Totally Reliable Delivery Service Review

Totally Reliable Delivery Service has a simple concept, get the packages delivered to their location in the shortest possible time. There is a twist, you have to control the arms of the delivery person individually similarly to other titles like Octodad or QWOP.

When I fired up the game it gave me the option of playing locally with up to four players or online with the same amount. I decided to try my hand offline to explore what the game had to offer and let me tell you; it is a banana sandwich.

The game starts off teaching you the basics of making a delivery. Grab the package dispenser switch, lift it up to pop out a package, and deliver it to the marked location. Seems simple, until you actually try to move the package with any precision. The next dispenser that is marked has a vehicle spawn when you lift the switch to get the package out. Obviously they wanted me to use the vehicle to deliver this next package and it was a little trickier than anticipated.

As I explored and drove around, there were more things to factor in, like speed: if you go too fast the package will fly out, or the shocking surprise that if you drive over a manhole cover, your package and vehicle will get bumped into the air. All of these factors just added to the fun and character of the game.

As you complete deliveries, you are rewarded with cosmetics to customize your driver. At any point you can enter the menu to switch up your customization. Some of it was locked behind DLC. However, it seems a decent amount of the options were unlock-able by playing the game.

Totally Reliable Delivery Service is set up on several different islands, with each having their own number of deliveries to be completed and it actually feels like quite a bit to undertake.

The game has simple controls: left/right trigger controls grabbing with your left/right hands respectively. Left/right bumper raises the corresponding arm so you can lift the package, and in a vehicle whichever hand grabs the driving stick steers the vehicle with the corresponding analog stick. Pressing in the left stick runs while not in the vehicle, and honks while driving. The nature of physics games adds to the difficulty and challenge. There were times where I struggled with the controls: the game sometimes has difficulty with understanding where your feet are in comparison to the ground and I found myself getting permanently stuck on multiple occasions. However, there is a re-spawn feature to quickly get unstuck.

Speaking of controls, Totally Reliable Delivery Service throws a plethora of vehicles at you to make sure your packages get delivered safely. The most fun vehicle I encountered was a race kart that was powered by two fire extinguishers, however there wasn’t any room to carry a package in it. Some of the vehicles feel good and simple like the forklift, but the most frustrating to operate by far was the helicopter. The three times I tried to deliver a package using it, I crashed or fell into the ocean.

The online mode has a few options, ranging from quick play to hosting your own sessions. I hopped into a quick play session and it was chaos, delivery drivers crashing into each other, destroying packages, the system had failed us. The positive to take away is that there were a bunch of people playing. So I joined another session and it went a bit more smooth, me and another gentleman delivered a few packages together and tag teamed some of the heavier deliveries.

One last note about Totally Reliable Delivery Service, the music is awesome. It has a calming and smooth rhythm that makes the game feel like it is moving along at a nice pace, without interfering with game-play or annoying you.

A Totally Reliable Delivery Service has its share of technical bugs that's for sure, but what it delivers is a lot of fun. I think if you had a couple friends to coordinate the chaos with, the game would be on another level of goofy multiplayer fun.