Some very glaring issues with this. You get punished for playing with a larger FOV, because there's no way to zoom in on what you're doing when you're performing any cooking actions (i.e. chopping ingredients, seasoning, etc), which makes aiming an absolute pain and made it nigh upon impossible to grab my food from the oven. The actual controls do not translate well to a mouse and keyboard setting because of how accurate the developers are trying to be with rotation and moving tools/containers up and down, so it feels really sluggish and strange doing simple tasks like transferring items from fryer baskets to a plate (which is where I also ran into some bugs of my food items phasing through the basket & plate). And there's this constant struggle of needing something in your hand vs needing to put it down somewhere (and it's not as simple as it seems, because you often need a specific angle to place something down on a surface; it gets quite finicky) because you can't hold more than one tool/item at a time on your person, and tongs/oven mitts don't exist in this game so you always have to use containers to transfer hot food. The main career mode definitely has a demanding time component, so since I could not get used to the awkward controls and preparation, I found career mode quite punishing and unfun. I'm constantly reminded that I'm basically performing a service/chore made significantly more grueling thanks to the non-fluid control scheme, while not actually getting one of the main perceived benefits from the process (that is, taste testing your own food).

I just think this game doesn't understand what it wants to be. There's not enough looseness with the mechanics of the game for this to serve as a creativity simulator; mixing & matching ingredients and experimenting with different techniques is crucial to creating interesting and appealing dishes in the real world, and that's just not possible in a game this streamlined and stiff. The controls feel too slipshod and non-intuitive at times to keep up with customer demand as a management simulator. And there aren't enough things I can light on fire or get a reaction out of microwaving for this to be an effective meme simulator. At least you can still microwave the fire extinguisher.

Run your own kitchen and make food your way.

I’m a fan of cooking and I am always interested in seeing how video games emulate it. Cooking Simulator has players running around a kitchen and cooking food that is ordered by faceless Patrons that will complain about almost anything you do wrong. The goal is to prepare food exactly as the recipes require and in the time required, though you can customize your experience and play in a relaxed mode with minimal time pressure.

Cooking Simulator though has a couple of odd issues. I played and filmed myself on the Steam version and it’s mostly the same experience, however, the steam version has an achievement to get 5 stars on every dish, which is a challenging goal and that’s like 200 dishes. Microsoft doesn’t have that. Microsoft’s store lacks most of the DLC as well.

The one specific thing about Cooking Simulator is it’s a simulator game that’s trying to be whacky, and I’m not fully sure why. I enjoyed this game playing normally and trying to master each dish is challenging and that’s what I found interesting, but it often feels like the game is trying more for overreactions than skilled play. Feedback on what you have done wrong is sometimes hard to understand, and there are a lot of moments where it feels like the physics engine is random, like smashing a plate you’re holding for some unknown reason.

Pick this up if you like the Simulator genre or cooking. I’m working on becoming a better chef over the last year and have made some huge strides towards that. Cooking here is quite fun. However, if you’re new to the simulator genre, definitely start with PowerWash Simulator. That game was phenomenal and quite a bit better than this one, even though I do enjoy this title. I also think the difference in achievements between Steam and Microsoft might be a deal breaker. I’d rather play this on Steam, though the game itself is fun.

If you want to see more from me: Check out my video on this month of Game Pass games: https://youtu.be/tgNS9djM5ak

oddly more fun than what my and the average ratings make it seem. it's a physics-based cooking sim and that's about what you get. you can play seriously or be silly, and it fulfills both quotas.

my only real complaint is the burgers. you do not need to stack the ingredients like a burger to get a 5-star burger. if you just drop the correctly cooked and portioned ingredients onto a plate you will ace it. this was a 5-star burger according to the game.

i have no clue how you could even code some sort of method of detecting if the burger is stacked. but these burgers are ridiculous