How I learned to stop worrying and love Pizza Tower.

Seriously though, despite being a bit disappointed in my first playthrough, I kept coming back to it eventually in some way. The Noise update gave me another reason to do a full playthrough since he is a pretty different character, and I think that was enough to convince me that this game is actually pretty great. As much as I want to hate it due to its Ohio rizz band kid zoomer fanbase, I really can't. It really is an exceptional game. There's a lot of charm and genuine soul put into this that's very rare these days. I even went for a few P ranks and was surprised by how addicting it was. Definitely don't have the patience to P rank the whole game, but I finally get what people love about this game.

It's still not as good as Wario Land 4 though.

I'll get straight to the point and say that Pizza Tower fucks and is one of my favorite games of all time. It is an exhilarating and extremely rewarding experience chasing the P rank on every level. A P rank is awarded for clearing a level near flawlessly, with a combo active the entire level, and getting them is, without a doubt, the best part of the game. Levels are laid out such that you can gracefully, and extremely efficiently, flow through them as you grab each collectibles while continually refreshing your combo meter. This makes the moment to moment gameplay extremely rewarding in itself, once you understand Peppino's moveset and are able to soar through the obstacles laid out by the level at mach-speed! Racking up your combo while pulling off efficient movement tricks makes me feel cool as hell and is what drove me to devour this game.

The level design is far from the only thing that Pizza Tower knocks out of the park; the music, visuals, and aforementioned controls were all clearly given a lot of time to cook, giving the game an extremely unique identity and cumulating in the game's extremely sicknasty style. The hyper stylized MSPaint aesthetic was very offputting to me at first, but the brazen individuality of it quickly grew on me, and the game often takes advantage of it with surprisingly charming artwork that evokes the emotion of high quality MSPaint shitposts (such as the Baja Blast heist to name an example), which I am a major fan of. The music is just as strange as the visuals, with an extremely unique sound and random samples thrown in every so often. Despite that, I think that the music is still generally appealing in a way that non-terminally online people would be able to appreciate (although I am often told I have a terrible taste in music so I may be way off on this).

And finally, to get to Peppino's moveset, once you get a grasp on it, it's amazing. His run speed quickly builds to extreme heights, making long stretches of perfect play super rewarding as you reach record speeds. Fortunately, the camera is way zoomed out the whole game, so there is no issue with not being able to see things that are ahead of you that other speedy platformers like Sonic have. His wall climb also maintains his running speed, allowing you to continue building it up through large sections of each level. Turning around also conserves some of your speed, but it unfortunately has a pretty low cap on how much speed you can retain from it, which I would have liked to see increased or removed all together. The upward dash also stalls for no reason when you do a horizontal dash out of it, which is unsatisfying to lose seconds to. Peppino also has some secret tech that is never explained to the player which I am pretty baffled by. You can build instant speed from 0 with a crouch dash, cancel a dash by dashing in the opposite direction, and ground pound out of a dive by pressing down + jump midair. These moves are really useful, especially the ground pound, and I think I would have enjoyed the game less if I hadn't been informed of their existence by a friend. The second playable character, The Noise, also has some pretty great controls. He is more similar to Peppino than not, but his minor changes end up making him feel very different. Although, there are times where levels were clearly not designed with the abilities of The Noise in mind, making for strangely difficult obstacles and less satisfying sequences. Despite the minor imperfections, Pizza Tower's controls are a huge enabler for the frantic gameplay and rewarding level design that I love so much about it.

I do think that PT has a couple of major flaws that make it hard to get into. First, the best part of the game (getting P ranks) is not at all obvious to the player. Beyond existing and adding to the save files % score on the file select, there is no extrinsic incentive for players to try and get P ranks. In my initial playthrough, I didn't worry about getting S or P ranks at all and ended up being pretty underwhelmed by the game after I had beaten all the levels. Only after deciding to go back and try getting a few P ranks did I realize that that is the main appeal of the gameplay. I think this issue is exacerbated by my second major complaint, being the hidden collectibles. Every level has 9 major collectibles, multiple of which are hidden, often in hard to find places, especially if you are going fast (which is the best part of the game). This leaves the player in a really awkward spot, having to choose between taking their time to explore the level looking for secrets, and going fast to maintain their combo exercise mastery of the game's controls. This conflict is even more apparent when the secrets are hidden in parts of the level that are only accessible during the timed escape sequence at the end of each level. After I decided to get all the P ranks in this game, I just looked up a guide of all the collectible locations and had a much better time with the game after that, which I think speaks volumes as to how the secrets interfere with the game's biggest strength.

Pizza Tower makes me feel cool as fuck when I am showcasing my understanding of the game's controls and mechanics by earning P ranks. It is unforgettable, with its extremely unique music and art, not to mention the final boss, which is one of the most hype levels in any video game I've ever played. It occasionally gets in its own way by slowing the player down, and getting P ranks does admittedly ask for a lot of effort from the player, since they will have to play through the level at least one time before even attempting P rank just to get familiar with the route they'll have to take. These are relatively easy flaws to ignore though, and everything else is so well done that Pizza Tower has earned its place as one of my favorite games of all time!

Dada

Dada (/ˈdɑːdɑː/) or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916), founded by Hugo Ball with his companion Emmy Hennings, and in Berlin in 1917.[2][3] New York Dada began c. 1915,[4][5] and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris. Dadaist activities lasted until the mid 1920s.

Developed in reaction to World War I, the Dada movement consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works.[6][7][8] The art of the movement began primarily as performance[9] art, but eventually spanned visual, literary, and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, and sculpture. Dadaist artists expressed their discontent toward violence, war, and nationalism and maintained political affinities with radical politics on the left-wing and far-left politics.[10][11][12][13]


Cover of the first edition of the publication Dada, Tristan Tzara; Zürich, 1917
There is no consensus on the origin of the movement's name; a common story is that the German artist Richard Huelsenbeck slid a paper knife (letter-opener) at random into a dictionary, where it landed on "dada", a colloquial French term for a hobby horse. Jean Arp wrote that Tristan Tzara invented the word at 6 p.m. on 6 February 1916, in the Café de la Terrasse in Zürich.[14] Others note that it suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness and absurdity that appealed to the group. Still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar meaning (or no meaning at all) in any language, reflecting the movement's internationalism.[15]


Francis Picabia: left, Le saint des saints c'est de moi qu'il s'agit dans ce portrait, 1 July 1915; center, Portrait d'une jeune fille americaine dans l'état de nudité, 5 July 1915; right, J'ai vu et c'est de toi qu'il s'agit, De Zayas! De Zayas! Je suis venu sur les rivages du Pont-Euxin, New York, 1915
The roots of Dada lie in pre-war avant-garde. The term anti-art, a precursor to Dada, was coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913 to characterize works that challenge accepted definitions of art.[16] Cubism and the development of collage and abstract art would inform the movement's detachment from the constraints of reality and convention. The work of French poets, Italian Futurists and the German Expressionists would influence Dada's rejection of the tight correlation between words and meaning.[17] Works such as Ubu Roi (1896) by Alfred Jarry and the ballet Parade (1916–17) by Erik Satie would also be characterized as proto-Dadaist works.[18] The Dada movement's principles were first collected in Hugo Ball's Dada Manifesto in 1916. Ball is seen as the founder of the Dada movement.[19]

The Dadaist movement included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals; passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture were topics often discussed in a variety of media. Key figures in the movement included Jean Arp, Johannes Baader, Hugo Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Emmy Hennings, Hannah Höch, Richard Huelsenbeck, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Hans Richter, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Tristan Tzara, and Beatrice Wood, among others. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music movements, and groups including Surrealism, nouveau réalisme, pop art and Fluxus.[20]



I fucking hate playing Baldi's Basics but I can appreciate a good shitpost when I see one.

I noticed a weird bug where the ball went through the paddles sometimes, the devs really should fix that on the next patch...

There's something so cosmically hilarious in the fact the CEO of Atari saw what would become one of the most influential piece of tech to ever be made as a ''fucking piece of trash'', and the main developer, Allan Alcorn, thought of it just as a side project where he did some things haphazardly to make his bosses weird-ass demands happy. It grounds the legend around Pong while being even more inspiring un a way.

It wasn't the first arcade machine, it wasn't the most creative thing you could do with the tech even back then, but damn if those beeps and boops aren't charming as hell and if playing alone isn't some of the most oddly interesting fun you could have with a game like this, even if sometimes hitting the ball when it respawns is even harder than when another player hits it back...

I could go on about Pong for 4000 words... except actually no, I couldn't; it's Pong, and beyond its unbelievably important historical value and rich history, it's still a game, and even more than half a century later, it still holds up as one.

A legacy that other games from back then and soon after do share, but one still worth praising nonetheless...

Death of a Shadow

There are two fights in this game, both against the same enemy, that I believe perfectly encapsulate the things I find myself loving with a burning passion and the worst parts of the entire experience respectively; one is a frenetic ‘’you die if you stay still’’ challenge that acts as the perfect exam for jumping and dodging, a movement test if you will, and it does that while creating an incredibly fun encounter that makes your heart race in a pretty simple but appropriate arena, and just when you think it’s over, it surprises you with a brand new set of moves that dive you the perfect chance to make your parry and guard skills shine as well as use what you may have learned about spacing in the last phase. It’s an unexpected yet perfect fight which the game had been quietly building up through its mechanics and the area that you traversed to get to it… And then the second time around you randomly encounter in a much more cramped, less interesting arena where the camera really likes to go to the great beyond —more than usual I mean — and I has NO new moves and it doesn’t get interesting in any way, in fact it’s second phase is fighting another enemy with the moves that it had at first at the same time.
It may sound like it has the potential to be a cool fight, and maybe it does.
In practice it just isn’t.


Some of the faults of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice come from the fact, despite playing and functioning in entirely different ways, it never breaks is ties with the Souls series. The enemy AI behavior and camera are essentially the same, and if the latter was already a point of contention in the best of cases and the reason many stopped playing in previous games, in here shit is fucked up. This is not a camera that was designed for encounters this hectic nor for a combat so fast paced, and even if most of time works, when it doesn’t it feels like an entire enemy of its own; it’s not weird to get backed into a corner when fighting some bosses or losing sight of a really big one in the open field, and if that happens then prepare to pray to every singular member of the FromSoft team, ‘cause the chance of you getting out of that situation without a giant slash across your entire body is pretty damn low. It is not a constant, but it happens way to many times for it to not be a pretty big issue, and the amount of times I’ve NEARLY lost entire fights because of it is a horror story in itself. Basically what I’m trying to say is, if you see a mini-boss in a rectangular arena,RUN.

Regarding the AI tho… maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, but I want to make clear that when it comes to one-to-one combat, this game excels in so many ways that if I tried to explain it this review would be way longer than it probably is going to be already. It’s an exciting and terrifying dance where the enemy may decide the beat, but you are the one taking steps, and fights flow like water down the stream… but Sekiro isn’t entirely a combat focused game. Stealth makes up a huge portion of the game and there is no limit to the amount of options, paths and strategies you can take, and it’s pretty fun!.. except that it really doesn’t feel like it flows as well. The AI is extremely rudimentary, and enemies can be in three different states: clueless, on alert and on battle; they are predictable as they are completely impossible to understand, they always act and reset to their original position even if you killed half of the camp you are in, which kills a bit of the tension when you are always more mobile than any of them, so going away and returning is a constant safe option that never really punishes you aside of enemies getting their health back (which doesn’t really matter for non-bosses since enemies die in one hit if you mortal-strike them) and it sometimes feels like getting spotted is a total gamble that depends on some weird-ass enemy placement or just plain inconsistency. It feels oddly clunky, and granted, it only feels like that when you do something wrong, but I also really think that a liiiiiiiiiiiiittle more complex AI and things like more traps and more persistent enemies would have made it far more punishing but satisfying. One thing it does help is that because enemies act INCREDIBLY aggressive, fighting more than one rando at a time feels like actual hell, so going in sword blazing is never a feasible option, and that is a smart way to encourage getting rid of enemies individually… except that sometimes the game does force you to fight groups of enemies directly and it’s the sloppiest most unfun thing ever but you know what I think I’m gonna shut up now…

The artificiality is only reinforced by how the actual characters themselves act in big moments, you may be in the middle of a fight or an entire castle is being conquered right as you speak, doesn’t matter, even characters withing the building won’ say a word about… odd is the word I can really think of for it, it’s just too odd…

It really doesn’t help that quite a few of the optional content feels more like a chore. Getting exp and money for the items can be a really big time consuming process near the end, but I guess that comes in the package with it having RPG elements, and said elements are indeed pretty good so I can look past that. But fighting the Headless, doing some of the more impossibly obtuse quests and getting all of the prosthetics upgrades however, that’s a bit harder to ignore… they are amazing parts of the game contextually, but actually getting them is a huge investment that can be the most mind-numbing thing ever, even if the reward itself is more often than not worth it.
And funny that I mention the obtusity of the quests, ‘cause that reminds me of the narrative… oh, the narrative…

Seems you’ve grown… if just a little

I can’t recall being so torn about a story as I am on Sekiro’s, in big part because I actually fucking love it so much. The land of Ashina, its darkest of catacombs and its highest of peaks, is is a world that made me wish to be able to learn more about it even after spending nearly 30 hours on it. Is a deeply rich, highly folklore inspired tale of mysteries and tragedies, of smallest victories and massive losses, and its cast makes a huge part of that. Meeting the Sculptor and seeing the clear but deeply hidden sadness it hides made me immediately invested, and from them it never stopped the pace. The weird-ass merchants you meet along the way, the impossible to not love allies—like Emma, Kotaro or the Divine Child — and every single one of the major foes you fight. Some don’t even need to say a word, their design and animations already tell a story on its own, confirmed by some of the items you can fins, but generally, it speaks and if you can drink sake with them, it’s a character worth meeting… but at the center of it all, there’s a Shinobi.

The protagonist isn’t a mere unnamed assassin, nor is it a representation of us as players. The main character of this story is Wolf. It is Sekiro… one problem tho: most of the time he isn’t really a character.

By that I don’t mean that ‘’Oh he doesn’t speak much so he’s barebones xdddddd’’ no, that’s actually an endearing trait of his that I loved each time a character pointed out, it humanizes him and levels him down from what otherwise would be an unstoppable killing machine, but aside from that, the only thing I can say for sure about Wolf is that… he’s…. loyal to Kuro, I guess?... oh wait no, nevermind, there’s an ending where you can betray everyone including him HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH?????!

Wolf gets completely screwed over by the fact he’s the main character of game with a couple different options and that lets you kills some NPCs, so we get this conflict where we get a clear version of the character in a scattered cinematics and the intro, but it never gets explored meaningfully and it can all feel screwed if you just acted a bit whacky and decided to sometimes be the purest angel imaginable or a complete psychopath at the flip of a switch. Which it may not be as big of a deal as making it out to be, Sekiro isn’t an expansive, dialogue reach RPG in the first place, but there are times where the game does really try do some cool-ass stuff. I made fun of it before for the sake of a joke, but the decision you can make of either defining your father, the Owl, or joining him is incredibly compelling both ways, one that makes perfect sense depending on how you view Sekiro and a surpringly super meaningful choice, but in contrast to that we get thing like fighting the Owl two times, both fights amazing and some of my favorites in the entire game mind you, but never achieve an ounce of the impact they could have simply because Wolf is one stoic bastard and we had only really seen the Owl like… one time before the fight.

Characters like Isshin, Emma and the Sculptor seem to bounce well of Wolf, but a ton of the more interesting moments are ones you have to go out of your way to reach, and they don’t feel really that personal; it’s just feels like the gang telling you stuff that it’s REALLY interesting, but it gets speed up or brushed aside, and sometimes just an excuse for a fight that you don’t even begin to comprehend it until it’s over (they really did my guy the Sculptor dirty, man…) so the only really meaningful collection between characters we have is the duo of Wolf and Master Kuro… which to be fair is my favorite of the game.

Kuro is a super curious spin on a immortal character, especially coming from FromSoftware’s previous work, and his showings of Kindness for Wolf like cooking rice balls and Wolf’s diligence to protect him felt like a curious Father-Son bonding moments I wasn’t expecting to see, and felt worth hunting for and seeing. I’m glad that bond that gets stronger as the game goes is the one that moves the game, because I feel it’s a genuine moment of true direct narrative being perfectly showcased and not just another wall of text you read after killing a boss. I just wish that for once we got the full narrative and more character driven-moments, but at least what is there, what it’s for us to see and play, it’s excellent…


…huh…


... it’s funny… that’s a statement that goes for the rest of the game too…


Hesitation is Defeat

Three words from the mouth of an old legend.

I didn’t know it when I first heard them, but those three words were going to echo in my mind from then and onwards, and even before… I just didn’t understand them yet.
The highs of Sekiro are so high I could swear they broke my goddamn roof. This is not a game about ‘’getting it’’, it’s about understanding it. It takes a while for sure, there’s a reason the game makes a fight for you to lose and one of the major mechanics is having more than one life. Experimentation and learning is the backbone of the game, both in the long term and in the moment while a fight to the death, but it’s not only through battling that you’ll gain experience.

You are made for this world, even if it’s hellbent to screw you; Wolf’s mobility and arsenal is simple, but the amount of possibilities opened up by the zones and how the enemies act doesn’t make it binary, in fact quite the opposite; your mind and reflexes are constantly tested, you need to think on your toes while you approach it slowly, and then you’ll maybe be able to gain an advantage and a better view of the area or a perspective on a fight. Whichever the case, it feels like silk, Wolf has always a bit of delay when starting its actions (except for blocking, that’s instant no matter what) but it’s constantly delayed, and when you start blasting or jumping or grappling-hooking, the only think that’ll be able to stop you will be a sneaky enemy or a mistake of your on. Few things feel as satisfactory as breaking an enemy’s posture or getting the drop on a mini-boss, fin fact, no… none really compares, nor that I can think of at least.

When everything is going right, the combat of Sekiro is king of the accursed universe. I described it before as a dance, but that does for every little action, every decision like taking an item or using a prothesis in the right time is just another brand-new way to go around this deadly waltz, avoiding fear and poison, sometimes going even underwater, it doesn’t matter, it always feels satisfying, you are always in control, you just have to not let them take it away from you.

I complimented Ashina before, but aside from looking astonishing, the lay out of every single zone that encompasses the kingdom is jaw dropping. Not that it’s just ‘’well designed’’, it’s that I cannot think of a single room that feels out of place or badly put together, let alone an area. It never feels unnatural, and in the best of cases I wished I could be transported right into them, the build up in each of them and the surprises they hold a treat to be experience. The Divine Kingdom, Ashina Castle and Senpo Temple are not just my favorite areas in the game, they are some of my favorite areas in ANY game, FromSoft even managed to pull off a Fores Fog and Poison Swamp and make them amazing! The bastards actually did it!

They are only enriched by the small or most impressive moments: a knight from a far away land walking out of a corner, a soothing melody hiding the dark truth of an old village, a small hill full of pinwheels that act as a reminder of a dark truth yet to be known… or just a dude falling at full speed onto you while screaming his lungs out.

I wanted to make special mention to the Great Shinobi Owl fight, I mentioned before it was great, but the reason why I think that is that it grounds this world even more; a boss that uses cheap unexpected tricks unpredictable in every way and that even uses your tactics against you… it’s like fighting a mirror, which not only tells a bit of the relationship both characters have more than any dialogue, it feels so satisfying to, after facing warriors of thunder and mist, after looking into the eyes of beast and hiding from giant gods, have a fight where everything you know about yourself and the enemies you have battled till now is tested… a fight where you cannot hesitate.

This review could have been all about talking about the boss encounters, and you know, maybe that’s a write-up for another time, but for now I can only state the obvious. Sekiro’s combat is joy, it’s stress, it’s a learning process, from beginning to the very last sword slash, even at it’s worst, 90% of my deaths were because I doubted, because I didn’t do a Mikiri counter or broke my guard, those were deaths that I felt responsible for… but with abilities to use and tricks to employ, you’ll always have at least another chance…

Also, the other 10% was at Demon of Hatred seriously FUCK that boss, it isn’t even the one I died the most to (I think) and I still despise it, get back your annoying ass to Devil May Cry 2!


Return

I tried Sekiro for the first time back in 2020. You can imagine it didn’t go so well.
4 years later I still see the problems that I could feel back then, and the fact most of that not-so-good content is optional doesn’t really make it more justified, and things like the camera are just undefendable… but, and this may seem rich coming from the guy spent the entire first 1000 words talking about everything wrong with the game… I still adore Sekiro. It’s flaws do get in the way of me loving it like so many others di, but after 4 years, being rapped by its world and visuals, fascinated by it’s combat and celebrating each victory like no other, excited to discover and learn even more… and to end up victorious in the end, that’s a feeling I don’t think a game will make me feel again, at least not for a long time.

The last of Ashina are unique, special, and so are the challenges it holds… challenges I surpassed, even when I really didn’t think I do, ‘cause for every 20 deaths at some random Mini Boss in the early game, there’s a Genichiro defeat at the fourth try. Falling again and again, and the in the end to not hesitate… that’s what Sekiro is about.

And when it teaches it well, it’s wonderful.

As a remaster it's kinda lackluster, besides the "newer" models and more high-res textures it's pretty much just looks like the PC version, which isn't a bad thing since I think the game still holds up pretty well for it's era I just would've liked a few more changes to really make this game stand out as a remaster. But even if I don't think it really makes full use of it's remastered elements I can't deny that I'm glad this exist as a good way for newcomers who've never played Alan Wake on 360 to finally play it very accessible way with all of it's DLC content, which is something I wished more studios and publishers did.

I sometimes have the tendency to look down on these ‘Lost games' ARG BS that flood itch.io and steam. Not because they're bad or not scary but because they're always the most basic bog standard creepypasta BS you could possibly think of with very little to show for it in scares, puzzles, or clever use of the ARG format. I think the only games I’ve seen done well were Ben Drowned, Godzilla NES, and Petscop, two of those are just hi-effort Creepypastas and one that doesn't even exist. Which is why I'm glad to say that this game goes out of its way to not only pass the super low bar of lame creepypasta lost game bs; but also carve its own path as a pretty great ARG and a genuinely scary experience. Finally we can have a lost game ARG where it's not about a dead person/child controlling the game but rather something much MUCH worse.........disgruntled employees.

Also I really wanna give this game a huge thumbs up for the game's N64 like presentation. It's not one for one like the games of its era and at points you can clearly tell it’s not a game that could’ve worked on a real N64, but they make it work in the lore of the ARG along with still having the ability to make the atmosphere all the more dreadful by going for a more basic lower quality look.

I don't have much else I wanna say about it without giving away spoilers but I do think the puzzles are a little too obtuse at times but the game was designed to be a community driven ARG experience so really if anything they did too good of a job if you think about it. But overall it's just a really solid horror experience I'm glad I gave a chance instead of just scrolling past it like any other itch.io ARG creepypasta schlock.