Heart of the Swarm 3.0 Patch

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - October 07, 2015

Blizzard released three prologue missions that tie together StarCraft2’s expansion Heart of the Swarm to the newest installment (available November 10), Legacy of the Void - for free.  Patch 3.0 gives players access to “Whispers of Oblivion,” “the beginning of the end through the eyes of Zeratul as he searches the galaxy in an effort to prevent impending doom.” To play these, go to battle.net and install the

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Tips for Writing a Great 'About Me' Section

Posted By: Melissa - October 06, 2015

You’ve made the first step on your quest for love and joined GamerDating. You’ve uploaded a picture and added some of your favorite games to your library, now it is time to fill in your profile information. Your ‘About Me’ section is one of the most important, and sometimes intimidating, pieces of an online dating profile.   It is difficult to sum ourselves up in a hundred or so words. We’ve ga

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Grand Ages: Medieval Now Available Bundled With Gold Membership

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - October 06, 2015

We’ve added another Gold Membership Bundle! Gaming Minds Studios released Grand Ages: Medieval about a week ago and anyone who knows our team personally has been surprised that we are still working.  We sort of have a thing for strategy games - and by sort of I mean put one in front of any of us and watch as we put up blinders for hours while conquering. Gamers, we need your help.   We have a big update coming for GamerDa

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Super Mario Maker Hits 1M in Sales

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 30, 2015

Today, Nintendo announced via the Nintendo America Twitter account that Super Mario Maker has sold over one million units.   The game has been on sale for just under three weeks.  Already there are more than 2.2 million created and these combined have been played over 75 million times. Great timing as Super Smash Bros. added a Super Mario Maker stage to their DLC today (3DS: $2.49, Wii U: $2.49: 3DS/W

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WildStar is Now Free to Play

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 29, 2015

WildStar: Reloaded launched today making the MMORPG free to play.  There are also some changes and improvements made to the game; as described by Team WildStar on their site: WildStar: Reloaded includes BIG changes to core game systems; a new character creation and intro experience; improvements to dungeons, itemization, tradeskills, world bosses and group content; a class stat revamp; new quality of life features, bonus events, the Cos

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Total War: Attila Now Available With Gold Subscription

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 28, 2015

Although we haven’t been together for all of it, the GamerDating team has been playing the Total War series for the entire 15 years.  We love the combination of strategy and history, merged with ever evolving gameplay and increasingly great graphics. The Total War series has been one of our favorites. We are excited to be able to offer you the latest title, Total War: Attila, as a Gold Member package.   In 2016 we are gettin

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Announcements from TwitchCon Keynote

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 25, 2015

During today’s TwitchCon keynote, CEO Emmett Shear announced a major change to the platform: soon users will be able to upload pre-edited video to their channels.  We are looking forward to watching the war between them and YouTube. Also announced was a viewing app coming for PlayStation 4 next month and Playstation 3 and Vita soon to follow.  The app, which gives PlayStation users the ability to watch any stream

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Minecraft Coming to Oculus Rift

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 24, 2015

At today’s Oculus Connect 2, Palmer Luckey announced that the Windows 10 version of Minecraft will be compatible with the Oculus Rift headset.  There aren’t many details as yet - the deal was apparently only confirmed early this morning.  What we have been told is that the game will be available some time in spring 2016.  The consumer version of the Rift hits retail shelves at some point in 'Q1' but no official

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Horror Game Iron Fish Gets New Release Date

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 23, 2015

Iron Fish is a horror-action game for those of us who grew up with the vision of an angler fish swimming in their back of their minds whenever they approached an ocean.  The player takes on the roll of Cerys, a deep sea investigator for an elite British Naval group who has access to all sorts of great technology that was made for the exploration of the 5% of the ocean we have seen.  Iron Fish will be released for PC via Steam some

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Mega Man Legends Being Rereleased

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 23, 2015

Today Capcom announced that Mega Man Legends, the classic PS1 game, will be available in the PlayStation store next Tuesday, September 29th.  This rerelease will be playable on PlayStation 3 and Vita.

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Episode 5 Release Date Announced

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 21, 2015

In the spirit of Max’s birthday, Dontnod Entertainment decided to announce the projected release date for Life is Strange: Episode 5, Polarized.  They are “aiming to release” on October 20th.  This is a little longer than players have been waiting in between previous episodes - there is extra care being taken with the finale. Life is Strange follows Max, an 18 year old photography student who has gained the ability

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New Rocket League DLC Announced

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 18, 2015

Only a week after the first big patch for Rocket League, developer Psyonix has announced plans for the second DLC release.  Looking back fondly on their previous “football-game-without-feet,” Supersonic Actrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars, the team put together the Revenge of the Battle-Cars DLC that will be available in October.  No exact date as yet. From their Steam announcement: Revenge of the Battle-Cars has a

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The Witness Finally Gets a Release Date

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 17, 2015

In 2009 after the success of his first game, Braid, Jonathan Blow announced that his next game, The Witness, would be released ‘Christmas 2011’. Blow told Polygon: "I thought it was going to be a much smaller game at the time, so when I announced it.  Of course, the reaction on the internet was, ‘Oh my god, that's so far in the future. Why are they even bothering announcing it two years ahead of time?' Now

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Meet the New League of Legends Champion: Kindred

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 15, 2015

Riot Games, makers of League of Legends, announced their newest champion today - Kindred, the Eternal Hunters.  These marksmen are are fragile but powerful and designed for life in the jungle.   From Riot Games:  Kindred prowls through camps, marking enemy champions for death and permanently growing in strength if they’re able to carry out the promised sentence. But just as Kindred brings death, so can they delay it.

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Legacy of the Void Release Date Announced

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 14, 2015

StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, the standalone expansion pack that is the third and final part of the StarCraft II trilogy got a release date and cinematic trailer yesterday at the WCS Season 3 finals in Krakow.  Legacy of the Void will be available on November 10th. The StarCraft II trilogy revolves around three species: the Terrans, human exiles; the Zerg, a super-species of assimilated life forms; and the Protoss, an advanced spec

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No 9 Day Wait For Items

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 11, 2015

Super Mario Maker released today with a patch available to remove the item-unlock delay. There has been a lot of commentary on the nine day, five minutes a day regimen required to unlock all of the items and it seems that Nintendo listened.  There aren’t any details on exactly what the requirements are to unlock everything.  Players say the unlocked content becomes available if you wait between fifteen minutes and two hours.&nb

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80 Days is Coming to Desktop

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 10, 2015

Inkle Studios announced today that 80 Days, their award winning interactive fiction game previously only available on mobile devices, has been rebuilt “from the ground up” in collaboration with Cambridge-based studio Cape Guy.  The game will be available on September 29th on Steam, GoG and Humble. 80 Days is loosely based on Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days.  The player controls Phileas Fogg&rsquo

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Hearts of Stone Expansion Release Date Announced

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 09, 2015

Hearts of Stone, the first expansion to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be released on October 13th.  This adds over 10 hours of gameplay, introduces new characters, monsters, “unique romance” and a new storyline shaped by your choices.  There is also a brand new system of Runewords that significantly affect different aspects of in-game mechanics.  These allow players to experiment with various tactics and strategies.

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New Expansion for Total War: Attila Announced

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 08, 2015

Sega announced a new expansion for Total War: Attila today titled The Empire of Sand Culture Pack.  This paid expansion adds three playable factions: Aksum, Himyar, and the Tanukhids.  From Matty on the Total War blog: Hailing from the harsh deserts of Africa and the Middle East, these factions are part of the new Desert Kingdoms cultural group, they bring new campaign and horde gameplay mechanics, events, enhanced religion feature

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Pikmin 4 "very close to completion"

Posted By: The GamerDating Team - September 07, 2015

In an interview with Eurogamer, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that Pikmin 4 is in development and more than that, is “very close to completion.”  He didn’t give any details on when we can expect to see the game or what console it would be on. The last game in the series, Pikmin 3, was released for Wii U in 2013.  Previous titles were released for the GameCube in 2001 and 2004.  You play astronaut

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Overcooked! Our sous-chef reviews a top coop.

Posted By: Will Smith-Parsons - August 01, 2022

Game

Overcooked: All the fun of watching your kitchen burn down, none of the messy clean-up.

Overcooked! is a top-down, high-pressure cook-em-up that pits aspiring chefs against the clock and a series of strange circumstances to prepare ingredients and cook dishes to the satisfaction of hungry customers.

After each level, players receive a score and a number of stars based on how many orders were completed, how many were missed, and how many were stolen by penguins for some nefarious purpose.


This review draws from my experience of playing the first Overcooked! game, both single player and co-op, on the Nintendo Switch Lite.

 

An appetizer

Picture the scene. A pair of chefs stand on the bay of a flatbed truck. Another truck, made up of hobs and ovens that join with the current truck to constitute their kitchen for some reason, drifts away to avoid oncoming traffic.

A pot of soup was left on before the oven truck had to swerve to avoid a speeding milk float, and now the whole vehicle looks like the ice cream van Ghost Rider runs on weekends.

As the flames lick higher, one of the chefs—who is a walrus—wipes the tears from his moustache. He would likely not be consoled by the controllers of both chefs, who are unable to stop laughing at this turn of events.

Are there other games like Overcooked

We cooked Pie...rates... ahem.

 

Before we get onto the main course (this will not be the only cooking pun) of this review, there is something I must stress. Overcooked! is a game about there being too much stuff to keep track of. Things will go wrong, things will catch fire. Mice will run away with your cheese while you desperately try to assemble the rest of your pizza.

Perfectionists will find the array of tasks that must be completed under time pressure and in nonsensical circumstances both frustrating and unfair. This is a game that caters towards a messier palette, to the gamers who, in the face of ghosts stealing their lettuce, can laugh as the games takes them on its whacky journey. 

In essence, a lot of the gameplay loop is about things going wrong and desperately clamouring to overcome those things. Still with me? Right. Service!

Souper Smash Bros!

Souper Smash Bros

 

Menu

Aesthetics: 65/100.

The visuals are there to do a job, and they do it well.

Aesthetically, the game has a humble but effective art style. It is bright and colourful, with a wide array of backdrops and circumstances for your culinary chaos. Although it lacks the wow factor of more artistically inclined games, and after a while a lot of the elements start to look the same, the main advantage of this style is that you know what everything is from a glance, which is vital once the pressure starts building.

The visuals are sufficient to indicate which bits of the game are which and do not embellish themselves further. You are very much in a kitchen, not a gallery.

Gameplay: 75/100.

A well-focused gameplay loop taking you through a wide array of levels and circumstances. It may well get stale, but it’ll take a while. Just don’t play it in single player.

The gameplay is the real meat of Overcooked!. A focused and, in my experience, bug-free gameplay loop (prepare ingredients, combine into meals, serve) is framed in different environments providing various challenges and hectic circumstances under which you must prepare soup and avoid ghosts.

Different dishes will be requested—often variations on the same theme—and preparing the right ingredients and assembling them in the time limit is key for success. The game deviates little from this core set of mechanics, with the exception of occasionally adding new dishes and themes, but trusts in the circumstances of each level to provide the challenge. It’s not trying to reinvent the wheel, just send it down a different road every time.

Cooking with your date

Cooking to take your partner out of this world.

 

A massive bonus on the gameplay front that adds to the pacing of the game is that although you need three stars to get the high score on a level, you only need one to advance. This relieves the pressure between missions and gives the game really good pacing: even if things go wrong, you aren’t stuck on the same level becoming increasingly frustrated.

Completionists can rerun levels for high scores, but this is treated as an option rather than a necessity for progression. Ultimately, it is easy to progress but hard to excel in Overcooked!, and the game shines for it.


However, I would highly recommend playing this game with somebody else. Although the game is playable in single-player mode, switching between chefs feels clumsy and it’s much less fun to laugh at yourself when all of the mistakes are yours. The single-player mode seems like an afterthought in an experience very much designed for a second pair of hands.

Top Coop Games just look at it

It’s called ‘street food’ for a reason…

 

Longevity and value: 80/100.

Lots of content, a solid story, and an arcade mode for the tourists, and many stars to try to achieve for full game completion, all on a £30 plate.

In its current form, Overcooked! offers a generous portion size of game for the price. The version that is currently on sale is the ‘All you can eat’ edition, which comprises Overcooked!, Overcooked! 2, and all additional released content. For the first one, my sous-chef and I got in around 4 or 5 hour long play sessions before reaching the end of the first game, and moving onto the arcade mode.

In addition to the main story campaigns, there are arcade and challenge modes for those who want to really stretch the game, although I anticipate things would start to feel a little repetitive once the game started running out of new mechanics.

Top Coop Games just look at it

This is fine, this is fine, this is fine…

 

Relationship value: 90/100.

For the right kind of partnership and in the right (easy to achieve) setup, Overcooked! is a co-op triumph of hectic bonding and pulling together against the worst the culinary world can throw at you.


Overcooked! is designed with co-operative play in mind. However, I recommend that you and your sous-chef are either in the same room or using voice comms while playing in order to co-ordinate your efforts and hear each other’s sounds of panic as you realise you’ve run out of clean plates. 


Overcooked! is a game about facing adversity with a collective grin. It’s a game about pulling together in the face of the nonsensical and unfair and managing to progress into a completely unrelated scenario with the same tools and objective but different routes and obstacles. You may get in each other’s way, you may have to passively aggressively chop tomatoes because the other person forgot, but you pass or fail together irrespective of who made the most soup. Sometimes you miss orders, sometimes the truck drifts off with something on the stove and catches fire, but those levels are still recoverable. Overcooked! teaches us that it’s hard to be perfect, but sometimes being just good enough can hit the spot just as well.

 

Pros:

1- Solid gameplay and excellent pacing through the range of what Overcooked has to offer.

2- No bugs encountered over the story campaign or in the arcade mode.

3- Despite the pressure inherent in the game, it’s very relaxed for short play sessions or imperfect runs.

4- Good value for money.


Cons:

1- Lacklustre single-player experience

2- Players need to be ready to accept the haphazard nature of the game or it can rapidly become frustrating.

3- Visuals are more about utility than artistry.

 

Great game on the switch

A well-paced co-operative experience.

 

Overcooked! is, above all, a well-paced co-operative experience about finding joy in imperfection and pulling together in the face of ludicrous adversity, but you need to meet the game halfway to truly discover its delights.

Average score: 78/100

You can grab Overcooked! in our Silver bundle, and get gaming with this straight away.
 

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