Cooking games are hugely popular on both PC and consoles and that make for great co-op or multiplayer fun – but which one is the best?
We have chosen two of the most highly rated cooking games to see which one is ‘cooking on gas!’ Overcooked vs PlateUp!
Overcooked is a chaotic, fast-paced, arcade-style, puzzle cooking game with fixed levels and environmental hazards while PlateUp! is a strategic, restaurant management game focused on customization, automation, and planning.
They are available via Steam for PC and also on all main consoles, so it is easy to get hold of either one and your gaming platform is not a limitation.
Overcooked was originally released on 2nd August, 2016, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows. The popular co-op cooking game, developed by Ghost Town Games and published by Team17. It was followed up by Overcooked 2 and a host of new DLC content. Finally, this was all bundled together and sold as ‘Overcooked – All You Can Eat!’
The Overcooked series focuses on the kitchen environment. There is a huge number of levels where the kitchen is designed in more outrageous layouts. It is your job as the chef to slice the ingredients, cook them, before putting onto a plate and getting them to the serving hatch.
Your main challenge is the countdown timer, which expires after a set time and you are rewarded with points and stars based on the number of meals you have served. That’s it – it’s simple and a lot of fun as things become more rushed and chaotic.
We love Overcooked and have spent many hours trying to earn stars to unlock the next level. The recipes are varied enough to keep it interesting and you can hinder your friends as much as help them, which is cause for all sorts of amusement if someone is taking the game just that little too seriously.
We love Overcooked and have spent many hours trying to earn stars to unlock the next level
There are some downsides to the Overcooked game. The first is that the levels are static, so the kitchen will always be set up the same way, with the same recipe assigned to that level. You cannot adjust the layout of the kitchen or try a level with a different set of ingredients. The game would really excel if there was a level designer so you could create your own levels and challenges, giving infinite amounts of fun. There is still plenty of content but it leaves you wanting just that little bit more.
PlateUp! was originally released for PC via Steam on 4th August, 2022. The console edition for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S was subsequently released on 15th February, 2024.
This game takes the cooking theme to a whole new level as it introduces not only the kitchen, but front of house too. This time you are not only cooking the food, but also serving it to the diners and clearing the tables. It brings in a new challenge that is fun but can also be frustrating.
Although you cannot design all aspects of your restaurant, the game does provide freedom to move items around, such as kitchen appliances, tables, sinks and ingredients. This helps you improve the flow around your work spaces, saving time when service is busy. Plateup offers ways to make your restaurant more efficient and faster or to scale and relieve some stress in certain areas so you can focus others or to automate and focus on aspects other than cooking or cleaning dishes.
The levels in PlateUp! are split into days and you have to complete each day to move onto the next. This is where PlateUp! can feel disappointing. You can spend time refining your restaurant, only to have your restaurant closed when you don’t seat a diner in time. It only takes one failure for the session to end and you are back to the start, with all your hard work lost. You can only restart up to day 3, so once you get past that point then you have to be perfect, otherwise it’s game over and you return to the beginning.
PlateUp! has the potential to be the better game, with more depth and more options, but we just cannot look past the severe penalty when you cannot keep up – you cannot even earn more lives to give you another chance.
It is interesting to note that you can add mods to the PC version, but not to the console one. This adds more ingredients, kitchen gadgets, and other gizmos to the core game. This definitely adds more value, although the PC is more likely to be used for online multiplayer than local co-op play.
Plateup! offers ways to make your restaurant more efficient and faster Or focus on aspects Other than cooking or cleaning dishes
If you are a solo player, then you will struggle with either game as they do appear to be geared towards multiplayer. Yes, you can play them on your own, but you are going to find it difficult to compete and you will not be able to make the high scores that you do in co-op mode.
In truth, it seems that they have not adjusted the skill levels based on the number of players joined, so you will just be served the same level no matter if there is one player or four players participating. This does mean that once you have achieved high scores with four players, you can never get close when playing with less. So in reality, both games require you to have a bunch of friends to get the most enjoyment from them.
The graphics in both games are cute and cartoonish and suit the games perfectly. At a push, we would say that Overcooked also wins this contest, as the graphics have a slight edge and the characters are selectable and outstanding. The characters in PlateUp! are coloured ‘stick people’, which work fine but are more functional rather than individual.
In terms of control, which is essential for these types of fast-paced action, once again Overcooked comes out on top. If you make a mistake or miss a deadline, it is usually a fault of your own rather than the game. PlateUp! controls are good, but we found the controls were a bit more complex and more mistakes happened. When moving items around the work spaces, the controls were tricky rather than intuitive and you had to stand in the exact spot to get them to work properly.
Overall, we love both games and can happily recommend that you will have a lot of enjoyment playing both. They lead the cooking game genre, when there are many other competitors looking to take their crown. But if pushed to select a winner, we would have to go with the Overcooked series. It’s a more polished game and has more levels, which will result in you playing it for longer. We have not experienced any issues with the game, or any major frustrations where we have felt the game has not performed.
But despite the huge enjoyment we have had from Overcooked, we are still left a little bit unfulfilled. It seems that this is the end of the series, when players are still hungry for more. There are no signs of an Overcooked 3 and it feels like an opportunity missed to give the fans more of what they want.
We would also love to see the game expanded to allow for player designed levels – or to add the front of house to make it a ‘dream’ cooking game. Perhaps even add a financial model to make it a ‘restaurant tycoon’ type of game, where the player has to actually manage the running of a restaurant, choose the recipes to go on the menu and keep the customers coming through the door. There is potential for a new game designer to enter the fray and develop the game of our cooking dreams!
