izigame.me

Pizza Tower is the only 2D platformer I have ever played and truly, holistically, personally liked. I can respect Mario and Sonic's catalogs, and smaller games like Fancy Pants's games and Super Meat Boy, but I genuinely like Pizza Tower for myself, by myself, because it's awesome in basically every major department I can think of. I don't just like this game, I *love* it. Like-- seriously, I don't know where to start.
As I've gotten older, my standards in/for the games I've played have gotten higher and higher, while still being picky about things like difficulty, control, and presentation. Every time I go back to 2D Sonic these days (with the exception of maybe Mania), I'm absolutely barraged by mental notes while playing; about how I'd do this mechanic differently, about how this part of level design was poorly implemented, about how this boss feels like it was designed in an hour, and on and on and on. It adds up fast, and while it doesn't *ruin* these games by any means, it does dent my enjoyment of them significantly. With Pizza Tower, I think my one and only major complaint is that there's not *more*. Some kind of museum to play the game's many demos and learn more about them, more playable characters, more levels - that sort of thing.
Pizza Tower is incredible. It makes Sonic nearly obsolete and feels like the angel sent to earth just for me, after years of languishing alone, as someone who was never really able to get into Mario ever despite trying. An extremely fast, tightly-controlling platformer that's nearly nonstop, balls-to-the-wall adrenaline combined with the smarts and reaction speed to channel that adrenaline productively; set to a visual, tonal and sonical energy that's every part as it's unique as it is VERY appealing. This game isn't somehow *incredibly badass* feeling to play in spite of it being goofy ahh, but precisely BECAUSE it is, owning the MS Paint-meets-Boomerang wholeheartedly without overdoing it to the point of making the humor feel forced.
This game uses the same tricks to encourage the player to get better while rarely forcing them that fucking *Ultrakill* does. Most of this game's collectables do nothing but make a completion value go up, but you still want to earn them, because figuring out how to find and get them often goes hand-in-hand with learning how to do the levels faster and get those elusive S- or even P-ranks. Taking a Wario Land style 2D platformer about learning a level forwards, then having to speedrun it backwards, and cranking up the speed by a factor of *three* is one thing; giving it some of the best level design and artistic presentation imaginable is another; but then challenging the player to get everything in that level AND THEN GO ALL THE WAY BACK AROUND AGAIN WITH ONLY THE TIME LEFT YOU LEAVE YOURSELF DURING THE *FIRST* ESCAPE SEQUENCE IN ORDER TO GET 100% COMPLETION FOR THAT LEVEL is SO PSYCHOTIC that it should not work, but it does. It's IN the game, it's HOW Pizza Tower works. In its stupid, goofy, cartoony way, it dares you to be badass.
Also, I don't know how else to fit it in this review, but the boss fights are also perfect?? Instead of being pseudo-levels that don't deserve the designation of "boss fight", or nothingburgers that are just included out of game-trope obligation, Pizza Tower's boss fights are ALSO INCREDIBLE. You get locked in a one-screen-sized box with one of five extremely distinctively-fighting opponents and are challeneged to not just beat them, but style on them as hard as possible by minimizing the damage you take, while they all try *as hard as possible* to stop you from doing either. While Pepperman and The Noise involve a fair amount of waiting for an attack to end, then countering, even they put engaging and highly energized spins on the concepts. The Vigilante and the fourth boss, on the other hand, are genuinely some of the best boss fights I've fought in ANY game, being insanely chaotic yet perfectly balanced games of back-and-forth where you and your opponent both always looking for an opening, then doing everything you can to exploit it once found; the Vigilante especially is so *absolutely sensational* that it makes me even more upset that the ability to play as him was scrapped.
All of this, by the way is wrapped up in - as *insane* or uninformed as this is going to sound - what I consider to be my absolute, #1 game soundtrack of all time. No other game I've ever played across any genre has had this level of cohesion, quality, sauce, vision, and pure *awesomeness* as Pizza Tower's soundtrack. There isn't a single level or boss track I skip when going back for a relisten or making a playlist, and even the menu and hub-world themes have their appeal. It's incredible, it's INSANE, this game's music ALONE bumps it up a letter grade it's so good and that's on top of this game being an A+ at minimum already. It's ILLEGAL.
Again, my only gripe is that, while the content present is alone worth over twice the $20 price - you get everything in the base game with Peppino, a New Game+ with The Noise (who handles differently and has modified levels, scenarios, a unique boss fight, and multiple new pieces of music), and a secret co-op *New Game ++* where either you can play as both at once, or you and a friend can control them individually with unique combination moves - there should have been more. Mods have already added all the bosses as playable characters with all their own flair - including the ones the developers themselves have said would take too much effort - and experiencing PIzza Tower's *wealth* of fascinating development history requires going outside the game, when some kind of museum showing it all - and potentially even letting players play some of them - would be an amazing show of sportsmanship in the realm of teaching game development, and providing game preservation.
You should play this game. Even if you don't like games like Pizza Tower. Please. Genuine, wholehearted near-perfect games like these are so, so, rare.