I Don't Recommend Pizza Bandit

I Don't Recommend Pizza Bandit #Pizzabandit

Thank you to the publisher for providing a code for coverage and critique purposes.

This is Pizza Bandit. It's a game that managed to catch my eye basically the first time I heard of it. Its elevator pitch is that it combines beefy over-the-shoulder Gears of War-style shooting mechanics with a little bit of Overcooked, Cooking Mama, and a restaurant simulator. All these little quirky mismatched parts understandably garner attention.

Though after playing it, I don't think a Gears of War fan, a Cooking Mama / Overcooked fan or even just a general simulator fan will really get what they're looking for out of Pizza Bandit. And yet that's not even my biggest problem with the game so far.

Here's what happened when I played Pizza Bandit.

Pizza Bandit, if you can't tell from the name, does not take itself seriously. As the titular Pizza Bandit, you are an ex-bounty hunter who has finally accumulated enough cash to buy your own pizza shop, only to discover that the property is actually a dilapidated, unfurnished mess. Like some kind of deadly Dave the Diver, you return to bounty hunting to make enough cash to invest in your restaurant, and finally live out your dream of being a star pizza chef. That concept is fun in and of itself; that's why I thought Pizza Bandit may be worth checking out in the first place.

So, let's start with the bounty hunting side. You aren't just a bounty hunter, you are a time-travelling bounty hunter who goes to different years performing tasks. The game is set over the shoulder, starting with just a primary, secondary, and melee weapon. You have a large but limited amount of ammo, so you can pick up more from a seemingly never-ending supply of time-travelling aliens, or you can call in a pizza drop pod to top up your health and supplies. And the Gears of War comparison makes some sense given the location of the camera and the look of the guns, but it's not a tactical-adjacent cover shooter, it's more of a run-and-gun in small areas that are roadblocked by a constant stream of baddies.

You travel to different locations, mostly restaurants, to build orders for customers. This could be bringing tuna upstairs, cutting it, then plating it to make sushi, or throwing bread, cheese and meat together to make a pizza. Actually interacting with the different parts of a meal requires no more than pressing F, so though it aims to take on the vibe of a cooking mama or overcooked, it's actually far simpler. In practice, that ends up with you holding F, while watching over your shoulder for enemies, then bringing it to another location to hold F.

There are 8 missions in the early access launch, and you get given contracts as you level up. These contracts have you do those 8 missions in a specific order to unlock a new blueprint or cosmetic. By the fourth mission, I had already done the same basic mission type twice. That's the kind of game Pizza Bandit is. Missions take on unique aesthetics, but they don't actually add anything to the moment-to-moment gameplay. You are doing the same thing, just with another skin.