Cooking Simulator VR serves up a huge portion of fun
Watch Ian cook up a storm in this week's VR Corner.
I've had a lot of half-baked ideas in my time, but deciding to pick up Cooking Simulator VR was definitely one of my butter ones. While I don't normally find sim games very a-peeling, when I saw Cooking Simulator VR topping this week's best sellers list on Steam's VR store, I knew I had to give it a fry.
You can feast your pies on the first few missions of the game's career mode in the sizzle reel below. Expect maximum kitchen chaos and a large helping of food poisoning as I attempt to make soup, bake trout and even fry up a salmon fillet or two.
OK, OK... although I think I'm a real funghi, I guess may have over-done the cookery puns a little bit so let's chop them out of this post and get down to business.
Cooking Simulator VR might not sound like the most exciting of titles but what it lacks in guns and explosions, it certainly makes up for in immersion.
You're given an absolutely huge kitchen to run around in and there's all kinds of utensils and ingredients to get to grips with as you try to recreate one of the 80 or so recipes available in the game. While the motion controls can be a little bit wobbly occasionally, most of the time they work perfectly and it's incredibly easy to lose yourself in the cooking experience.
For novice chefs there's a pretty detailed but easy to follow series of tutorials leading up to the main career mode, but once that kicks off things really start to heat up (sorry, couldn't resist). During the career mode, you cook everything to a time limit and the pressure quickly builds as you try to juggle timings and ingredients, all whilst being judged by customers and food critics on everything from flavours to presentation.
There's a lot of hidden depth here too because, at the end of each day, you'll level up and unlock new perks, skills and best of all new recipes to cook up in the kitchen. If the fierce heat of the career mode sounds like a kitchen nightmare to you though, there is also a sandbox mode available where you can learn the recipes at your own speed and experiment with your cooking techniques.
With your usual comfort options for movement and the ability to be able to play stood up or sat down, Cooking Simulator VR is a great title for people of all VR skill levels to enjoy. It may not be the type of game I normally play but I was pleasantly surprised by just how much fun it was to cause chaos in a kitchen without having to worry about cleaning up all the mess afterwards (although that is an option in the game too!).
If you're looking for something different to add a little flavour to your VR library, I can definitely recommend this chef's special. Now if you'll excuse me, I really want to go in for a second helping...
If you enjoyed this episode of Ian's VR Corner, you can catch up with my previous adventures over on YouTube in our VR playlist, where I've covered Valheim VR's motion controls mod, Doom 3 VR Edition and everything we know about PSVR 2 so far. You can also read our list of the best VR games.
