Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! Soundtrack, Jonathan Geer, 2020
What do you do if you have delivered two successful instalments of your cooking simulation franchise and are wondering where to take things next? If you are developer Vertigo Gaming, the answer is: don’t change your winning formula, but have some fun with the premise. In other words: the core loop of clicking on the right ingredients at the right time while juggling multiple food orders didn’t change much. Reviewers did point out issues with the game’s UI and occasionally punishing difficulty level, but by large and enjoyed Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! (and its appetising art style). Where things took a left turn was with the game’s narrative. Set in a post-apocalyptic USA, your restaurant empire has been blown to pieces and now you’ve hit the road with a couple of helpful robots who’ve let you turn their van into a food truck.
Less surprising was the game’s choice of composer: Jonathan Geer returned after delivering solid work on the previous two CSD games. However, this was easily his most ambitious franchise entry so far, sporting significantly longer compositions than previous CSD titles – with the soundtrack clocking in at a whopping 102 minutes. And it’s not just the scope of the Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! soundtrack that impresses. Geer’s most creative work yet in his already eclectic discography is impossible to swiftly sum up and label with a genre tag. If one had to find easy descriptors, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! might well be dubbed game music’s most ingenious easy-listening score.
