Totally Reliable Delivery Service review for PS4, Xbox One, Switch

It?s hard to review a game like Totally Reliable Delivery Service. Like Goat Simulator years ago, it?s broken in a lot of ways…but it?s intentionally broken, which makes it difficult to tell where the line is between bad on purpose and just plain bad.

That said, I think Totally Reliable Delivery Service comes a lot closer to that line than Goat Simulator ever did. In fact, it may just outright cross it. Where a game like Goat Simulator occasionally reached some surprisingly impressive highs if you stuck with it long enough, with Totally Reliable Delivery Service, you?ll find that the whole thing has diminishing returns pretty quickly.

It?s not that the basic idea isn?t fun — it is. You (and friends, if you want) control — in the loosest sense of the term — a klutzy delivery driver, and you have to try and deliver all kinds of packages from Point A to Point B. Much like Human Fall Flat or QWOP, you have far more control over your driver?s limbs than you would in most other games, and the resulting flailing is good for a laugh or two. On top of that, some of the packages are explosive, which means the game makes good use of its ragdoll physics.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of times where the flailing and the falling feel more like a design flaw than something intended to make the game more enjoyable. Like, one time I dropped a package off in the designated area, and my character ended up getting stuck as well. Similarly, any time I tried getting into a vehicle — which is a must in this game, seeing as you have an open world full of deliveries to make — it was a hit-or-miss proposition. Sometimes I?d make it in, but just as frequently I?d phase through the vehicle entirely. One time, trying to get into a plane, I ended up rolling around beneath the wing, unable to do anything else. While it may be fun once or twice, when it happens over and over again, the humour evaporates pretty quickly.

Which is the other big flaw with Totally Reliable Delivery Service: it gets really repetitive really fast. Sure, the packages change, but it?s still all Point A to Point B while fighting with lousy physics. I?ll admit that I only played the game solo, so it?s quite possible things are improved by the presence of other people, but even still, I can?t see how that would make it substantially better. After all, there are only so many times you can flop around helplessly before it stops being funny.

In other words, Totally Reliable Delivery Service is the definition of a one-note joke that wears out its welcome pretty quickly. You?ll experience pretty much everything it has to offer in the first few minutes of playing it, and it?s the sort of game best experienced as part of a YouTube compilation, rather than something you need to play on your own.

tinyBuild GAMES provided us with a Totally Reliable Delivery Service PS4 code for review purposes.