Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! Review

Have you ever wanted to run your own food truck? Well, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! Gives you the opportunity to do this and beyond, creating your own food empire! Set in 2042, the post-apocalyptic age of war-torn America, you begin your journey in a small travelling food-truck, gaining money and experience as you grow. Allowing for new recipes, new upgrades, and new designs to make your truck the very best it can be.

As you play you have the option to do this on your own, via solo mode or with a friend using the local co-op mode. For the switch particularly this is a great option to have should wish to play through the campaign with someone else. Within each location there are several available stages. Each is unique in its own way, varying in difficulty, the number of customers you get and even how impatient they might become if you take too long preparing a certain menu item. You can change the difficulty, but this only varies between two either advanced or casual modes to gain either a bronze, silver, or gold medal for your efforts; of which there are over 300 to be earned throughout the game. If you do wish to advance and gain a gold medal, however, then you are going to have to turn on the advanced mode and experience the difficulty of a fast-paced food truck scenario.

Genuinely, it is fast paced. Numerous times have I found myself getting stressed because I have accidentally pressed the wrong button, annoying a customer, and costing myself the chance at a gold medal as a result. Learning the controls and button orders for each menu item is crucial. Thankfully though, the game does offer practice modes for each menu item. Allowing you to perfect your chosen menu and gain as many gold medals as you can.

The controls for the game, whilst often being confusing within a stressful level, do fit perfectly within the switch format. Again, with practice things do become easier for little tasks such as knowing whether you need to use ZR and X to prepare an ingredient instead of just X on its own. Certain shortcuts can also be learned through your experience with the controls, making it relatively easy to earn combos and therefore gold medals.

The sound choice for the game works well too. The calmer, more mellow music for the menu takes away from the pressure that you will experience once you begin a stage. Something which, again, the music fits perfectly to as the beat increases and the usually relaxing upbeat theme becomes stressful and irritating. Honestly though, I could not think of a better music choice for this game.

One of my favourite things, however, is not the music, but instead its attention to detail. The graphics look amazing for what the game is, everything from the backdrops to the customers and even food looks visually very impressive, more so than your average food oriented game; with much more of a realistic theme. Each menu item further comes complete with a detailed description (covering the ingredients and the history of the food), a visually mouth-watering picture, and equally stunning ingredients as you work to construct whatever dish it is that you have chosen. The variety of food ensures that you have the freedom to make your food truck whatever you want it to be, be it a menu constructed of fresh healthy greens or deep-fried onion rings. Personally, I think a breakfast food truck full of pancakes and fried foods is always a very good choice.

Honestly, I really enjoyed this game. Whilst it can feel repetitive, it does become very addictive and the goal to ensure that I get every medal possible is enough to keep me playing for weeks to come. It is very easily repayable too for the same reasons, and a game that you can easily return to without needing any recap.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Nintendo Switch code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.