Pizza Possum from Cosy Computer and Raw Fury is a pick-up-and-play arcade game in which you’ll be helping the titular character grab the biggest pizza on his home island. Check our Pizza Possum review!
Life is good when you are a possum. You can eat all you want, and there is no one who can stop you. Well, except for all the guard dogs patrolling the village you’re in. But really, who are they to stop you. Besides, if you get chased, a quick hide in the bushes will often do the trick and get them off your scent. So what are you waiting for? Time to eat!
Pizza Possum from Cosy Computer and Raw Fury is a colorful and fun arcade-style experience on PlayStation 5. Possum lives on an island and, after waking up, is – as always – very hungry. He smells a huge pizza on the other side of the island. Your objective is pretty clear right off the bat: you’ll never be happy until you’ve eaten this pizza.
The first few minutes of this experience might be confusing as there’s no tutorial. Luckily, this game is one of those “try it, and you’ll figure it out” releases – which, for the record, I do enjoy. Since the gameplay mechanics are so simple, it makes sense to leave you to discover them on your own. Basically, it’s as simple as this: eat everything you see and earn points. Once the points meter reaches the maximum value, you’ll unlock a key that is required to progress to the next zone. Oh, and don’t get caught by the guards. Rinse and repeat.
I liked the quirky arcade gameplay – which can also be enjoyed in offline co-op – and discovering the island locales and different food types. Hiding in the bushes to avoid the dog patrollers was also mandatory to avoid being caught. When a guard catches you, it’s back to the previous checkpoint. Speaking of checkpoints, there are a few around the map, but not necessarily where you’d usually look for them.
So basically, once you uncover a new area, your first objective is to find the next checkpoint to be able to respawn from there. If you don’t do this and are caught, you’ll be sent back to the last checkpoint you had activated. On that matter, you’ll likely end up stuck at some point where you have to grind to progress and then get caught a few times before figuring out how to proceed. Luckily, the food quickly respawns, so you can hide and wait until you have enough to progress to the next area.
The last few areas do feel a bit anti-climactic as you have to be careful and stealthy as you slowly progress through the island, but the last 3-4 areas (about 2 minutes) dramatically change the pace from a race around the clock against a lot of guards at once to being stealthy. Use your handy smoke bomb that temporarily stuns your opponents to wolf down the King’s pizza, and well… that’s it, you suddenly beat the game.
Once the game has been completed once, you’re invited to play again from the beginning without being caught once by a patrol and doing it three times to unlock the real ending. That means that if you want to 100% the game, you’re going to have to get good at it. My first run took me around an hour and a half, with subsequent runs taking around 30 minutes or so.
On the presentation side, I liked the cartoony world and exploring the island and its locales. The soundtrack was appropriate, but it honestly didn’t stay in my head after I was done playing the game. Even though this is a PlayStation 5 game, the DualSense features are not being used.
This game features a Platinum trophy, which will take a few runs before being obtainable. The list includes 2 Bronze trophies, 2 Silver trophies, and 10 Gold trophies. This Platinum requires you to unlock all of the items in the game, which will require a few runs and finding all the landmarks in the game. The hardest trophy will be to obtain three crowns, which requires you to reach the King’s pizza without being caught a single time in a run, which will require some extra practice.
Pizza Possum is a great arcade and family game set on a beautiful island. I liked exploring the island and discovering new locales and food types. The difficulty of a single run is mild and should take you less than 2 hours to reach the end. You can replay the game as you wish alone or in offline coop. Pizza Possum is out on PlayStation 5 with a $6.99 asking price.
Disclaimer
This Pizza Possum review is based on a PlayStation copy provided by Raw Fury.
