![]() Unfortunately, for every moment of hilarious triumph, we had just as many instances of frustration where we were fighting the game itself just to get anything done. I don’t think we could’ve done anything cooler if we’d planned it and it had us laughing for five solid minutes afterwards. But thanks to a mix of weird physics and my friend’s reflexes, he was hurled out of the back of the cart and directly into the delivery box. As we neared the destination, I lost control of the vehicle due to an exploding fire extinguisher and it veered hard to one side. My favorite moment was when we were driving to a delivery in a weird three-wheeled flatbed cart, my friend standing in the back with the package as I drove. There were plenty of times where a nonsensical interaction would lead to a funny moment for me and the friend I was playing with. Paradoxically, the greatest strength of Totally Reliable Delivery Service is also its most noteworthy shortcoming, and that’s the strange physics engine. Totally Reliable Delivery Service doesn’t do these things to frustrate the player, but instead to enable ridiculous chains of events, such as players purposefully colliding with an oil barrel while turning a corner in a truck to propel the truck over a river and into a sports stadium to complete their delivery. Walking up even the slightest incline is like climbing Everest, cars tip over when turning if driven faster than a jogging cow, and anything remotely combustible will detonate when touched by anything more forceful than a silk cloth. With these limited controls, players have to struggle against a purposefully tricky physics engine. When playing, players have very limited control over their delivery worker, only able to move, grab with their hands, and raise their arms. ![]() Totally Reliable Delivery Service is a game about goofy, overweight shipping and delivery workers attempting to deliver unusual packages while overcoming poor limb control and laws of physics that want to make the lives of every delivery worker miserable. Normally I don’t have much interest in these kinds of games, but most of the games I’ve reviewed so far this year have been slower, more serious games so when I saw Totally Reliable Delivery Service came out last week, I thought it would be a good change of pace. Since then, other games have come along including Goat Simulator, I Am Bread, Octodad: The Dadliest Catch, and Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. The first game of this genre that I’m aware of is Surgeon Simulator, a game about trying to do surgery by controlling each individual finger of a surgeon. The main focus of these games is creating preposterous, hilarious scenarios that you can share with friends and viewers through a physics engine that is almost accurate to real life. There is a category of video games that I believe are made specifically to be played by Youtubers, Twitch streamers, and anyone else who plays for an audience.
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