Pizza Titan Ultra Review(PS4)

Use the crust as your canvas. Pizza Titan Ultra is a third person action platformer developed by Breakfall. Smash and break your way through enemy cheezbots as you plow through the competition and try to live up to the Pizza Titan name. Become the ultimate delivery mech! Story: Destroy Cheezbots. Delivery pizza. Yup.

Gameplay:

Right away you're going to notice that this game feels like something that should've been released back in the days of Dreamcast or even the Gamecube. It has that distinct characteristic and aesthetic that would seem at home on those consoles and akin to the days of a Jet Set or Crazy Taxi. This is a very positive thing right from the beginning because for me it sets the tone and rose my expectations for the title on that alone.

The game acts as both a parody and homage to not only games of our past, but also to the celebrity figures that were apart of those era's as well. Some of these cameos and references may be immediately noticeable to some,while others may completely go over someones head. The funniest one by far for me personally was the cameo of Bob Ross, err sorry, I mean Ross Roberts! His personality was nailed perfectly and I absolutely loved it.

Ok. Sorry. I'll get into the actual mechanics of the game now. As stated in the opening, Pizza Titan Ultra is a third person action platformer that has you delivering pizza to your clients in a 10 story tall pizza mech. The game play revolves around mostly doing some of the same things over and over, like picking a mission,delivering pizza in the time frame allotted to you. On paper that may sound pretty repetitive or even boring, but honestly its more fun than it sounds.

In Pizza Titan Ultra you will play through 32 pizza delivery missions across 8 different zones of cities. Once you've picked what section of a city you want to play and picked which chapter you wish to try(IE: City 1 has 3 chapters of story), you are then put into the city you picked and put on a time limit to deliver a pizza to your main objective/client. While you may complete your objective as fast as you can in order to get a fast time, you're also able to do side things like gather up more money by grabbing green money symbols or boost your time by grabbing yellow clocks. The more time you build up means the more time you have to collect tons of money. Money of which will be useful later,which I'll explain in a bit.

While running through the cities and trying to complete your objective, you will be met with quite a bit of resistance from enemy Cheezbots. These enemies do not want you to deliver your pizza and honor your ''15 minute or less'' guarantee and well we just can't have that! Because as a great man once said ''Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for a late pizza'', well said Michaelangelo,well said. No Cheezebots will stop us.

As you control your mech, you have a way of combating these enemy forces by using your regular swipe attack by pressing Square, using an AOE attack that smashes the ground and sends a shockwave to near by enemies by pressing Triangle, or jump in the air and attack to do an electric attack in order to hit enemies that are flying in planes/helicopters that are harder to hit. Using these in combination with each other will be crucial at certain points in the game because there will be scenarios where you'll have a crap ton of enemies on the screen and you will be forced to think fast on what action you must take.

You can gain more speed by holding R2 in order to sprint and occasionally you will find power up sections in the city that allows you to stand on it or run over it and re-charge your mechs power. When you're full charged you're able to use your mechs turbo mode and this allows you to run at super speeds. When used in a strategic way,this turbo made can make the difference between succeeding in a pizza delivery or failing in a pizza delivery depending on when its used and how fast you're going. Make sure to stock it up and use it at the right moment of time for it to fully be effective.

But wait you say? what the hell is the point of having a giant mech if you can't destroy things? whether its on purpose or accident?! HUH!? TELL ME NOW!. Ok slow your roll and calm down. All environments in Pizza Titan Ultra are destructive environments. Yes this means you can run and stomp over houses as much as you want and hell some of it is even part of a mission!. Delivering pizza WHILE blowing stuff up and destroying a city? how does that not sound pretty damn awesome?

But you know what I have to do now. I gotta tell you the stuff that falls a bit short. I know, I know, It's never a fun thing to do but it has to be done in order to stay fair and balanced. While there are lot of good things to say about Pizza Titan Ultra, I do gotta touch a tiny bit on some of things that may get annoying for some people. You'll notice I touched upon it earlier in the review when I mentioned the word repetitive. Yes this game can seem very repetitive for what it is and what it offers and depending on the type of gamer you are, this may be a good thing or a bad thing.

The mission variety doesn't differ that much from each other,even when you advance further in the game, the objective largely stays the same. The real difference you will notice is the increase in difficulty with the enemies and enemy types, but core of the game revolves around you being dropped into the city,timed and running to deliver pizza. There are other mission types or ''modes'' you can do,however they don't offer that much more variety than the pizza delivery missions. Again being repetitive wont necessarily mean bad things to everyone,since this is a short game, but I felt it had to be addressed just in case any one had any inclinations about the subject.

Graphics:

The art style and design of Pizza Titan Ultra is superb. It cell shading painting like graphics remind me a lot of games like Jet Set or Viewitful Joe. Being that this game is a 90s type of homage to that era,the graphic design makes perfect sense and its a natural fit for what the developers were aiming for with this game. Everything is well designed,well animated,and the character models in the cutscenes and in game all blend together nicely. Just a good job all around.

Replayability:

Surprisingly while this game may seem short and repetitive, it does give you reason to keep playing even after beating the main game. During the game you will collect vast amounts of money that is usable to upgrade your mechs looks. Your mechs look can be changed in a variety of ways from head,chest,feet,legs,hands,etc etc. I cannot name ever single piece of unlockable thats available in the game though, ''why'' you ask me? well that's because there are like 100 pieces of unlockable items in this game for you to find. Yes you heard me right, there are that many! This will give any completionist a strong incentive to keep playing this game for hours on end in order to get every single thing this game has to offer.

Final thoughts:

At the end of the day after playing Pizza Titan Ultra, I found myself extremely satisfied. In the age where gaming takes itself way too seriously now a days with the nit and grit and realism,Pizza Titan flips the script on this and says ''screw that, were silly and weird and we embrace it!''. I applaud and appreciate them for this.

In what can only be described as not only an homage, but as a weekend cartoon series come to life, Pizza Titan Ultra while repetitive at times, still at the end of it all manages to be a funny,witty and entertaining action platformer that I can see myself revisiting time and time again just to get a bit of joy and laughter out of its goofyness. I highly recommend checking it out.

Pizza Titan Ultra is out now on Playstation 4 and PC

*Review code provided by Breakfall