Naw, Weird Al wasn’t really involved with this, although a polka-flecked rhythm game that doubles as a parody of “Paperback Writer” would be pretty rad. Pizza Driver (Free) is a much more straightforward kind of game: You hold down anywhere on the screen to accelerate your bike, let go to jump, and tap again to execute a landing.
All the while, you’re racing against the clock, which delivers the game’s biggest challenge. The time limit is brutally short on each stage, and until you are able to rack up enough dollars (in-game ones) to upgrade, you should get used to seeing the first few stages over and over and over again.
Eventually you can buy continues, more hearts that will make getting hit by a car less of a big deal, and other things. But, unless you get incredibly impatient and want to pony up real dollars to buy fake ones for upgrades, you’re going to have to just put in the time and effort to earn your right to advance on.
Pizza Driver is a game that happily exists in the category of time-killer iPhone games, although there is a bit of a twist and motivation to keep slaving away at it: If you land the highest score for a 24-hour period, developer Krikoff will send a piping hot pie your way. I am not sure how it works, but the French studio insists they are “for real” about it, so I doubt they are lying. Nevertheless, the game’s official trailer explains all about this gimmick and they’ve even posted a short video of the first recipient of a free pizza.
It’s not an incredibly deep experience, although the smaller touches help it shine a little brighter. Things like the music fading and being obscured by air gusts when you’re up particularly high in the air, or the branching paths some levels offer (should you dip into the subway or stay topside?) show that Pizza Driver has some legs.
But for the time being, that’s all it has: legs. Some of the game’s best aspects are merely whispers that could be reinforced to become full-on shouts. As it is, though, it’s spread a little thin — like so much tomato paste across a vast vista of butter-crust dough.
The game is cute and its fun lasts about as long as a pack of gum’s flavor, so, maybe it’s a blessing that it’s so gosh-darned hard. There’s something intangibly hooking about the game’s routine of collect-die-upgrade-try again. It’s nothing new, and it’s certainly been done slicker before — Jetpack Joyride (Free) or Tiny Wings ($1.99) come to mind — but has just enough of a gimmick and twist to earn it a temporary spot, at least, on my iPhone menu.
