Mini Review: Parcel Corps (PS5) - A Speedy Dispatch, Not a Special Delivery

Delivery games vary drastically from simple delivery driver simulators to more complex titles such as Death Stranding, where you traverse treacherous terrain to complete your daily drops. However, Parcel Corps, the cel-shaded, extreme sports delivery game from Billy Goat Entertainment, sticks to a more familiar concept, providing the player a BMX for completing business drop-offs with style and in a timely manner.

With saddle under cheeks and tyres on tarmac you set out on a 12 to 15-hour campaign to recruit a variety of wonderfully wacky businesses as clients for your new courier company. By scanning QR codes located on signs around the city, you can activate small challenges — time trials, fragile shipments, drone takedowns, poster placements, and trick-performing trials. If completed successfully you'll onboard the new firm and have the option to fulfil day-to-day jobs for them. After several establishments are available, you’ll unlock Delivery Rush, a mode tasking you with increasing your reputation by achieving as many client duties as possible in a short amount of time, with complete freedom of where you go and who you deliver for.

Along the way you’ll be performing various tricks on your customisable BMX; rail grinding, bunny hopping, and wall riding to name a few. The controls for these can be cumbersome when combined with the basics, pushing in the direction of travel on the analogue while mashing X to pedal, right trigger to drift and the left to slow. It might sound simple, but with the addition of even more advanced controls, it takes a good while to master. With some buttons linked to multiple controls it can often trigger an unwanted action, killing your built-up momentum, which is very frustrating when in a time-sensitive scenario.

To make matters worse there's a slew of frame rate drops, wonky physics, and janky object collisions that cause you to get stuck, clip into the environment, or even fall through the world entirely. It’s all lacking a certain level of polish that would come with that special delivery.

Parcel Corps has a quirky and fun aesthetic with cel-shaded visuals that complement the trendy, edgy teen vibe it’s got going with BMXing and dark comedic characters. However, the repetitive gameplay and sheer number of visual bugs overshadow the enjoyable elements. With misaligned animations, parts of the environment popping in and out, glitchy objects floating around, music looping, and characters blocking cutscenes, it’s a real struggle to recommend a title with this many issues.