Overcooked! 2: Surf 'n' Turf Review (Astute)
THIS DLC IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE SEASON PASS.
Surf 'n' Turf is the first DLC for Overcooked 2, and it's passable in terms of content and difficulty. It's an entertaining backdrop for cooking, with a few new cooking mechanics thrown into the mix. It leans a bit too heavily on RNG and time-gating mechanics, which results in a slightly higher difficulty curve than the base game.
Surf 'n' Turf takes Overcooked to a summer beach locale, featuring new dishes and cooking mechanics related to blenders and fire pit roasts. For the most part, it's a pretty well done aesthetic, nailing that warm colorful theme while still preserving most of the gameplay readability necessary to play the game.
The most notable new mechanics are the bellows and water gun. Both are equippable items, similar to the fire extinguisher or the flamethrower from Overcooked 1. The bellows is used to raise the temperature of fire pits in order to expedite cooking. The water gun is used for cleaning dishes at range.
The bellows mechanic is a bit hit or miss, amounting more to babysitting than a worthwhile mechanic. On top of managing various recipes, you frequently have to top off the fire pits with a few puffs from the bellows to ensure peak cooking efficiency. It was interesting at first, but ultimately became more of a tedious gotcha.
On the flipside, the water gun was surprisingly fun and useful. Instead of having a fixed sink for washing, you can now clean from any location. It introduces an extra layer of strategy, forcing your team to consider the most optimal place for dirty dishes to be kept, on top of the usual priorities for handling dish cleaning.
The only other point worth mentioning would be the difficulty. Many of the levels seem to be designed around waiting for things to move, or working around an instant loss of progress mechanic.
Certain levels feature obstacles that block your ability to cook or serve, requiring wait times before being able to continue. Conga lines in particular are used as a gating mechanic, which forces you to sit and wait before being able to proceed. I wouldn't call this completely out of the ordinary for Overcooked, but it happened often enough that it became noticeable.
The other, more glaring issue, is the loss of progress mechanic. Multiple levels feature cooking stations that clear or lock themselves, or an auxilary mechanic that wipes out all of your current progress. These progress mechanics are usually signaled by a screen shake, but it's very quick at times, and can potentially catch you off guard. The result is usually the clearing of your cutting boards, your cooking stations, or the entire map. Ultimately, it came down to brute force memorization to complete these levels.
These gripes aren't so bad that they ruin the DLC, but they are just annoying enough that they impacted my overall enjoyment. Many of these mechanics weren't fun or interesting, they just added unnecessary and sometimes griefy difficulty into the mix.
As before, it's a passable DLC. It's not great, but it's not bad either. I'd pick it up on sale.
Steam Curator