Totally Reliable Delivery Service Review on Xbox

Totally Reliable Delivery Service is a game which uses ragdoll physics and package delivery to its extreme. Work solo or together, using odd machinery, useful gadgets, and the wonders of physics to reliably deliver packages to their destination.

The premise of the game is simple, you take control of a ragdoll character and spend your time trying to deliver packages in an open sandbox world. Think Human falls flat meets Postman Pat, a postman falls flat if you will.

Gameplay

You start of with a basic rag doll character which you can fully customize at anytime by entering the pause menu. To start off with, you can pick from a pretty good selection of outfits, facial items and silly costumes. However as you make more deliveries, you then unlock even more to ensure your delivery person to truly unique.

Now whilst this is a game is best with others and their co-operation, I would recommend that you start off solo. Mostly because you can then get used to the rag doll physics and wont look like a complete wally when trying to control vehicles in other peoples worlds. For those who have played human falls flat, you will instantly understand the appeal of this game. For those that haven’t your first thought might be…why the controls so bad???

 Ignore this for the moment and realize that this has been designed this way. You control everything your person does, from which arm to move to which hand grabs what in a floppy sort of way. It’s simple, a little frustrating, but oh so good when you work it out!

When you spawn, you get told how to do deliveries, which entail pulling a stick on the package drop box, which then tells you where to deliver. The tricky part is how you deliver said package as some can be fragile, explosive, slippery or awkward. Combine this with a timer which shows how long you took, and potentially a damage meter and things get a bit hectic.  Once delivered, you get to see the result, which depending on how well you did, rates you in either bronze, silver or gold. Most drop boxes however, do have a convenient solution nearby though, which are mostly in the form of wacky machinery or gadgets. Combine this with you controlling your characters rag doll physics and this can prove to be quite the daunting task.

And thus begins your various and often hilarious attempts to do something most would find simple. Even getting a package into the back of a vehicle will take skill in understanding how your characters body moves and works. However, it won’t take you long and your soon be waddling your delivery person across quite a large open world in an ever increasing and funny attempt to drop off a object.

Now speaking of control, the layout of such,  did give me a bit of an odd issue. You see the trigger buttons control your respective left and right arms, whilst bumper buttons activate the corresponding grab of said arms. Generally this was all fine, but on the heavier items, I had to use all triggers and bumpers to hold the package off the ground. Not a problem you may think, until you realize that you are using most of your fingers in just holding a package and will then have to do some thumb gymnastics to move your character. To resolve this the developer could easily add in a setting which could allow us to change the controls to a much more manageable layout.

Now whilst the missions are fun in their own way, its when you side track and explore the worlds wacky environment that really heralds the games truest form of enjoyment.

Here is where things really get silly and you will often find hidden gems that will make you laugh out loud. And if you combine this with other people, before you know it you will be charging rockets and planes into each other, or firing your mates out of cannons and into balloons. There is so much fun to be had here, I just couldn’t stop myself from finding the next wacky thing to do and see my characters rag doll body react in equally funny ways. My favorite so far is flinging myself and others into the carnival wheel as it goes round at speed. Try it, your soon see what I mean.

The developers have also hidden a few amazing little gems into the game, which really do boost the overflowing enjoyment. In one amazing area I found they had added their very own version of rocket league if you could find the hidden switch. This alone provided me and friends a few hours of amazing enjoyment.

Speaking of friends, at any moment you can invite your friends into your gaming world for true rag doll carnage. Or if you don’t have any, you can simply jump into others and help them complete deliveries or even hinder them. Just be aware, if you are too much of a pain, they can boot you.

Genuinely I have to say, this game is a lot silly down to earth, belly laughing fun, that is perfect for a you, family and mates to do stupid things in. From paragliding into cannons, to jumping off the blimp and grabbing onto a mates plane as they fly past, to ramming your vehicle into your mate who holds a nuclear device, its all superb silly fun.

Graphics

The games art style is like a cute cuddly jelly baby designed world that oozes colour and patterns of a simplified nature,, that works perfectly in showing off its fun locations and wacky machinery. The way your character wobbles as they wave, to the way they waddle along when running, its all been designed to endear them to you, and it works. The beautiful bright colour pallet shines here, whether you re in a town, beach, snowy mountain or techno floating fortress. The developers have gone out of their way to show off a variety of amazing locations in his lovely open sandbox world, and in doing so, means your always wanting to explore. 

But, whilst the graphics are lovely, I did notice some heavy pop ins and slow down. Now I reviewed this on the Xbox One X, and even then I saw chunks of map, meters away from me load in as I just got there, on solo. With its simplistic design style, this really shouldn’t be happening, as its draw distance has been heavily scaled down too. There will likely be a day one patch to fix this, but I thought it prudent to point out as those on the mid-range consoles may experience far more game breaking elements.

Sound

The music here is very techno orientated with a decent amount of different tracks to keep your ears pleasantly entertained. The general sounds like your characters movements, explosions or general vehicle sounds are top notch. There is voice sounds for your delivery person, say from the average grunt or ouch. Overall the sounds do the job and help sell this fun titles quirky nature.

Verdict

This leads me onto the rating of the game:-

Now I rate games in order of, avoid, on sale, great purchase and must own. My rating for Totally Reliable Delivery Service is "Great Purchase".

This game wears its silliness on its shoulders and even with some minor technical issues, will provide you with the belly laughs for hours on end. This rag doll open world sandbox game is great alone but best with friends.

The game is currently priced on Xbox at £12.49 or approx $16, and depending on skill and patience would give you about 10-20 hours worth of gameplay to potentially clear all the deliveries,  however it will easily keep you interested for hundreds more due to add-ons, accessories and general wacky fun.

This game brought out my inner child in ways I had yet to imagine, and never have I laughed so much when seeing my tubby character gets into so much havoc.