Reviews Featuring ‘Cook, Serve, Delicious!’ & ‘Suika Game’, Plus the Latest Releases and Sales – TouchArcade
Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for October 11th, 2023. We’re back around to another Wednesday, and as usual it’s not exactly the busiest day of the week. There are a couple of reviews today. Our pal Mikhail has his review of tomorrow’s Switch release of Cook, Serve, Delicious!, and I’m reviewing a little game you can only buy from the Japanese eShop called Suika Game. After that, we have a few new releases to check out, and then the lists of new and outgoing sales. Let’s go to it!
Reviews & Mini-Views
Cook, Serve, Delicious! ($12.99)
Well, it finally happened. The original Cook, Serve, Delicious is now on Switch, and apparently coming to more consoles in the future. Cook, Serve, Delicious is a legendary game, and one I’ve adored for years as I said in my interview with David from Vertigo Gaming across multiple platforms. When Vertigo Gaming started porting games to consoles, we had the excellent Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 and 3 hit consoles (but not mobile), while the original seemed to be left on iOS in its old build while also being on PC.
When a remaster was announced, I thought this is how the team would bring the classic to modern consoles, but I was wrong. Cook, Serve, Delicious saw a surprise announcement, and it is out now on Switch. I’ve loved this game from the start, but I was curious how it had aged today, and also how it compared to its PC and mobile versions. I’m going to cover all of that in this review.
If you’ve never heard of this game series, the first Cook, Serve, Delicious has you managing your restaurant across its menu and running it while you try and make sure dishes are cooked correctly, served on time, deal with robbers, clean the bathrooms, and more. This is all done by a combination of shoulder buttons, face buttons, directional inputs, and analog stick movements. Having experienced this game mostly only on touch, I was glad to see touch controls available here in some form, but I’ll get to the controls in a bit.
The original Cook, Serve, Delicious is a simpler game, but a better one overall. It remains my favorite of the main trilogy, and it has aged really well. The backgrounds, catchy music, timeless sound effects and voiced sounds, and more come together to really take me back to when I first played it on mobile and PC.
When it comes to controls, the controller support is good, but the touch controls need work. Right now, it seems like the touch targets are smaller than they should be, and you can only use touch controls to tap the button prompts instead of the buttons if that makes sense. I hope this can be patched to work like the mobile version. Barring that, there are no control issues.
On the visuals and performance side, Cook, Serve, Delicious looks amazing on Switch, but it feels like some character movement is a bit jittery compared to other platforms. The colors look excellent on the OLED screen, and it has been great playing it on my monitor as well.
Cook, Serve, Delicious on Switch is an easy recommendation whether you’re new to the series, or curious about its origins as a newcomer. Once the touch controls can be improved, this will be my favorite version of this classic. I’m glad it finally got ported, and hope we get a physical trilogy release now. -Mikhail Madnani
SwitchArcade Score: 4/5
Suika Game/Watermelon Game (Japanese eShop Only, 240 Yen)
Suika Game! It’s the latest craze sweeping the nation (of Japan)! It came out months ago but for some reason has gone incredibly viral of late, and let it never be said that Shaun isn’t at the forefront of digging his hands into viruses. Or something. After seeing my favorite Vtuber Inugami Korone play the game, I decided to pop into the Japanese eShop and use some of the coins I had saved up to buy Suika Game. It was only 240 yen, which is less than two American bucks. So what’s it all about? How is it?
‘Suika‘ is the Japanese word for ‘Watermelon‘, and your goal in the game is to try to make as many watermelons as you can. You do this by dropping fruit into a container. When two of the same fruits touch, they’ll merge into the next bigger fruit in the chain. At the end of it all awaits the extremely large watermelon. If your fruit spills too far out of the top of the container, the game is over. Yes, it’s a merging game. I imagine most of the people reading this site have played at least one game of that sort before.
There are a few things that make Suika Game work as well as it does. First of all, it’s absolutely adorable. The fruits have faces, and they all look super charming. The music is catchy without being annoying. The physics of the fruit and the way they move and settle can allow for some unexpected outcomes, which adds to the excitement and danger of each round. The game keeps track of your best scores for the day, week, and all-time. There are also online leaderboards for those three categories, allowing you to see how you stack up against others.
That’s really all there is to it. Still, there’s something hard to resist about Suika Game. My wife actually asked to borrow my Switch to play it, and she has literally never had an interest in using my Switch before. It’s cheap, it’s fun, it’s not available outside of Japan, and it’s amusing enough to be worth learning how to get around that particular issue so that you can pick it up. Recently, when I’ve only got a little time to kill, this is my go-to. I hope they release it globally so more people can easily enjoy it.
SwitchArcade Score: 4/5
New Releases
RedRaptor ($4.99)
Here’s another vertical shooter, one that introduces itself as a throwback to “genre classics of the 90s”. My hunch is that it means Raptor: Call of the Shadows, but who can say? It offers up five stages to play through, and has a persistent upgrade system. You also get online leaderboards. Not bad for a fiver, if this is the flavor of shooter you like.
Terra Alia: The Language Discovery RPG ($14.99)
Well, if you can’t make an amazing RPG, at least bring an interesting gimmick with you. And that’s essentially what we have here from BoomBox. The story sees you solving a mystery at a magic academy where the language is different from your own. Which language? You get to choose the target language from a selection of ten. Just by playing the game, you’ll be able to learn some vocabulary from that language. Probably not enough to have you delivering speeches in Portuguese or anything, but it might be a fun supplement to other language learning activities you’re doing.
The Bin Bunch
Supreme Car Parking Simulator 2024 ($4.99)
Sales
(North American eShop, US Prices)
A very tiny list for today’s inbox, it seems. I don’t have a lot to say about anything on there, though if you like Sonic-ish platformers that Retro Rollers Bundle is nifty for a fiver. The outbox is more interesting. I cannot stress enough that most Arcade Archives titles only get one sale in their entire lifetime, so if you want any of the games in there you will probably never have another chance to get them this cheap. There isn’t anything else in there that I’m going to shout about, but do have a look at both lists carefully.
Select New Games on Sale
The Companion ($1.99 from $19.99 until 10/18)
Dordogne ($13.99 from $19.99 until 10/20)
Call of Cthulhu ($7.99 from $19.99 until 10/20)
A Plague Tale: Innocence – Cloud Vers. ($15.99 from $39.99 until 10/20)
A Plague Tale: Requiem – Cloud Vers. ($32.99 from $59.99 until 10/20)
Vampyr ($9.99 from $39.99 until 10/20)
Othercide ($11.99 from $29.99 until 10/20)
Dark Quest 3 ($5.69 from $18.99 until 10/30)
Retro Rollers Bundle ($4.99 from $9.99 until 10/30)
Sales Ending Tomorrow, Thursday, October 12th
ACA NEOGEO Magician Lord ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
ACA NEOGEO Metal Slug 5 ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
ACA NEOGEO Over Top ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
ACA NEOGEO Power Spikes II ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
ACA NEOGEO Pulstar ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
ACA NEOGEO Puzzle Bobble 2 ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
ACA NEOGEO Sengoku 2 ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
ACA NEOGEO Stakes Winner 2 ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
ACA NEOGEO The King of Fighters 2003 ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
ACA NEOGEO World Heroes ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Arcade Archives Chack’n Pop ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Arcade Archives Champion Wrestler ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Arcade Archives Darius ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Arcade Archives Elevator Action ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Arcade Archives Fighting Hawk ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Arcade Archives Flipull ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Arcade Archives Halley’s Comet ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Arcade Archives Kurikinton ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Arcade Archives QIX ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Arcade Archives Raimais ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Army of Ruin ($7.19 from $7.99 until 10/12)
Baseball Club ($3.99 from $9.99 until 10/12)
Blackberry Honey ($3.89 from $12.99 until 10/12)
Blasphemous 2 ($23.99 from $29.99 until 10/12)
Bramble: The Mountain King ($20.09 from $29.99 until 10/12)
Caffeine: Victoria’s Legacy ($8.99 from $17.99 until 10/12)
Castle on the Coast ($2.99 from $14.99 until 10/12)
Catmaze ($4.99 from $9.99 until 10/12)
Dariusburst CS Core + Taito/SEGA Pack ($17.99 from $29.99 until 10/12)
Ducky’s Delivery Service ($7.99 from $9.99 until 10/12)
Effie ($3.99 from $19.99 until 10/12)
Farm Slider ($3.49 from $4.99 until 10/12)
Formula Bit Racing DX ($1.99 from $4.99 until 10/12)
Garden In! ($5.99 from $9.99 until 10/12)
Intrepid Izzy ($6.59 from $10.99 until 10/12)
Islanders ($2.24 from $4.99 until 10/12)
LogiKing ($10.49 from $14.99 until 10/12)
No One Lives Under the Lighthouse ($9.59 from $11.99 until 10/12)
Parasite Pack ($3.99 from $7.99 until 10/12)
PHOGS! ($11.24 from $24.99 until 10/12)
Rubberduck Wave Racer ($15.99 from $19.99 until 10/12)
Ruku’s Heart Balloon ($7.69 from $10.99 until 10/12)
Serious Sam Collection ($10.49 from $29.99 until 10/12)
Stay Out of the House ($14.39 from $17.99 until 10/12)
Stray Cat Doors2 ($3.99 from $7.20 until 10/12)
Tales of Aravorn: Seasons of the Wolf ($7.99 from $19.99 until 10/12)
The Diabolical Trilogy ($4.99 from $19.99 until 10/12)
The Game of Life 2 ($8.99 from $29.99 until 10/12)
The Last Hero of Nostalgia ($18.74 from $24.99 until 10/12)
The Last Hero of Nostalgia DE ($22.49 from $29.99 until 10/12)
Ziggurat ($2.99 from $14.99 until 10/12)
Ziggurat 2 ($17.49 from $24.99 until 10/12)
That’s all for today, friends. We’ll be back tomorrow with the big Thursday list of new releases. It’s looking like a decent-sized batch of about twenty games, and we’ll have summaries of all the games that deserve them. There will also be the usual lists of sales, and if any big news rolls in we’ll hit on that as well. I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday, and as always, thanks for reading!
