The deranged Pizza Tower was hotly anticipated with its unique art direction; charming hordes of fans across the internet prior to its release and promising to be the 5th Wario Land in spirit with its block-based puzzle platforming, slapstick cartoon aesthetics, and evocation of Nintendo's crude but lovable antihero in the near-constantly agitated Peppino.

What we got, however, feels narrow in scope despite its handsome production values and a pandering to a specific niche of gamers to the point that the game's awesome and inspired art direction becomes invisible: the game rewards speedrun-like gallops through its levels so much that Peppino grinding enemies between his teeth and pile-driving them into the floor simply serves as flavourful padding to a game that should have focused less on formalism than refining its gameplay. The game needed an art style that is functional instead of flexing.


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