Flash game review bonanza 3

Pizza Frenzy:

Having apparently popularized the Frenzy, the next game over at Popcap places you in the position of a delivery boy for Italy’s best up-and-coming pizzeria, run by none other than the artisan pizza-making family, the Strombolis. Despite their talents, apparently the Strombolis can only produce one type of pizza at each pizzeria, so the gist of the game is that as customers phone in their various orders (represented by icons on the game’s general screen, a map of whatever town you’re in), your job is to click the order and then place it at the right pizzeria.

Create-a-Pizza Bonus Level: Behold, the most luscious of all topics, the mini-crab!

The twist is that many customers have special talents–one will change everyone else’s order to whatever she just ate, another is a robber in disguise that you have to drop off at the police station for a cash reward. Regardless of their quirky personalities, every customer will leave a tip for a speedy job, and you get cash for completing the delivery.

By delivering consecutive pizzas of the same time, you can rack up a combo multiplier, as well as upgrade that topping (cheese, pepperoni, etc.) for future rounds. Also, you can purchase coupons that will change a customer’s order to a desired topic, allowing you to continue your combo. A neat addition to the game is the bonus stages, where you are given a set of five template pizzas which you have to recreate by distributing a surfeit of toppings across their surfaces.

Once more, graphics and sound are nice but not phenomenal. I take issues with two features of the game. First, though you gain access to a wide variety of toppings (of which you choose 2 or 3 to use per level), there seems to be no reason to prefer any one to another, unless you’ve upgraded a certain topic and thus want to use it to make more money. I would have much preferred it if utilizing certain combos (say, pepperoni and donuts) could earn you bonus points. Instead, you have no reason to experiment.

Second, the game is too easy to beat. Unlike Feeding Frenzy, where the levels are challenging even if you aren’t trying to earn a high score, the entire challenge behind Pizza Frenzy is trying to build an ultra combo by getting the customers all to order the same kind of pizza. If you only try to complete all the deliveries in a level, you will have no issue breezing through the game and earning a 100% delivery rate on every map. While some may enjoy the challenge of building huge combos, it certainly isn’t worth laying down twenty dollars for such an easy game. The 60 minute demo, however, is definitely worth checking out.