izigame.me

Peppino the pizza chef is a sweaty, fidgety cartoon maniac, eaten up with worry and burdened by bills, who now must contend with the Castlevania-like appearance of a mystical, mechanical, multi-biomed Pizza Tower on the precipice near his humble establishment. It all comes to a head when the Tower's cruel master, a giant floating pizza with green pepper mustachios aptly named Pizza Face, mocks our hero with his wicked intentions: at some point in the near future, a giant energy weapon atop the tower will blast Peppino's Pizzeria into smithereens. This is the call to action; blood boiling and veins popping, legs an elliptical cartoon blur, Peppino races at mach-speed toward the tower in what may be one of the greatest game intros of all time. Throughout his arduous adventure, our hero is defined by a like range of tempestuous emotions and torturous contortions: he fluxes through a finger-gnawing nervousness that sees his phalanges bulge like balloons, a terrible fear that melts his body into putty, a tumbling, limb-flailing haste that carries him faster than any player can react (without prior experience). His big-handed grab attack is defined by a covetous desperation; a sadistic, wild-eyed dominance possesses him when the combo meter is riding high. He's just a hot mozzarella mess one beat away from an explosive heart attack, and that is what makes him wonderful.
After a few minutes of play, you too will see that all the same, dangerous, late-night love (replete with its obligatory micro-obsessions and moments of personal crisis) evident in the extravagantly rubbery and superficially "MS-Paint" artwork -- and in the intensely serious-but-maybe-not-so-serious theme -- is also fully present in the gameplay, is in fact stuffed and restuffed to bursting into every savory, crispy crevice of the world, with brand-new gimmicks and enemies to engage in every. Single. Stage. McPig is nothing if not a loving maniac; he has pumped countless gallons of painfully tapped vital essence into this work.
But the really odd thing, the very nearly discomfitting thing is that, despite Pizza Tower's staggering mechanical and artistic variety, it will eventually either be a (likely dull) walk in the park . . . or a burning personal crucible in which you can feel unused -- even obstreperous -- parts of yourself being burned to ash, with very little gradation between. It all depends on the challenge you set for yourself. If you go for an A-rank or lower, you can just about sail over the bar the first time on every level; it's not tough at all, and mostly the game can play itself. Be duly warned that at this lower degree of difficulty, Pizza Tower doesn't actually feel like Pizza Tower. I say this not as a tryhard or elitist (because I'm not good enough at games to be called either), but It's only in striving for the S and P-ranks that the gameplay and level design truly shine.
The basics: you proceed through a long and lovingly detailed level, gathering ludicrous speed to smash through obstacles and enemies (who can hurt but never kill you, hence anybody can finish with ordinary stubbornness), until you enter the cloud of ominous groans surrounding the John Block: a living structural member who presumably plays a part in upholding the Pizza Tower. Once you smash this scowling and fragile pillar, you have to run the level in reverse while a timer ticks down -- once it reaches zero, Pizza Face himself comes out, and if he touches you, you fail the level. It's the only way you can lose, but the timer is very generous, much too generous for an A-rank run. But then, my bored and untested friends, there's S and P-rank! The real deal! The main attraction! The self-set goals that make the game worth your time, not to mention your blood, sweat, and furious tears!
To win an S, you have to find all ingredients and secrets in the level, including a special ingredient that can only be unlocked by an ersatz pink Spongebob called Gerome, the neutral janitor and maintenance man of the Tower, who himself is often hidden -- and then you have to squelch through a special pizza portal at the end of the return lap that transports you to the end again for a Second Lap, with the timer exactly the same as when you entered the portal! In grabbing Ss, it's common to finish with Pizza Face not a finger-breadth behind. It's a pretty feat. Still . . . I will argue that that's not the fullest Pizza Tower experience. To milk this game and earn your Ps, to throw wide the dopamine floodgates and mortally wound your personal demons, you will have to . . . gather every ingredient and secret . . . find Gerome and unlock the special ingredient . . . and then finish the Second Lap . . . all while maintaining your combo from the very beginning of the level! The number above the combo meter goes up by one whenever you smash an enemy, the meter itself wholly resetting with every addition; it is also set back a little with every small topping you grab. Your meter halves with every injury, putting you perilously close to losing the combo altogether, giving all new meaning to the hazards in your way. P-ranking is not easy; it will require great patience, great perseverance, the narrowing of your attention to a fine point that starves all other concerns of notice until they shrivel and die.
Speed and perfection, memory and smoothness of execution, greasy garlic sweat and pulse-pounding periods of suspense, gusty exhalations of relief, shouts of exultation, snarled vows to conquer with the next attempt -- that's what the P-rank experience is! And it changed me, I'll have you know, and truly! This time-waster, this flashing, streaking, savory diversion, this loving work of art changed me with its higher challenge. No, it unfortunately did not morph me into an ultra-muscled Doc Savage equipped with a prehensile member (which I'm pretty sure Lester Dent never mentioned the Man of Bronze as possessing) nor an overnight billionaire with a mile-long list of accomplishments -- but there have been certain alterations. You see, I was haunted, at the time I began Pizza Tower, by a bevy of worries and illogical, gnawing fears that had reduced my happiness and general effectiveness by a marked degree. At first, I half-consciously breezed through a pile of levels. receiving As with little effort. It was amusing for a time; I appreciated what the creator had done, but I began to grow bored, was even disappointed in his five-year baby -- yet the vaunted P-rank challenge seemed a bridge too far, if not an absurdity.
Then, while I was shaving, a small voice -- I suppose it was a part of my subconscious -- whispered to me: "Hundred-percent the game, man. C'mon. You'll love it! They all love it . . ." A strange feeling came over me then, as if a veil had been pulled off my brain that allowed an inner light to shine forth and bounce back from the roof of my skull to feed the source once again. What else could I do? I took up the controller and commenced to struggle for runs that encompassed everything. And I screamed. And I sweated garlic sweat. And I was silent and deathly still at times. And I loved every painful, glorious, intensely meditative moment. This game was what I needed to set me right again. Amazingly, many of my demons -- delicious fiends of cheese and sauce -- are, for the nonce, dead, reduced to flimsy ghosts I can laugh at -- slain, banished by the speed that breaks through barriers and makes complexes quail.
I think Pizza Tower is really for crazy people, despite its popularity -- but still, it's popular for a damned good reason! It speaks to something in so many of us, even though it may serve as medicine for but a few. Maybe we're all just a little crazy, then!