LogFAQs > #932317932

#93





Years of release: 2016 (PC/PS4/XB1), 2017 (Switch)
Beaten?: Nah

Have I mentioned that I really, really love couch co-op games? That's not a rhetorical question. I can't actually remember if I mentioned that I love couch co-op. Uh, I do though.

Co-op and team games have a really cool design space I think - when you're playing a game by yourself, you can always sharpen all of the little tasks that go into getting better at the game and perfect your skill, but when you add a second person into the mix and suddenly cooperation and communication become key elements of play, a lot of inefficiencies get introduced to the system, and two people maximizing their skill together is exponentially more difficult than a single person maximizing theirs. This is especially true when it's a game where one person CAN'T do everything alone - some games like Contra just sort of slam a second player character in there in a game intended for one player, but some games really demand that both players do their job in order to advance. Communication in a game is a skill that has a lot of complexity to it, and there's a lot of potential different ways to solve the problem, and truly mastering it requires a ton of work, which really opens up the number of different ways any given co-op game can play out; co-op play always tends to be very emergent in the number of unexpected ways that something can go wrong. So they're great! Plus, playing anything with a friend is just sort of automatically fun.

None of this is to say that Overcooked is a truly transcendent game, I just felt like waxing on about co-op games for a bit because I don't have anything else to say. It's a good game with a cool concept - you get food orders that require you to do a bunch of different tasks, and you and up to three friends have to figure out how to most effectively divvy up those tasks to get them done as quickly as possible. There's a lot going on, and just the ability alone to pick up objects and put them down really opens up the number of potential ways you can solve any given problem. Lots of different ways to maximize your workflow. There's something really fun about figuring out with the other person you're playing with and getting into a rhythm. It's simple to play and satisfying to sort-of-master. Sometimes I like simple shit like that.