Spooks 最近的评测

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! is the second entry in a series about playing a hectic rhythm game, with the immediate guilt of looking at anime trash replaced with the good feeling you get when looking at pictures of tasty food. (Don't worry, you can still theme your restaurant with anime paintings in-game if you want, you filthy weeb) The aesthetic of running your own restaurant may seem cutesy but if you've ever watched a cooking show in your life (or worked at a place, for that matter) you'd know that what happens behind the kitchen doors is nothing if not brutal. This game follows suit.

Throughout the review I will reference CSD1 and its features - as a consequence you may not get everything I'm talking about if you're not a returning player. I want to ensure you, upfront, that you do not need to have played the first one to pick number 2 up; it is simply hard for me to articulate what is good about this game without referring to its predecessor.

Mechanics:

CSD2's mechanics improve on the first game's in most every way. There is a greater focus on multitasking rather than recipe memorization - a balance that was heavily skewed in CSD1. This manifests in several ways, from the holding stations, to how recipes are performed.

The holding station mechanic can be most easily explained thus: instead of grilling every single meat patty for a burger per customer order, you can grill a bunch in advance and let them sit until an order comes up, saving you the nuisance of a customer order stewing in the prep station sidebar. There is, of course, more that the game does with holding staions that that and it culminates in overall smoother play throughout your in-game day, as you have more things to do besides simply waiting for customers to show up.

There is a greater emphasis on consistency with regard to how your actions are performed as well. Some examples include having to now press Enter to complete both recipes and chores. There are also only 3 recipe pages and you have to actually turn over to one if you want to add the ingredient that's in it. To compensate, more recipes have specific, sequential steps to complete. You will not be able to add ingredients of e.g. the second page before you've added the ingredients in the first one. Overall, your actions in the game are much more structured and establish a better rhythm - something that's arguably rather important for a rhythm game.

I could talk more about the mechanics, but let's move to the content on which your skill at those mechanics is tested.

Content:

The game, at the time of review, gives you a free-mode that is similar to the orignal's Career mode, and a bunch of custom scenarios/challenges, gated behind experience level progression and medal earning (similar, in turn, to the challenges added to CSD1 with the Battle Kitchen update). Personally, I felt the CSD1 challenges to be somewhat half-baked, which is why I feel more excited with how this Cook For Hire mode has been implemented to better mesh with the freeform CSD2 experience. In these scenarios, you are given themed menus and started off at a low playing speed so you can get a first idea of how the recipes work. The following levels of the scenario continue on to increase the pressure and switch up foods in the menu a bit. Overall, there is plenty to do in these themed levels to tide you over until more improvements are made to the free mode.

As it stands, free mode - or your custom restaurant - is lackluster. There is certainly fun to be had with making your own themed menus and role-playing a bit, especially now with the greatly expanded food selection, but the mode is more or less just a self-constructed scenario level. There is no context, no flavor text e-mails nor any structured progression with regard to how you unlock your foods. Money's purpose is sort of nebulous here, which is why I feel bets aren't in either. For the first two, I am aware that all the e-mail and story text is largely written and done, therefore their re-introduction is simply a matter of time. Food description text is all in, however.

As to the latter, I cannot stress enough how glad I am that chore/food upgrade progression has been stripped. This was a gating mechanic that, by locking game content from players, actively discouraged them to experiment with recipes and foods for fear of piling more complexity on themselves. It served little besides being a simplistic moneysink.

Technical:

The game is not locked to 30 FPS. Cook, Serve, Delicious 1 was locked to 30 FPS. I could try and convince you of the difference this makes in a game that requires extreme precision and timing at critical times, but you're reading this review on Steam, you're a PC gamer. You should know this.

Visually speaking, the game is a major step up in graphical fidelity. The menus are minimalistic and clean, while the food art is much better. Your customers' faces are still weirdly drawn, but I you'd be hard pressed to notice when Rush Hour rolls around. The font rendering is ever so slightly aliased and I hope this can be amended soon.

Sonically speaking, eeeeeh? The sound in CSD was quite important, as the correct FX of slopping meat or sizzling chips added so much to the overal gamefeel. I'm glad to say all the cook prep foley is more or less on the level here, with additional UI sounds when orders are ready to be served, getting burned, etc., added in. These do help in relaying gameplay information to you and I praise their inclusion. As far as the music itself, I would say it's about as good as in 1, but not much better. It may be that I am more accustomed to the tracks in CSD, I don't know. Big ups for Rush Hour music having a proper lead-in and lead-out, however.


Conclusion:

I believe the distinguishing factor for a good game is a solid execution in what it's trying to achieve. For a rhythm game like Cook, Serve, Delicious, gameplay is the most important ingredient. CSD2's gameplay is stellar and, as a sequel to a pretty flawless game, it manages to innovate in a new direction while keeping the essense of "Cook, Serve, Delicious" intact - the crowning achievement of any sequel.

The admission fee for this title is good for what you get and what you will get further down the line. We're talking about a developer that added a huge update to the original game - the Battle Kitchen update - a whole year after the game was released, for absolutely free. If you've been burned by bad developer practices before, you won't find them here.

For my money, I couldn't care if the gameplay was framed in levels or freeplay whatsoever. If I wanted vapid progression I'd just play Clicker Heroes for a thousand hours until I got bored and sick of useless progression mechanics in any game ever - kind of like infecting yourself with smallpox on purpose to gain immunity. In fact, if you look at my profile, you'll see I've done just that! Anyway, my point here is: what makes this game good is in there, right now and if you're even a casual rhythm game fan you owe it to yourself to expeience Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! Hell, CSD may be the only rhythm game I've played, so not even genre can stop it from being a reletless, sweat-inducing and immensely satisfying test of skill.

Now, just get out of here and get cooking!!!

Stick with the PROD.

Prod with the PROD.

Just in case though, we're police.

I CAN'T WAIT TO BE A USELESS PIECE OF ♥♥♥♥ AND FALL DOWN ALL THESE STAIRS

Hey kids! Play this game! Queue on the Russia servers! Go middle lane with Crystal Maiden! Buy a Crystalis! Get Dagon 5! Win! Hours of fun!

It's a well-above-average hat collection simulator that combines fancy hat rendering presentation, believable colour and wiggle behaviour and additional hat related accessories with some oftentimes interesting FPS minigame sessions. If you are interested in head garnments even in the least, you can't go wrong with Team Fortress 2.