Back when you could click your fingers, do finger guns, and say “Daddio” without getting funny looks. Ah, the late 1950s, such a horrible time for half the population. Set deep in Americana, the island town of St Monique is a somewhat peaceful place, until Winston Green becomes a courier. Much like an Amazon delivery driver with diarrhea, you’ve got one hand on the wheel of your car and one finger up your bum. Winston is a mysterious amateur engineer back when you could end up looking like Doc Brown on accident, but that doesn’t pay the bills anymore, so he joins We Deliver.

We Deliver is an eccentric delivery company, however. While takeaway places might do a “30 minutes or less” and Amazon does its “We’ll kill the driver by the end of the day,” option, you have a much harder job. Be it transporting rotten watermelons in the back of a pickup truck with no tarp, or a massive Marlin that will start eating you if you don’t get it a snack on your fast, frantic drive to drown it in white paint. Much like The Ant Hill Mob and the Slag Brothers, Swedish developer Studio Far Out Games’ Deliver At All Costs is “whacky.”

Adopting not only a sort of classic-style GTA look, though this time more isometric than top-down, you’ll speed through the city, maybe not trying to kill people, but still doing it. However, the other major inspiration (seemingly) is the 2009 space terrorism ‘em up, Red Faction: Guerrilla, as most buildings are somewhat destructible. If only games with this level of destruction weren’t overly written and trying to hammer ideas home like a tent peg. I think in that alone, you can read my entire opinion of Studio Far Out Games and KONAMI’s Deliver At All Costs.

Stylization, aesthetic, and overall presentation are where I think Deliver At All Costs wins me over, as I love a bit of that ”50s-’60s Americana. However, that stylization only works for so long as you sit through story elements that are a bit heavy-handed at best and as slow as a brick through molasses at worst. I don’t want to say Deliver At All Costs is played up for stereotypes. The leading Black character you’ll make friends with, Norman, isn’t close to those ideas. In fact, I’d say outside of Winston, Norman is the most fully-realized character you’ll interact with.

Others (such as your boss Harald) are rather caring and wistful but easy-going, his son Donovan is one-note and angry that others exist, and the warehouse manager Johnny is tarred with the brush of Gee-Willikers. This means the story of Deliver At All Costs kind of feels hamstrung to get the events of St Monique over with as much character as possible, instead of being concise and punchy. A cutscene that could be only a few sentences becomes several more than it needs to be, and so on. Which means by the time you’re a couple of hours into delivering packages in stranger and whackier ways, it becomes laborious.

It makes the attempts at larger-comedy-turned-serious-conspiracy a bit flat overall. One minute you’re speeding through the small maps that break up St Monique, dragging a poo-covered statue, or flying away like Mary Poppins with the balloon machine, the next you’re fighting the will to live as Donovan talks about corporate restructuring. A perfect example of this would be the latter-day Saints Row games, all of which have a tone that is about as consistent as a broken, whimpering foghorn. The world itself is exactly that.

Be it speeding through intersections like you are pulling off a heist in GTA or plowing through buildings like Marvin Heemeyer, you can do almost everything and anything without repercussions. Running over pedestrians like you are trying to commemorate acts of terrorism doesn’t get you more than a shaken fist from said pedestrian, at worst they’ll run after you. Here’s the thing, to paraphrase K-9, “you are in a car.” Even when the nameless-faceless drones of pedestrians swearing your name latch on to the side of the pickup truck, you can scrape them off on a tree, lamp post, or building.

Cops are virtually nonexistent, which is fine to keep up the building-smashing fun for a bit, but even missions hardly have a proper fail state. Early on you are told to deliver a seismograph machine to the top of an active volcano in town, however, halfway up you are bombarded with landslides and could very easily fall off of the side of the mountain. None of that matters though, as you’ll be reset roughly where you were or a little further up depending on the checkpoint, and you can just keep going. No slap on the wrist and no halt in progress, just nothing significant to overcome.

The biggest hurdles to overcome is putting up with a story that’s extremely dissatisfying as it involves aliens and time travel, or trying to control the pickup and several other available cars. Not a full GTA as you can’t carjack anyone; so no quoting Nick Kang’s “give me your car, your keys, and get your ass out!” Though you can break into/borrow anything that is parked up, be it a normal 50s-looking family car or something else you might find on the map. All of which handles about the same: Floaty and a bit like you have an arrangement of helium balloons in the truck bed.

For the type of game that Deliver At All Costs wants to be, that’s sort of fine until it isn’t. Missions will either be easier and probably a bit funny for some deliveries, or possibly made worse by every bump, crash, bang, and wallop you end up getting into. Though, as Mr Stevenson says as you deliver the bomb, “You weren’t in any real danger, of course.” As the worst you’ll come to with a mission is to be reset, or on foot, you’ll lay down for a second. Much like the story, it’s all a bit anti-climactic.

In every fun, quirky, and yes, even whacky moments of Deliver At All Costs’ several hours of gameplay on offer, you’ll soon realize there is just as much boring or tedious work to do. Be it a lack of inspiration beyond the few examples to make it difficult, or just a want to make the most difficult parts feel annoying, Deliver At All Costs fails to balance the story and the gameplay well. That’s not to say it is all bad, but there is something about it that sometimes makes it feel like a chore.

Of course, the unique aspect that sells anyone on Deliver At All Costs is the destruction and general “whacky” nature, which is absolutely there. However, neither the plot nor the gameplay seems to really utilize this half as much as it probably should be. The bomb mission and probably the watermelon ones are the easy ones to say it is difficult to go plowing through buildings at high speed during, but I think the only one that stood out to use that system was the statue you tear down. As you drag it down the street like Lightning McQueen, it turns to rubble.

Yet, the gameplay benefits don’t outweigh the cost, as nothing really happens other than a couple bits of rubble appear where a building was and it lands with a momentarily satisfying physics crunch. When the dust settles and you’ve done a few of the missions, however, it all becomes normal and what was unique becomes quite mundane. For me at that point, the lasting excitement is the Americana, which I only really like because of the fashion, the music, and the cars. All three of which Deliver At All Costs delivers on.

Ultimately, Deliver At All Costs may have sent the delivered notification, but somewhat like certain delivery companies that Amazon hire, the delivery is a bit unsatisfying. It’s a 50/50 split whether or not the missions are something unique and enjoyable, while the story thinks it has some great importance before quickly falling to bits, leaving itself unfinished. Nonetheless, for the few moments Deliver At All Costs pulls everything together – music, gameplay, story, and visuals -, it is fantastic. Too bad those moments are too few and far between sometimes.

A PC review copy of Deliver At All Costs was provided by KONAMi for this review.

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Deliver At All Costs

$29.99

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• So much destruction.
• The stylization, aesthetic, and overall presentation.

Cons

• Unsatisfying sci-fi plot.
• At best, 50/50 on fun mission ideas.