Totally Reliable Delivery Service (Nintendo Switch) Review

The title is, of course, ironic. The chubby delivery man or woman you'll be in control of is not reliable. Nothing is here. From carrying a package to a vehicle then driving it, to unloading your cargo, the physics of this world will be your biggest enemy, with the controls following suit. The premise is simple enough: deliver 100 items, in a sandbox island that lets you that in the way you prefer; on foot, on car, on helicopter, on cannon, whatever. Actually pulling that off is anything but simple, though, as even carrying a box, let alone loading it into the back of a car, can be quite hard.

You have to manually move each hand, with the first set of shoulder buttons being in charge of grabbing, and the second one moving them up when pressed. Have something to deliver? Great! Now wobble like a sack of potatoes towards the forklift nearby, and try to place your item on it. Feel drunk yet? No? Then start driving towards the place where this needs to go, and try to understand if you suck at driving, or something is wrong with your wheels. Reached the "finishing line?" Based on your performance, you'll be awarded with a medal, some cash, and a cosmetic item.

In reality, none of these will give you the incentive to keep on playing. Totally Reliable Delivery Service caters to the Goat Simulator demographic, in that it wants to be entertaining through the craziness of it all. You aren't supposed to have fun by completing deliveries, but by seeing your character fail doing so, or by experimenting with the game world. The problem is that, with deliberately "bad" controls, you need to provide a particular level of balance, where the player is having a hard time doing… well, anything, yet continues having fun - and this just doesn't achieves that.

The intended wonkiness and crazy physics can indeed offer some laughs, but this gets closer and closer to the realm of aggravation the longer you play, as some things happen way too frequently. Getting stuck under your car, for example, can be fun… once! When it happens for the umpteenth time, you'll want to pull your hair out. In the end, Totally Reliable Delivery Service's world is also devoid of things to do. This kind of games is about having things to experiment with to have a laugh, but here this gargantuan island mostly feels empty, and thus doesn't lets you go wild.

It's important to note that this should never be played on your own. This was always meant to be enjoyed with at least one more human being, which is why this allows local split-screen or online play for up to four players. Sadly, while company will make it easier to have a blast while trying to carry out the simplest of tasks, this wasn't built with co-op in mind. Driving a car, for instance, has one player driving it, while the other tries to simply not fall over. Oh, and by the way, there's no way to play with a single Joycon, as movement is set to left analogue, and camera to right.