Everyone has that game which defined, for them, the core of many games that came after it. DOOM for FPS, Warcraft for RTS and for this old reviewer anything that includes a universally destructible environment must, must take inspiration from the venerable Blast Corps. Yet it’s not a game I hear many people mentioning or talking about, instead most pointing to things (even myself it seems) like Red Faction: Guerilla or other titles that came out a decade or more later. No for me there’s no truer king than Blast Corps, the game where you lived and died by your ability to destroy obstacles so that a runaway nuclear weapon wouldn’t crash into them and explode. This is where I was transported back to when I saw Deliver at All Costs’ opening vignettes, the young boy in me seeing the opportunity to wreck untold havok to his heart’s content. Whilst that’s certain a part of the game, maybe even the core part of it, the rest of the game is surface level enough to make it less engaging than I’d hoped it’d be.
Winston Green is down on his luck; fired from his last job he finds himself moving to a new town in order to seek out a new beginning. He’s got one hell of a brain on him but that’s of no use to the people of this town which, for some unknown reason, is undergoing something of a boom in the delivery business. So he takes it upon himself to land a job at the premier delivery service: We Deliver. The writing is on the wall the second he tries to go there though, the car that his landloard lent him being left in reverse and as a result putting Winston through the front door of the house behind him. That’s just the beginnings of his troubles however as We Deliver is not your standard deliver company and Winston is far from a run of the mill driver.
I’m struggling to come up with a good assessment of DAAC’s visuals as they feel nostalgic in some senses, feeling like they’re from games of 10+ years ago, but at the same time they feel extremely modern. Part of this is the old school 3/4 fixed perspective that the game uses, something that many games of yesteryear did to avoid having to have extremely detailed assets that were viewable from all angles. Other parts come from how good the game looks from the default viewpoint which then falls completely apart in the close up sections. The devs are of course aware of that so I know it’s an aesthetic choice, I just can’t put my finger on what exactly it reminds me of. That all being said though whatever tricks they’re using they work extremely well, even when you deliberately set out to try and stress the game engine to its limits.
DAAC’s core game loop is centered on deliveries and the chaos that you can create as you go through them. You’ll be given jobs which are almost all the same at the base level: get from here to there to deliver some form of cargo. This starts off easy and direct, giving you full freedom to engage in unending destruction as you see fit, and gradually morph into varying different challenges that require you to be a little more discerning in where you point your vehicle. Most deliveries will also have a litany of other ancillary tasks you’ll need to complete or some modifiers (like a helium balloon generator attached to you) which will make the experience more…varied. In between missions you’re free to explore the world and engage in some side quests which will unlock additional upgrades for your company car.
Let’s get to the core of it: the destructible environment and driving experience is definitely the game’s standout feature. Whilst all vehicles drive the same (as far as I could tell) you’ll only ever want to be using your company car anyway since that’s the one with upgrades. Whilst it’s far from realistic in any sense of the word that’s the beauty of it: there’s barely anything stopping you from mowing down buildings, ripping up fences and just generally destroying the place should you feel like it. This makes driving back to your apartment between missions very enjoyable and usually somewhat rewarding given there’s money caches hidden everywhere that you’ll accidentally discover when you’re waist deep in a 4 storey building.
The biggest let down is one you’ll see coming a mile away: when the restrictions on your driving get put on in order to make the missions challenging. Now I expected this from the get go but it was a bit disheartening when it was clear that driving in the way that I had been for the first 30 minutes or so wasn’t going to work for the rest of the game. To be sure, there are still numerous opportunities to drive as recklessly as you want, but the campaign missions will require you not to do that in order not to fail them. Of course the devs expect you to do at least some of that, at least that’s what the achievements lead me to believe, but that tension between one of the game’s best features and the need for there to be some challenge is a hard obstacle to overcome.
That and the missions get repetitive pretty quickly. The devs have done their best to add variety into the core package delivery loop but at the end it’s effectively the same thing at the end of the day. The wanton destruction between missions helps alleviate the repetition somewhat, but there’s only so many things I can smash before I’m looking for challenge elsewhere.
A good chunk of this could be mitigated by a strong story but that’s not preset here. I will say that they’ve done a good job of letting the characters develop naturally, even managing to walk the hard line of a comedic game that doesn’t scream “HEY THAT WAS FUNNY WASN’T IT?!” that others stumble on, but the narrative is very surface level. Is that the point of the game? Not really and it’s serviceable enough, I just needed more to tie the whole experience together to forgive some of the other sins.
Saying all that though I still enjoyed Deliver at All Costs for what it was: an amazing rendition of a destruction sim that let my younger self relive the glory days of Blast Corps. My gripes come from a place of love, of wanting to want to play this more but just not finding the reasons to. Better mission variety, a more compelling narrative and somehow incorporating the core destruction mechanic rather than restricting it are all things that’d make me play it more. Not having them just means the experience had a shelf life for me, one that was shorter than I expected.
Rating: 7.5/10
Deliver at All Costs is available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S right now for $43.95. Game was played on the PC with a total play time of 3.1 hours with 12% of the achievements unlocked.
