Cookie Cutter: Overkill Edition review for Nintendo Switch

Cookie Cutter was one of many Metroidvania’s released in the past few years that I had always wanted to play but could never quite find the time to do so. Originally released back in 2023 for a variety of platforms and reviewed at Gaming-Age on PS5 at the time, it always looked like a gorgeously animated action game that I knew would be up my alley if I could only eke out the time to play it. Thankfully, with the recent release of Cookie Cutter: Overkill Edition on the Nintendo Switch, I now have the perfect excuse to do so.

While there haven’t been any major sweeping changes between this release of Cookie Cutter and the original 2023 game, there have been several improvements made. Overkill Edition introduces fully voiced dialogue, new map tools like a percentage completion rate, new cinematics, additional special moves, and a few more tweaks and fixes to improve upon the original release. Overall, you can see the polish in Cookie Cutter this time around, locked in at a rock solid 60 frames-per-second both docked and undocked. It’s a great looking game in motion, even if the resolution does take a bit of a hit on a big screen.

In the world of Cookie Cutter, you take on the role of Cherry, a Denzel (think robot/android) on a mission of revenge against the corporate overlords that kidnapped her maker/love-of-her-life and beat the holy hell out of Cherry at the onset of the game. Along the way, Cherry will befriend a wild cast of characters as she explores the Megastructure, comprised of a series of different sections with various themes, unique enemies, giant bosses, and some tricky platforming sections with plenty of secrets packed in.

Movement in Cookie Cutter feels fantastic throughout. Cherry gains access to various upgrades that improve mobility and exploration, utilizing familiar toolsets like a double jump, air dash and so on that’ll feel right at home for anyone that enjoys Metroidvania style games. Cookie Cutter also rides a fine line between difficulty and fun, giving you challenging sections that may start to test your patience a bit, but ultimately leading way to gratifying solutions and achievements that’ll help you improve as you advance through the Megastructure, making previous hurdles feel trivial when you inevitably encounter them again while hunting down various extras scattered about the world.

Cookie Cutter also has a heavy emphasis on combat, something that occasionally is overlooked in other Metroidvania’s. Cherry has a whole host of abilities to take down foes, starting with simple, basic attack combos that lead into heavier hitting abilities. You can even launch foes into the air, knock them into environmental hazards, and parry attacks to land devastating instant-kills, resulting in some gory over-the-top animations. I will say that I found parrying difficult to master at first, but as I became accustomed to the different attack patterns of enemies I certainly found myself improving at it. Also, you can generally get away with dodging enemy attacks instead of parrying, but parrying certainly is the most efficient way of taking down most foes.

As far as complaints go, I don’t have too many huge gripes with Cookie Cutter. There are instances where I think Cherry can get a little lost in the action, in particular in the locked-in battle rooms you encounter where you’re forced to take on waves of enemies. Sometimes the on-screen action just gets to be a bit overwhelming, and keeping track of where Cherry is in relation to multiple enemies and projectiles can feel a bit harder than it should. I’d also like to see a few more teleport locations scattered around the various biomes of the Megastructure. When you’re hitting the tail end of the game and want to clean up some of the things you missed, you might find some of the backtracking to be tedious, which I think could have been alleviated with either better placement of your instant teleport locations, or just a few more of them in general. Finally, while most of my time spent with Cookie Cutter felt pretty flawless, I definitely ran into a handful of hard crashes that booted me out of the game on Switch. Generally, the save points are liberal enough throughout that I didn’t lose major progress, but it was still frustrating when it happened, especially if it occurred after a tough fight or platforming section.

Still, my overall impression of Cookie Cutter is that it’s an excellent Metroidvania and certainly one of the best to be released in recent years. The Overkill Edition on Nintendo Switch looks and runs great, and while I have little doubt that more powerful systems make Cookie Cutter even more visually appealing, the Switch is no slouch at maintaining the 60 FPS you want for this style of game, and in handheld mode you’ll be pretty impressed with how great the game looks. I’d highly suggest checking Cookie Cutter: Overkill Edition out whenever you have the chance, you won’t be disappointed.

Note: Rogue Games provided us with a Cookie Cutter: Overkill Edition Switch code for review purposes.