My first impressions of Pizza Tower were that it embodies the concept of a fangame, not just due to its obvious homages to an existing franchise, but due to how its definition of coolness is so video game-y.
EVERY LEVEL A NEW IDEA
KEEP UP THE MOMENTUM
PARRY EVERY BULLET
GET THOSE HIGH RANKINGS LIKE ITS LIFE OR DEATH
GRAPPLE TIL’ THAT COMBO COUNT’S IN THE HUNDREDS
GET EVERY ONE OF THOSE ENDINGS EVEN IF IT TAKES A THOUSAND HOURS
THEN SPEEDRUN FOR A MILLION YEARS
And through an incredibly tight set of influences, and some honest to god brute forcing, it all works out! What impresses me the most is how the “get to know it, then blow through it” design ethos of Wario Land 4 so perfectly overlays onto the mesh of a Sonic Rush-ish speedrun game to create something so immediately rewarding.
Peppino really steals the show here; controlling this bumbling chef feels like manning a well-oiled machine. Where I was most impressed with the game’s tactile nature is how you control his speed; to go fast, you gotta throw out a lot. While dashing, your jumps become stone cold arcs reminiscent of classic Castlevania, and your only actions out of it either push back against your momentum, or have their own foresight-necessitating fixed arcs as well. Gotta love stuff like how turning while dashing has a massive lag to it, and you’ll just freeze up and fall to your death if you drift off an edge. That’s that good Super Metroid type clunky!!
But when you shine a light over a game; interrogating it as a precision platformer–a practice the game itself encourages through its ranking system and playthrough judgements–things get a bit messier. Having done a few P rankeds and watched some speedrun gameplay, I can’t help but think the game evolves into a less interesting version of itself at high level play. The game’s stick shift-y movement can be easily teched around through the instant boosts of speed through canceling a grab into a crouch, getting you full speed dashes almost instantaneously. The dash’s true invincibility then ripples out into downplaying other core mechanics, such as the necessity of your grab and parry, and makes slowing down much less of an awareness-requiring commitment. So once the game has been broken down into a simpler run-and-jump formula, it becomes noticeable how little there is to learning its flow; you'll never see something like a Sonic game’s multi-path routing, for example. While it’s too early to tell what this game will look like at maximum capacity, I already feel a bit disappointed with the cool factor of my perfect runs; on paper, this is one of the most frenetic speedy action games I’ve ever played, but in reality, it’s a bit coarse. This is especially frustrating due to the game’s lack of playgrounds to challenge yourself - you're really just picking between its entirely precision-based P ranks, or its death-less, punishment-less go-for-literally-any-other-ranks. Pizza Tower is an incredible first run game - defined by its constant bombast of new ideas to the face, and the sheer kinesthetic joy of suplexing wads of cheese into the ground, but as of right now, but I can't say I fuck with the game's replay value despite its breezy runtime. Wow, this really is a Nintendo inspired game!
And while it’d be pretty shallow of me to compare this game too intensely to Wario Land 4–they are literally not that similar in motion–I was a bit disappointed in the places where this game was less transgressive than its forefathers. Just look at how loosely those boss fights are integrated into the game's rules compared to Wario Land 4’s time limit fights! In general, I thought the bosses were a bit overbearing; testing me on the same things repetitively, in a way that always fell behind my skill growth and memorization. Generally, I’d lose some attempts, unable to keep up with the stamina required for their length, then I’d beat them completely one-sidedly later on - which I would usually see as a sign its mechanics were taught well, but it felt a bit extreme here.
Despite all those negative ramblings I have for the game, though, its energy is absolutely contagious in a way that makes it near-impossible to hate. Easily one of the greatest games ever made to not play and watch a friend play instead–and I mean that as un-back-handedly as possible–I deliriously spectated one of my close friends playing this before I got my hands on it myself, and every time I turned to my screen, I saw Peppino getting up to something I had never seen before. Genuine every-frame-a-painting shit. And their enthusiasm for it was just as contagious too, I think I literally liked this game more before I had played it. This friend came out of the closet a few days ago, so I am being very nice to them by telling them I love this game instead of “yeah its great but the postgame experience just made me want to play sonic 3 instead”. What I’m saying is, I love my friends, and I don’t love Pizza Tower, but Peppino won me over, so he gets to be one of my friends too. Therefore, I appreciate Pizza Tower in the same way I appreciate a first meeting locale, or a hang-out spot, or
a fuckin pizza
Pizzas come split down the middle so they can be perfectly leisurely shared amongst a group
Pizza really is the food of friendship…😳
[3/25] silent edit notation: nvm games antisemitic i don't even like it a bit anymore i'm gonna be real. just like a complete mood souring. i don't even edit my reviews usually, i like preserving the exact authentic amount of grammatical errors and dumb shit i've written over the years for reasons that are too vague for me to explain, but i kept wincing thinking about how i wrote "near-impossible to hate" and found out that there's an enemy named "tribe cheese" that does tomahawk throws, war cries, and rain dances like 2 days later. buddy, that's at least 2 too many details to even be worth being remotely charitable!
EVERY LEVEL A NEW IDEA
KEEP UP THE MOMENTUM
PARRY EVERY BULLET
GET THOSE HIGH RANKINGS LIKE ITS LIFE OR DEATH
GRAPPLE TIL’ THAT COMBO COUNT’S IN THE HUNDREDS
GET EVERY ONE OF THOSE ENDINGS EVEN IF IT TAKES A THOUSAND HOURS
THEN SPEEDRUN FOR A MILLION YEARS
And through an incredibly tight set of influences, and some honest to god brute forcing, it all works out! What impresses me the most is how the “get to know it, then blow through it” design ethos of Wario Land 4 so perfectly overlays onto the mesh of a Sonic Rush-ish speedrun game to create something so immediately rewarding.
Peppino really steals the show here; controlling this bumbling chef feels like manning a well-oiled machine. Where I was most impressed with the game’s tactile nature is how you control his speed; to go fast, you gotta throw out a lot. While dashing, your jumps become stone cold arcs reminiscent of classic Castlevania, and your only actions out of it either push back against your momentum, or have their own foresight-necessitating fixed arcs as well. Gotta love stuff like how turning while dashing has a massive lag to it, and you’ll just freeze up and fall to your death if you drift off an edge. That’s that good Super Metroid type clunky!!
But when you shine a light over a game; interrogating it as a precision platformer–a practice the game itself encourages through its ranking system and playthrough judgements–things get a bit messier. Having done a few P rankeds and watched some speedrun gameplay, I can’t help but think the game evolves into a less interesting version of itself at high level play. The game’s stick shift-y movement can be easily teched around through the instant boosts of speed through canceling a grab into a crouch, getting you full speed dashes almost instantaneously. The dash’s true invincibility then ripples out into downplaying other core mechanics, such as the necessity of your grab and parry, and makes slowing down much less of an awareness-requiring commitment. So once the game has been broken down into a simpler run-and-jump formula, it becomes noticeable how little there is to learning its flow; you'll never see something like a Sonic game’s multi-path routing, for example. While it’s too early to tell what this game will look like at maximum capacity, I already feel a bit disappointed with the cool factor of my perfect runs; on paper, this is one of the most frenetic speedy action games I’ve ever played, but in reality, it’s a bit coarse. This is especially frustrating due to the game’s lack of playgrounds to challenge yourself - you're really just picking between its entirely precision-based P ranks, or its death-less, punishment-less go-for-literally-any-other-ranks. Pizza Tower is an incredible first run game - defined by its constant bombast of new ideas to the face, and the sheer kinesthetic joy of suplexing wads of cheese into the ground, but as of right now, but I can't say I fuck with the game's replay value despite its breezy runtime. Wow, this really is a Nintendo inspired game!
And while it’d be pretty shallow of me to compare this game too intensely to Wario Land 4–they are literally not that similar in motion–I was a bit disappointed in the places where this game was less transgressive than its forefathers. Just look at how loosely those boss fights are integrated into the game's rules compared to Wario Land 4’s time limit fights! In general, I thought the bosses were a bit overbearing; testing me on the same things repetitively, in a way that always fell behind my skill growth and memorization. Generally, I’d lose some attempts, unable to keep up with the stamina required for their length, then I’d beat them completely one-sidedly later on - which I would usually see as a sign its mechanics were taught well, but it felt a bit extreme here.
Despite all those negative ramblings I have for the game, though, its energy is absolutely contagious in a way that makes it near-impossible to hate. Easily one of the greatest games ever made to not play and watch a friend play instead–and I mean that as un-back-handedly as possible–I deliriously spectated one of my close friends playing this before I got my hands on it myself, and every time I turned to my screen, I saw Peppino getting up to something I had never seen before. Genuine every-frame-a-painting shit. And their enthusiasm for it was just as contagious too, I think I literally liked this game more before I had played it. This friend came out of the closet a few days ago, so I am being very nice to them by telling them I love this game instead of “yeah its great but the postgame experience just made me want to play sonic 3 instead”. What I’m saying is, I love my friends, and I don’t love Pizza Tower, but Peppino won me over, so he gets to be one of my friends too. Therefore, I appreciate Pizza Tower in the same way I appreciate a first meeting locale, or a hang-out spot, or
a fuckin pizza
Pizzas come split down the middle so they can be perfectly leisurely shared amongst a group
Pizza really is the food of friendship…😳
[3/25] silent edit notation: nvm games antisemitic i don't even like it a bit anymore i'm gonna be real. just like a complete mood souring. i don't even edit my reviews usually, i like preserving the exact authentic amount of grammatical errors and dumb shit i've written over the years for reasons that are too vague for me to explain, but i kept wincing thinking about how i wrote "near-impossible to hate" and found out that there's an enemy named "tribe cheese" that does tomahawk throws, war cries, and rain dances like 2 days later. buddy, that's at least 2 too many details to even be worth being remotely charitable!