station mechanic is really great though, I will say that
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Sep 21, 2017 21:21
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Looks like we'll be getting a "classic" mode with upgrades and stuff. Okay he planned this all from the start and the game was just released early. Whatever! DaveKap fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Sep 22, 2017 |
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Sep 22, 2017 01:59
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 10:07 |
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Boosters and detractors were disabled (techinically they exist but their effects are invisible to the player) on release due a bug, my understanding is that equipment upgrades and the like were rejected during development for design reasons. The former were always planned to be in, but the latter are being added due to feedback.
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Sep 22, 2017 03:13
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