by theygamesGrowing up as a kid, no game made me smile more than The Simpsons Hit and Run. Sure, the plethora of jokes and references to the TV series were great, but it was the destructive, ludicrous spin on the Grand Theft Auto formula that was the most addictive thing about it. It’s been a long while since I played a game that captures that same spirit – that was until I got hands-on with Deliver At All Costs, the debut title from Far Out Games that’s being published by Konami.
In a nutshell, Deliver At All Costs is a top-down driving game set in a 1950s American town where a down-on-his-luck and short-tempered chap named Winston Green picks up work as a courier. That sounds fairly tame, but I can assure you it is totally chaotic.
The handling of the vehicles encourages a slidey, cartoonish driving style, almost everything you see in the world around you can be destroyed, and the packages you deliver are… unconventional. From boxes of fireworks that rocket into the sky every few seconds, to an enormous (and still writhing) marlin that was hooked by fishermen, no delivery is straightforward. Your cargo often has an effect on the behavior of your truck too – getting airborne while delivering helium balloons lets you float for long distances, for example.
Some of Winston’s courier jobs are simple fetch quests, others will require you to prioritize speed to deliver a package against the clock, and some will force you into driving a little more carefully so as not to break or spill whatever’s in the back of your truck. Even in the 90-minute section I played, there was a good variety of mission types, and I’m sure there are more to uncover later on in the game.
I was also really impressed with the visuals and excellent aesthetics of the island town of St Monique – even if a lot of the time you’re going so fast on your delivery run you won’t have time to appreciate it. You can explore it from an isometric perspective both in vehicles and on foot, which is unsurprising given that game director Daniel Nielsen cites GTA 2 as “one of the main inspirations” of Deliver At All Costs. Both exteriors and interiors are really well-detailed, and the ‘50s vision is well-realized in the design of the cars, the style of the advertising boards and signs, and even the music and adverts you hear on the radio.
Little secrets and silly side quests are scattered around too and will distract you from the main storyline when they catch your eye. During my playthrough, I found myself helping a clown drive a haunted car into a volcano, just to give you a sense of how ridiculous some of these side quests will be. It felt reminiscent of the lunacy of nonsense games like Goat Simulator.
With the environment being fully destructible as well, it makes for the perfect sandbox. St Monique isn’t a fully open-world game, and is instead split into several sections with short loading zones in between, but that absolutely didn’t matter to me.
There are a few concerns, though. Despite the world looking fantastic from its top-down perspective, cutscenes don’t sparkle in quite the same way. While the main characters sound engaging and expressive, there is some questionable voice acting for some minor characters that feels like it might be AI-generated, although I can’t confirm that. And while we’ve all occasionally found ourselves driving like a law-abiding NPC in games like GTA, that felt extremely difficult to do here. Of course, 95% of the time you will want (and need) to be speeding and sliding around like a maniac, but I can see the ‘protect your cargo’ missions becoming a bit tedious due to the lack of control you have over some vehicles.
This isn’t so much a negative, more of a disappointment at what could have been, but Deliver At All Costs is going to launch as a single-player game only. I couldn’t help thinking how brilliant this game would be as a co-op adventure, but alas, you’ll be taking on its 10 to 12-hour campaign solo.
However, those downsides don’t detract from what was a truly joyful experience. It’s been a while since I smiled this much while playing a game – it made me feel like I was back playing Simpsons Hit and Run all over again.