You play as a giant pizza delivering attack mecha. That line alone should be enough to tell you whether you will love this game or not, as Pizza Titan Ultra is unabashedly exaggerated, cheesy and cartoonish in its every second of gameplay. Framed as something you might have seen on Toonami back in the 90s, the game is filled with pop culture gags, loving jabs at the animated genre it emulates and the sheer insanity of its own premise. Most levels are built around delivering foodstuffs to a parody of cartoon icon and racing through the city in order to accomplish your goals.
Pizza Titan Ultra largely utilises the likes of Crazy Taxi for its inspiration, with a wide city to navigate, a single target, and a score which is impacted by your performance. How much damage you inflict on your surroundings, the speed in which you move and damage taken all influence how much cash you make by the end. More than a few of these are influenced by the unique quirks of your customers, and on a few occasions the sorts of foes you bump into.
The game’s top-down depiction of the city is perfect for the high-speed brawling it encourages, and it means that you can more easily familiarize yourself with the city map. Given the extensive campaign, there are a multitude of times when memorizing certain routes, buildings and possible threats become essential to finishing a deliver in record time. Small quirks like this help to give it a sense of being something greater than the sum of its parts, allowing players who actually pay attention to have an edge in later stages of the game.
Even once you finish up racing through the city there are always things to come back to, from customising your mech to re-trying older missions for a higher score. However, with this being said there are a few minor shortcomings. The most obvious among these is that, if you’re not fond of the humour, the mission dialogue can easily become grating over time. Furthermore, while Breakfall made every effort to keep the experience engaging, there’s no denying that you can find certain missions to be quite repetitive, especially in the lulls between earning upgrades. This only hits the game in its final few missions, but it is notable after such a strong campaign.
If you’re a fan of any cartoony, arcade-style fun, you owe it to yourself to play Pizza Titan Ultra. It’s one of a multitude of hidden gems buried beneath bigger releases last month and is a definite must-buy option for anyone who remembers Playstation era pick-up-and-play games with fondness.
PIZZA TITAN ULTRA / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER: BREAKFALL / PLATFORM: PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
