Overcooked! 2: Campfire Cook Off Review (Astute)
Campfire Cook Off is the second paid DLC for Overcooked 2. It's definitely a unique idea for an Overcooked locale, but it bungles a lot of that potential with spotty auxiliary mechanics that probably felt like a good idea on paper, but occasionally make the DLC a bit of a chore to play. It's not so terrible it's bad, but it's not good enough to call it anything more than passable. If not the weakest DLC, it's definitely tied at the bottom.
Campfire Cook Off is set in a woodland campground facade, featuring foods and cookery related to campfires and skillets. It's a novel backdrop for cooking, but it's subjective whether or not you'll enjoy this style. I didn't care much for it, but to each his own.
New mechanics in this DLC include the backpack, the skillet, and wood fuel for campfires.
The backpack is a mobile food dispenser that is carried by a single player around the playfield. It's an intriguing idea, but I don't believe there was enough thought put into designing levels around it. This mechanic was probably intended to be used as way to move the food source around as the team assembles the meal, but it more or less makes the player effectively stationary. It could have been neat to have levels where the food source moves and everyone else sticks to their area, but it ends up being just another nuisance to work around.
The skillet, a pan with four separate slots, is used to cook the breakfast meal on certain levels. It's another concept that doesn't jive very well with the base game. Unlike other recipes that require a certain base(pizzas need dough/tomato/cheese, cakes need eggs/honey/flour) that you then customize to fit the order, breakfast meals are mostly random mixtures of similar looking items. One meal might require sausage and beans, while another will require sausage, egg, and bacon.
Due to the lack of similarity in the meals, or the absence of a shared foundation for each meal, breakfast levels tend to be a lot more mentally taxing than traditional ones. It's difficult to discern the difference between a sausage/egg/bacon and a sausage/egg/beans in the order list, and then parsing your current skillets to make sure you're cooking the right combinations. Players who are not completely focused on meal assembly may ruin an order by accidentally adding to the wrong skillet. Mix in the usual frantic nature of Overcooked, and you're left with something that's more exhausting than entertaining.
The fire keeping mechanic from Surf 'n' Turf returns in the form of wood burning. Campfires must be supplied chopped firewood for fuel, and need be kept at peak heat in order to cook quickly. Wood must also be chopped before it can be burned.
It's an aggravating mechanic that takes something that was already annoying and adds an extra step to the process. Keeping fires hot is not as intuitive as preparing meals or cleaning dishes. You're likely to fall behind or lose orders simply because the fire died down at the wrong moment. Keeping up with them becomes a full time job on certain levels, with the dominant strategy being allocating one or more players to fire duty. This job isn't particularly fun or strategic, and ends up feeling like busy work that doesn't need to be there. This becomes even more poignant when you play levels that do not use campfires, as the lack of management feels like a weight off of your shoulders. Ultimately, 1-3 players get to play Overcooked while one player sits out and manages the fires.
If that weren't enough, the levels tend to be a bit more difficult than the base game. I'm not sure if this is due to poor difficulty balance, or if simply because the new mechanics are a chore to play with. I'm on the fence as to whether or not this is the worst of the DLCs they've put out, but it's definitely neck and neck with Surf 'n' Turf in terms of annoyance factor.
And yet, none of the things I've mentioned are especially egregious to the point I'd call it bad. When it's being traditional Overcooked 2, it's enjoyable. When it tries to step outside the formula and mess with half-baked gameplay ideas, it's aggravating. It rides the line down the middle, sitting firmly in the "mixed" limbo between 45% and 55%. Get it on sale, and be prepared for some added hassle.
Steam Curator