Played Overcooked64 with friends and the experience was both very fun, stressful and genuinely frustrating at times.
I've always wanted more cooperative gamemodes, so this was personally right up my alley. At first I wasn't interested in a gamemode that once again takes heavy inspiration from existing games, but I feel like the level variety lent itself to very creative concepts and challenges. Personally my favorite is the Rainbow Ride level.
But there were very major issues with the gameplay and score balancing. For one, some difficult levels had low score requirements that made them feel really easy in comparison to other levels (some that come to mind are the Final/MGR levels. Tick Tock Clock had the opposite problem, where the 4th star requirement was so immensely high compared to other levels that it took a full 4 hour session (and then some) to complete it with around 8-9 people. I'm pretty confident in saying that the score requirement multiplier should've decreased gradually as more players join (300 -> 400 req for 4 players (+100), 1350 ->1400 for 16 players or smth (+50))
Another annoying gameplay choice relates to picking up ingredients while holding a plate. If you wanted to pick up a patty from a pan or collect soup from a pot, the food will go directly into the plate without you having to put the plate down. But for whatever reason, picking up raw ingredients like chicken, mushroom, cheese, even buns, will force you to put the plate down while grabbing the ingredient. This only happens when food is on the counter, which is generally the safest place to keep food given the variety of hazards and terrain in every level. Imagine having to pick up burger ingredients as they're all sitting on the counter. You have to press B to pick up each ingredient, and then press B again to pick the plate back up. It's a very minor detail but can easily mess you up in tense situations, which in this case is not a good thing.
One big issue with levels also comes down to desync and a unique issue with the final level.
In levels like Merry-Go-Round, ingredients won't stay aligned with their intended placement on teh floor. This causes ingredients to slowly move against teh rotation of the merry-go-round, which has caused a lot of headaches for my friends and I.
------ final level spoilers here if you care ------
In the Bowser level, the entire gimmick around dealing with Bowser trying to mess up players with his attacks is entirely negated with one spectator (or even one active player). Spectators can just grab Bowser's tail for some reason????? I really don't understand how this wasn't considered since anyone with half a brain would try to grab Bowser while spectating, especially in public lobbies.
But even without that bug in place, just being able to grab Bowser's tail and incapacitate him for the rest of the run makes what (at first) felt like a really fun and interesting last level turn into a complete joke. On my first run with friends, we beat teh 4th star score req by triple the amount because of this oversight.
------ ok no more spoilers -----
But the biggest issue I have with gameplay (and frankly within the entire gamemode) comes down to the lack of action priority.
Lets say you wanted to place a head of lettuce down on the cutting board, but there's a raw tomato conveniently placed right in front of said cutting board. Should you place the lettuce down or interact with the tomato?
The answer would be placing the lettuce down, but Overcooked 64 opts to interact with the tomato instead. Interacting with the raw tomato when you have another item in your hand does nothing.
In another scenario, you're frantically making pizzas, trying to keep up with the orders. All the ingredients are prepared but are laid on teh ground along with their uncut variants. Should you prioritize picking up the prepared ingredients so they go directly onto your dough or prioritize interacting with the uncut ingredients?
Once again, the answer should be picking up the prepared ingredients. But Overcooked 64 decides to try and interact with the raw, uncut ingredients (which also does nothing!).
This was what frustrated me the most while playing. It interrupts the flow of gameplay by forcing you to stop and adjust yourself to make sure you're interacting with the right action. In a tense situation (which is almost every run), minor issues like this start to add up very quickly.
Despite my critiques, I did have a lot of fun playing Overcooked 64. Cooperation has gone mostly untouched in favor of competitive mods. so I was always bound to have some fun here. I just think that the gamemode would be a really easy 10/10 if it wasn't tied to a gamemode competition. Something like this deserves more time in the oven (im so funny) to add more polish to the major parts of the mod, and I'm kinda sad that it wasn't given that chance, cuz I would've considered it to be my favorite gamemode of them all.
Overall tho, anyone reading this should still play Overcooked 64. Gather some friends and collectively struggle to make that one pizza that's been up on the order list for too long. It really is lots of fun.
Score: 7.5/10
