Deliver At All Costs

Winston obviously had something important go on in his past. He has space posters all over his messy apartment, letters from various governmental entities, and he spends lots of time building rockets on his own. Unfortunately, we live in the United States, and that means we need a job to support ourselves, so Winston, hearing a radio ad, does what anyone in the 1950s does and heads down to the We Deliver building with a smile and a firm handshake. Boomer dads of unemployed children are just b...

It only takes one glance at Deliver At All Costs to understand its appeal. We all remember games like GTA and LA Noire, which feature notoriously unwieldy driving systems that have you bowling over pedestrians, rear-ending other cars, and crashing into walls. Funny thing is, we love every second of it. There’s a certain je ne sais quoi about blasting through a city street with no regard to property or person, so it’s nice to see a game finally tapping into that market.

Deliver At All Costs is a joyous throwback to the dafter years of our great hobby, and is full of ridiculous missions and smashable buildings.

It’s a fun time crashing through buildings and fences, and an easy recommendation at a budget price.

Deliver At All Costs is a perfect example of an average game with above average potential. What could have been a hit indie game with zany destructive environments and fun delivery gameplay turns out to be a tad too ambitious in the wrong directions. The game aspires to great narrative heights but severely lacks the graphical presentation to meet such lofty standards. Thankfully, a majority of the writing is earnest and intriguing, even if it isn't followed through in a satisfying way. Deliver At All Costs supplies some fun mission design, especially if you're a fan of 2D GTA titles, but its c...

While the world waits patiently for GTA 6, it seems smaller developers have started to turn to the origins of Rockstar’s open world juggernaut for inspiration.

There's joy to be found in the basic idea of package delivery. There's the basic task of getting a package to its intended recipient with video games opening the door to take that idea to absurd levels. Deliver At All Costs, from Konami and Swedish developer Far Out Games, is package delivery at its most absurd extreme. A game like this should be a layup, and in many ways it is, but the game's story carries a tone that almost flies in the whole face of the wacky premise and it's a mixture that goes about as well as peanut butter and salmon.

Deliver At All Costs features some uniquely fun deliveries and a satisfyingly smashable set of cities, but its slapdash story and limited tools for vehicular destruction mean it’s one shipment that’s far from the complete package.

When I first heard about Deliver At All Costs, it was through Steam Next Fest buzz from earlier in the year. I didn't see much of it, I didn't even check out the demo at the time, because I was busy going through a bunch of other Steam Next Fest games. But I kept seeing it pop up on the lists I would read of Next Fest demos to check out. It looked interesting, and like it would be a fun and funny game to play for a few hours.

Deliver At All Costs has tons of potential, but it doesn’t know what to do with it. A solid storyline is neglected in favor of chaotic quests, but the missions aren’t varied enough to stave off repetition for long. It's a game of competing ideas and intentions that would have been better explored across two entirely separate and fully realized projects.

Deliver At All Costs is explosive and silly fun for a bit, but its writing and gameplay quickly grow tiresome.

Because this doesn't strike me as a story someone especially wanted to tell, nor the additional sequences ones anyone especially wanted to make. They are inclusions born of a nervous yearning to fulfill the mold of an impersonal idea of what constitutes a real videogame, a ladder to worthiness built from checkboxes. Worse, they drag the party down and refuse to give me back my damn milkshake. If you reckon you've got a higher tolerance for battering the 'skip dialogue' button though, by all m...