May is here … which means it’s time to switch out the PlayStation Plus free games from April for this month’s new releases! Taking the place of The Surge and Conan Exiles will be Overcooked! and What Remains of Edith Finch. Let’s take a look at each of these games.
Overcooked! is a cooking simulation game developed by Ghost Town Games and published by Team17. In-game, players take on the role of chefs in a kitchen — preparing meals via preparation of ingredients, cooking, serving, and cleaning up all while racing a time limit to complete as many dishes as possible. During a round, the players are presented with an order that must be completed within a short timeframe. The chefs work together to complete that meal before the clock runs out. Most often, multiple orders of different types or varieties of meals will be presented in a queue, thus requiring the chefs to work together effectively to complete these orders. Preparing each meal correctly earns coins (with bonuses earned for speed) while orders that are improperly served do not earn any points whatsoever and only waste time. The goal is to collect as many coins as possible within the time limit. Players are ranked on a three-star system based on how many coins they received. The stages will go far to change and throw a wrinkle into your playing, even becoming two separate rafts on a river at one point.
Overcooked! has received generally positive reviews since it released on August 2nd, 2016 (gaining a 78 on Metacritic). After seeing a few friends play this, it’s a game you don’t want to pass on because this is a fun yet challenging game that you and your friends can enjoy together.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a single-player adventure game developed by Giant Sparrow and published by Annapurna Interactive in 2017. The game centers on the character of Edith Finch, the last of the Finch family line, who has a perceived curse that causes all but one member of each generation to die in unusual ways. Edith has returned to her family’s home off the coast of Washington state (following her mother’s death) to explore the house they hastily abandoned years before. She learns about her relatives and their deaths by visiting their bedrooms, which are sealed off and treated as shrines in their memory. Each death is played out in a short gameplay sequence for the player. The game is presented as an anthology of these mini-experiences, and wrapped in the dramatic retelling of the family’s history and fate through Edith’s narration.
What Remains of Edith Finch received “generally positive” reviews — according to video game review aggregator Metacritic — with a score of 88 on PS4.
If you haven’t had the chance to play either of these games, be sure to pick them up when the rollover happens on May 7th. I’m probably going to download both … looking to play Overcooked! with a few friends while I prepare myself for What Remains of Edith Finch because (from what I heard from other players) it can get a little depressing at certain points.
