Well... this is awkward.
So I've shouted out Pizza Tower a few times by now, and it's always been in somewhat of a negative light. The developer had previously voiced his intention to not release the game on Switch, and as someone who doesn't own a PC, I'll admit it did make me a tad bitter (the Cocoon incident definitely didn't help either). But as it turns out, they must've changed their mind because as of a recent direct, Pizza Tower is now on Switch! So, like with Spark 3, I finally get the chance to play a game I never thought I would play. Did it live up to the hype?
Of course it did, it's fricking Pizza Tower.
Pizza Tower And Its Inspiration
As a fan of the Wario Land series, I don't think I ever really anticipated the sheer rise in popularity the fourth entry would have these last few years. When I was growing up, everyone seemed to like 3 the best. Wario Land 4 was a really singular platformer for a long time. No prior Wario Land game was quite like it, particularly in terms of the added focus on speed and movement mechanics. While the fantastic Shake It did take a lot of inspiration from its gameplay loop, it had the cost of not being as distinctly weird, surreal, and unhinged in terms of its visuals. The only thing that really held WL4 back was that there just wasn't enough of it, so it probably shouldn't have come as much of a surprise that we'd start getting a bunch of indie games that attempted to build off of the groundwork it laid.
Of course, Pizza Tower and Antonblast are the two most notable ones, and it makes me really excited that I'm able to experience both this year. For as much as those two games get compared, I actually find it interesting to see just how different their approaches really are. Antonblast, from my experience with the demo, leaned more into the exploration side of Wario Land 4. There are an absolute metric ton of collectibles, and it leans heavily on the simple joy of breaking stuff to rack up a high score. Pizza Tower, on the other hand, focuses more on the speed side of Wario Land 4, taking those iconic escape sequences that defined the original and stretching that philosophy across the entire game. It's a great demonstration of how different people can have different takeaways from the same piece of media.
The Obvious Artstyle Praise
So let's get the obvious out of the way, once again, Pizza Tower's visuals are something to behold. The game goes for an absolutely unhinged sketchy style that looks equal parts amateurish and incredibly impressive, with fluid animations that have zero concept of "on model", frequent easter eggs and gags being tossed at you every minute, and nonstop moving NPCs, enemies, and level assets giving a feel of constant motion and action. There are so many little animations and details, from enemies screaming just as you're about to hit them, to Peppino's many anxiety-induced split-second expressions. Pizza Tower had me hooked solely just to see what visual gags would await me in the next level.
The music is also pretty great. I love how many of the instruments sound compressed, almost like they're coming out of a GBA. T...
The Unassuming Tutorial And Its Potential
Pizza Tower starts things off fairly slowly with a tutorial and a fairly easy first level in John Gutter. I'll be honest and say that neither of the stages really hooked me just yet. The tutorial does have a very funny remix of Spider Man 2's memetic pizza song, Funiculi Funicula, and John Gutter does offer a safe place to mess around with the controls, but neither stage really blew me away. The tutorial stage had zero collectibles or ranks to go for, unlike Wario Land 4's tutorial stage, the Hall Of Hieroglyphics. And John Gutter is just kind of boring, with a fairly dull city look that gets drastically overshadowed by a later stage and barely any exclusive gimmicks to speak of. These levels aren't bad, they're perfectly solid introductions to the game, but they definitely don't show off Pizza Tower at its best.
That being said, one thing that these two stages definitely show off is how good the movement is. Peppino's base movement isn't too dissimilar from Wario in 4. You can do a dash/bash move, grab and toss stuff, roll down slopes, but all these moves are expanded upon as well. You can use the dash to enter a Metroid-esque super jump, attack in the air to dive to the ground or gain extra height, and most of your moves never stop your momentum, they all transition between each other incredibly fluidly. This means that you can really enter a sort of flow state where you just start dashing through a stage at high speeds without running into anything, and while that's not something I'm especially good at myself, it feels fantastic to pull off in those rare moments.
Pizzascape, Ancient Cheese, & The Collectibles
The next two levels amp up the complexity quite nicely. Ancient Cheese is one of the less remarkable stages in terms of theming, but it amps up the platforming by having you traverse a bunch of dissipating cheese platforms. Pizzascape is where it's really at though, it might even be the Pizza Tower stage. It's got a unique medieval theme, some banger music, and introduces the game's first transformation. Yep, just like in Wario Land, Peppino gets a whole bunch of situational transformations from interacting with certain enemies, and they usually feel great.
The Knight in Pizzascape is a highlight though, as it allows you to slide down a slope and dash forward, breaking certain barriers in your path. The platforming puzzles this mechanic creates where you need to find the slope facing in the right direct feel incredibly Wario Land, showing an innate understanding of the level design philosophy behind those levels. And using the Knight to find some of the stage's collectibles felt like serious ah-ha moments. While Pizza Tower is more focused on speed, there is no shortage of stuff to find like the Toppins, a hidden treasure ala Virtual Boy Wario Land, and a bunch of secret rooms hidden in obscure areas, and Pizzascape has some of the better collectible placement in the game so far.
Bloodsauce Dungeon & Speedrun Level Design
Bloodsauce Dungeon seems to be a fairly overlooked stage among the fandom, but I found it to be the point where Pizza Tower really had me sold. This stage lacks many exclusive gimmicks, but it makes up for that with its unique vertical design. You spend the stage running downwards before breaking the Pillar John and dashing all the way back up, and it was this point where the controls finally clicked for me. Just a little bit into that escape sequence, something clicked in me and I was able to dash up an entire room without bumping into anything. This was the first time I entered that aforementioned flow state in Pizza Tower, and it felt really nice.
However, this stage also shows off just how speedrun-focused Pizza Tower is. Despite the collectibles, Pizza Tower's levels still feel very much designed with speedrunning in mind. They're quite a bit more linear than Wario Land 4's stages, often containing a lot of tight straightaways purely designed for you to run through. Of course, Pizza Tower even has combo and ranking systems that reward you for killing enemies in quick succession. Sadly, I couldn't really get into speedrunning Pizza Tower like I did with some other games. Levels in this game can be quite long and while the movement does feel really good in general, I found myself often misinputting at high speeds with how many options you have. I did not bother going for any higher ranks and honestly, that didn't really impact my opinion on Pizza Tower that much, I still really liked it. However, it did also hit me at points that I felt like I was missing something, I was worried that these levels were made to be run through and I just wasn't engaging with it on that level.
The First Two Bosses: Pepperman & The Vigilante
Pizza Tower's bosses are a bit interesting. I am a bit mixed on them, not because I specifically had bad experiences with them, but because I can see that happening for others. While most of Pizza Tower gives you invincibility like in Wario Land 2-3, the bosses give you an actual health bar. On top of that, they have multiple phases, can be quite lengthy, and you'll have to restart the entire thing if you die. I've played more than my share of games with these kinds of boss fights, though Tropical Freeze stands out the most in this area. It can make the bosses feel like massive impenetrable walls that block off the rest of the game for you, and after dying right at the end of the second phase of my first attempt at the Pepperman fight, I was worried this would happen to me.
Thankfully, that didn't, and I'm glad too because Pizza Tower's fights are really fun. The fight with Pepperman is easily the weakest of the bunch, with the titular character having a fairly basic attack pattern and most of the difficulty coming from the final stretch just flooding you with projectiles that pin you into a corner. But out of anxiety, I tried to play the next fight as early as I could just to make sure I wouldn't get blocked only to find that The Vigilante is one of the most fun boss fights I've played in quite a bit. A Meta Knight-inspired western-tinged duel where you get a gun and are let loose to spam attacks at this fast-moving boss, all the attack patterns being entirely readable and satisfying to dodge, and the fight ending with a quick draw section just as icing on the cake?! All my doubts towards Pizza Tower's boss design were completely erased thanks to The Vigilante, this is a fantastic fight and I immediately became excited to check out the rest.
World 2, Keeping Things Consistent
The first two stages of World 2 don't do much to really push the envelope, but they're still quite fun. Oregano Desert is the longest stage so far and packs in a solid variety of biomes and mechanics, from a desert setting, to small pizza gas stations you hop into to rescue Toppins, to mines with explosive TNT, to a brief section in a UFO. The highlight of this stage though is the fact that it's the first stage to have an its escape sequence in an almost entirely original section of the level, marking a solid difficulty spike. Wasteyard is one of the less memorable levels for me due to its more muted color palette and tone, but it also has a few moments of brilliance like a fun if a tad unwieldly ghost transformation and the escape sequence having you deal with a ghost relentlessly chasing you down as well. It's not until the third stage when I felt Pizza Tower really started to kick it up a notch in terms of level design.
Fun Farm was the stage I was most excited for and it did not disappoint. I knew ahead of time that Pizza Tower would have a cameo from Mort The Chicken, the protagonist of a failed PS1 3D platformer by Ed Annunziata, the guy behind all sorts of quirky projects like Ecco The Dolphin, Mr Bones, and Tiny Tank. The sheer randomness of this cameo is funny on its own, but I guess Pizza Tower had the last laugh because Mort is also an incredibly fun mechanic. He latches himself on your head and you can use him to doublejump, peck at obstacles, and fling yourself off of hooks like a sort of grapple mechanic. He feels incredibly good to use, and as per the usual, grapple mechanics are always a ton of fun in games. The last stage of World 2 is Fast Food Saloon, and while not as showy as Funny Farm, it's pretty fun and frenetic, with a solid amount of mechanics forcing you to go fast like having to beat a rocking horse to some of the Toppins.
Crust Cove And My Own Personal P-Rank
The first level of Floor 3, Crust Cove, may end up being the level I remember the most when all's said and done. It's an incredible stage, all the different elements that make Pizza Tower what it is coalesce into a wonderful whole. It's a lush and vibrant beach stage with a wide variety of environments, fairly open areas ripe for exploration, fun speed-focused mechanics like running on water and the barrel transformation, some of the best music in the game, and exciting chase sequences that have you shot at by a cannon in the foreground. It's easily one of the best stages in the game, maybe even a Top 3 contender. It also drove me up the freaking wall.
One of the Secret Eyes in this stage is right before a point of no return, tasking you with pulling off a clean run or else you've be launched up and miss it, forcing you to restart the level. I had to restart this stage several times attempting to get this Secret Eye, and it's not early on, it's around the midpoint of the level. And when I was repeatedly playing Crust Cove, I ended up pretty much mastering that first half so I could get to the Secret Eye faster. I even managed to pull off a nearly unbroken combo just after a few tries, and it felt really satisfying. So even though I wasn't aiming to go for a rank, I get it. It feels really good to master a stage in Pizza Tower, and while I don't really have the time to invest in going for S or even P ranks, I can see why others find it so addicting. At this point in the game, some of these collectibles really start to be tied to speed and mastery of the level design, and not just exploration. So I think I may have been wrong earlier, even if you don't go for the ranks and solely focus on collectible hunting, I think Pizza Tower might actually be just as fulfilling.
The Noise Is Cool
Once again, I decided to play the boss early just to make sure I wouldn't be walled off by a difficulty spike, and thankfully, I still wasn't. However, The Noise was a solid bump in difficulty yet again, both due to his random attack patterns and just how busy the screen could be. I had to really focus as to not lose track of everything, and got pretty overwhelmed by the end. I was so scared there'd be a third phase when The Noise pulled out a gun, but thank goodness his girlfriend showed up. While I don't think The Noise's boss fight is quite as original and exciting as The Vigilante's, it more than makes up for that with just how oozing with personality it is. The Noise is such a goofy little dude of a character, from his distinctly cheeky grin, to his erratic attacks, to the giant Noise balloon covering up the background in the second phase. No wonder people wanted to play as him, he's so silly.
Another Moveset?!
Gnome Forest tosses another wild curveball at you by having you briefly play as Peppino's friend Gustavo and his pet rat Brick. It's not just a gimmick though, Gustavo has a fully fleshed out moveset that's almost on par with Peppino's in terms of fluidity and versatility. You could build an entire unique game around Gustavo & Brick, and yet you only play as them like twice in the entire campaign. The novelty of playing as a new character really carries Gnome Forest because the level itself is nothing too special. There's some annoying enemies that are even more irritating to deal with as the somewhat more vulnerable Gustavo, and the sheer length of the stage must definitely make going for a high rank a pain, but otherwise, I thought it was a lot of fun being able to mess around with an entirely new moveset.
The other Gustavo & Brick level, The Pig City, shows up pretty early on in Floor 4, and honestly I think it's a better showcase of what they're capable of despite having less of them. The Pig City is already a fairly fun city level that amps up the griminess that John Gutter only hinted at, while also packing in some pretty hilarious comedic moments and fun gimmicks like grind rails. Halfway through the stage, Peppino gets arrested and you need to play as Gustavo & Brick to save him. The brilliant thing about this part is the fact that Gustavo & Brick utilize the stage's mechanics entirely differently from how Peppino does. Peppino grinds on rails, but Gustavo hangs on them. Peppino uses the balloons to float up, while Brick swallows the balloons to use as an air boost. The police rats try to grab onto Peppino, but they ignore Gustavo in favor of capturing Brick. It's such an unnecessary extra detail and I love it.
Floor 3 Is The Gift That Keeps On Giving
I think Floor 3 might actually be my favorite floor in Pizza Tower, the level quality really took a massive bump. Crust Cove and Gnome Forest were already a ton of fun, but Deep Dish 9 and GOLF are also serious standouts. Deep Dish 9 is a fairly traditional stage with a cool space theming that has you hopping across planets, but its two mechanics in the rockets and bubbles are not only incredibly fun and satisfying to use, but they play off each other really well and has you hopping between both modes by the end. The entire stage just has an incredible flow to it, more than most other Pizza Tower stages even. GOLF, on the other hand, feels like Pizza Tower's Pinball Zone. It's fairly gimmicky and asks you to take things a bit slower and play golf. I was worried this stage would be too gimmicky, but honestly, it's surprisingly fun. The golf mechanics are simple enough to be able to execute at high speeds, pars are pretty generous and getting under par is only needed for a high score, and having to play on unfamiliar courses under pressure during Pizza Time was really tense and exhilirating. Definitely another highlight for me.
Fake Peppino: The Walliest Boss
As usual, I fought the next and penultimate boss the first chance I got. I already knew about Fake Peppino going in, but as always, he's a fairly decent fight with some fun well-telegraphed attacks that slowly amp up in complexity as it goes on. The chase at the end, while easy, was also a pretty nice scare. However, this was also the boss that gave me the most trouble so far, even being the first one to take me more than a single attempt. The second phase has a lot of overlapping attacks that can get quite overwhelming, and while it was satisfying to take down, I think this of all the fights is the one most likely to wall people and that's mostly because of how long the first phase. In between each hit, Fake Peppino sends a bunch of clones to attack you, and you kinda just have to wait for him to show up again. All three of the previous bosses rarely make you wait that long to get in a hit, so it leaves Fake Peppino's fight feeling like a bit of a drop in quality (though I'll admit, it's still more fun than the Pepperman fight overall).
World 4, It's A Mixed Bag
World 4 is a bit of a step down from the last two in general, though it's not all bad. Peppibot Factory was a fairly forgettable stage for the most part, but it is the second one to have a big vertical emphasis, the pizza box transformation is incredibly fun to use, and the goal running away during Pizza Time was a great surprise, definitely one of my favorite tropes in games. Refridgerator-Refridgerator-Freezerator is an ice level so I already knew I was gonna like it a lot, but I especially love the metroidvania-ish structure it took on where you spend the first half of the stage blocked by ice blocks you can't break before getting a powerup halfway through that you can use to access all those areas you couldn't the first time through.
However, Oh Shit is probably my least favorite standard level so far, packing in all of Pizza Tower's worst traits. You have the worst transformation in the sluggish Cheese Monster, tons of mechanics that either irritatingly push you back, the iffy claw grab, a pretty gross toilet humor theming, and of course, multiple points of no returns that forced me to replay the stage a bunch of times. No wonder this was the first stage where I woke up Pizzaface. The few positives I can think of are that the pipes and trash can lids are decently fun to mess around with and the music is really good, but that's really it.
Pizzascare
Floor 5 only has three main levels, and they're easily some of the most interesting of the bunch so I need to talk about them each individually. Pizzascare is definitely the least remarkable of the three, but it's still noteworthy for being the only level to use concepts from a prior one, in this case being Pizzascape. Despite that though, Pizzascare still feels like a completely different beast and I feel it does a much better job at a utilizing a spooky theming than the Wasteyard did. The two main gimmicks are ghosts that you can only defeat after touching an Exorcist, and the King Ghost who follows you and activates objects on your path that can either help or harm you. I like the King Ghost a lot actually, it's a neat premise and introduced a lot of fun and satisfying platforming puzzles, though some of those anchors are pretty cruelly placed. The music is still great, and the whole stage has a lot of energy to it, this is definitely a solid one.
Don't Make A Sound
Don't Make A Sound is a more stealth/horror focused stage set in an abandoned pizzaria where you get chased around by animatronics, so it's obviously inspired by FNAF, a series I have absolutely zero care for or interest in. I was also a bit concerned at first that this stage would be a lot slower-paced, so I went into Don't Make A Sound somewhat doubtful that I'd enjoy it much. I shouldn't have doubted Pizza Tower though, Don't Make A Sound feels less like it's about slowly sneaking around and more about quickly dispatching of enemy cameras before they trigger it along. There's a really fun and satisfying flow to frenetically trying to take out all the cameras in the room, and there are even cases where you need to purposefully wake up the animatronics to progress making sure that even the most skilled player will have to experience a few chase sequences. I like that the Secret Eyes are often hidden behind animatronics forcing you to puzzle out how to get to them, and the finale which has you chased by every animatronic at once before getting a shotgun and turning the tables on them is easily one of my favorite moments in the game. Just a masterful and creative stage all around.
WAR
Well, okay, this might get me crucified. I don't care for WAR.
It's a shame too because I love the set-up. The hilariously blunt title card really sets your expectations, and in theory, blasting your way through a warzone with the aforementioned shotgun all while Hotline Miami-ass music plays in the background sounds like a blast. However, I found this to be the most thoroughly unenjoyable level for a bunch of reasons. So first and foremost, WAR is a level set entirely in Pizza Time. Grabbing the shotgun triggers a time bomb and you have to race to the end while breaking terminals to keep your time up. This isn't a bad idea, Wario Land 4 even did that for its final level, but you are given barely any leniency here, especially if you go for the collectibles since time continues to tick down when you're in the Secret Eyes (this is the only level that does this too). And since you need to collect every Secret Eye in one run, you really have to commit too. Pizza Tower can be a pretty tough game so I'm not exactly complaining that WAR is hard, but it felt really trial-and-error compared to the other escape sequences. I didn't feel like it was really possible to do this is one go, since there are so many easy mistakes to make that could cost you the stage.
And while the guns are incredibly fun spectacles in the Vigilante fight and Don't Make A Sound, WAR really shows how limiting they can be since there's a number of moves like the grab and uppercut you can do while holding the shotgun. This makes Peppino's movement feel, in turn, less fluid and it makes WAR feel less like a final level testing you on everything you've learned, and more like it's forcing you to adapt to this gimped moveset. I don't mean to keep ragging on this stage that pretty much everyone seems to love, but I found it to be easily the weakest one in the game. Even separated from its main hook, I found WAR's level gimmicks like the landmines, homing missiles, and Peppino clones to be pretty unremarkable on their own, and with zero incentive to explore, I also found the stage fairly lacking in substance. It also doesn't help that I feel a certain other level does what WAR did even better, but more on that in a sec.
The Finale
Thankfully, while WAR could've risked me ending the game on a sour note, Pizza Tower's finale is fantastic and sticks the landing hard. The fight against Pizzaface suffers from the same central issue that all the other bosses had, it's absurdly long clocking in at a whopping seven phases. However, its difficulty was also incredibly fair which helped the fight remain satisfying and climactic to take down. The Pizzaface fight tests you on pretty much all of your combat capabilites, with the fairly simple first phase having you toss enemies at him, the second phase using the gun, a boss rush with truncated versions of all the previous fights, and a cathartic final phase that tests your patience. It's got a real sense of spectacle too, from Peppino snapping and muda-muda-ing all the previous bosses, to the final blow having him suplex Pizzaface into the tower itself. I think The Vigilante might still be my favorite fight overall, but this is a fantastic final boss.
And it's not over yet, because after Pizzaface comes the true final level, the Crumbling Tower Of Pizza, which is actually my favorite level in the game. If you know me, you know that I love it when final stages feel like a victory lap that test everything you've learned and Pizza Tower absolutely nails this trope. This is another stage that you spend entirely in Pizza Time (though unlike WAR, there's a flat time limit with a decent amount of leniency), and it has you dash down the tower through pretty much every prior level. You get to pass through all the hubs, picking up the NPCs you've met along the way, and you get setpieces with pretty much every single prior mechanic. While I didn't find this stage all that difficult, especially compared to WAR, it felt incredibly satisfying and ended Pizza Tower on the best note possible.
And if you're wondering, I got a Not Bad rating which I'm pretty satisfied about.
Conclusion
Overall, Pizza Tower really is a fantastic game, and a wonderful love letter to the Wario Land series that shows a genuine understanding of their design philosophies. Even if the focus on speedrunning wasn't really my thing, the incredibly fluid movement, varied level design, satisfying collectible hunting, surprisingly fun bosses, and stellar aesthetics still make for one of the best platformers I've played on Switch. With all the hype, it's always a toss-up if a game will actually live up, but Pizza Tower thankfully manages to live up to its gargantuan cult status.
4.5/5 Stars
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