Parcel Corps

I don't know what people are complaining about. It's Crazy Taxi meets Jet Set Radio. -The biking is smooth and fun. -The voice acting is obviously satire and some of it's pretty funny. -The gameplay loop is dynamic. It might have a long intro but you can skip most of it. Id because of all the bad reviews and I found them to be mostly people with no patience.

feels very corporate propaganda, and not in the parody way, also the tutorial continues to say things like "you look like you know what you're doing so i'll leave you to it, but then keeps tutorialling at you. and the constant phone notifications for every thing you do.

As someone who's loving bicycle riding in real life and used to own a fixed gear bike, I want to say this game is one of the closest biking experiences in virtual space. The city environment, feeling of speed and engaging following camera all check plus a Jet Set Radio vibe and music makes simply cruising in Parcel Corps an enjoyable game time. The arcade side of gameplay is BMX like with some tricks on ground or in the air, and the true joy is to combine them to find shortcut/interesting routes involving ramps, walls and waters. The gameplay is mainly quick burst of delivering parcels and leveling up means more playable areas and aesthetic upgrades. It's about cycling and there's a layer of humor one can find in world-building and NPC customer characters. In comparison to the forever-popular skateboarding genre and the street culture around the sport, cycling seems to be niche and lacking mainstream attention, but this game reminds me of the movie Premium Rush and my friends who riding for delivery services. Having long been searching for a bicycle game(and thinking about making one) with smooth riding controls and a cool city backdrop, I want to thank developers of making Parcel Corps. I have to admit before purchasing this game I had concerns, as twice I downloaded the demo to Steam Deck and finding the performance mediocre. To my surprise, the formal game runs quite well with beautiful effects on the PC handheld and game loading is snap. Overall, Parcel Corps is a cool indie game with simple but engaging bicycle riding controls and seems to have the scale comparable to Jet Set Radio. Dreamcast's 2000 legend is, of course, unpassable with its music and street culture vibes. But Parcel Corps is its own thing and deserving much more attention in modern-day gamescape, I wish more people who like bicycles and arcade games can discover this game and have a great time.

It really hurts to leave a negative review for a game I had so much interest in....but the videos showing this game moving that fast are incredibly misleading since the performance issues I experienced never actually let me get it that fast, even turning down everything. I like the idea of a BRC/Crazy Taxi hybrid, but much like the learning curve of playing Crazy Taxi on PS2 for the first time the controls can be a bit of a pain in the ass to get the hang of. Once you finally do you're not really rewarded with high octane gameplay because of the hitching and various frame issues you'll encounter, which I was initially concerned about heading into the demo but figured "well this is deprecated this is a pre-alpha build they have as a demo surely they fixed it right?"...and honestly I think they made it worse somehow. For all the work they did change in trying to make the controls more fluid they apparently made the gameplay less so in the process. It was a nice surprise seeing Ben Potter getting work in a video game as I've been a big fan of his for years but I think you might be better off skipping this one until there are some serious performance patches made to the game, should this ever happen. Considering the state of the demo I wouldn't hold my breath but I've been proven wrong in this capacity by other games so we'll see.

May not be everyone's cup of tea, but reminds me of the era of Playstation games when I was younger that were weird and quirky or the later Xbox store full of random fun indie titles. Play in short bursts and I think most can enjoy the quick paced riding. It's fun to discover new short cuts, particularly in the later time trial feature you unlock on the way. Writing is well done and punny (if not wordy) with various whacky characters. Different establishments will have different criteria for delivery success (tricks, fragility etc.) which mixes it up slightly. A few things bring it down, the amount of talking at the start of the game, feels a bit slow to get going. Features unlock as you play, like time trials (a clever play on Strava segments and a great part of the game) - feel as if this could have been bought forward to the first area which got a bit samey before unlocking the next area. Same with bike customisation, very lacking - at least early on/so far. Controls took me some getting used to. I've had no bugs as mentioned in other reviews, but the game has been out over a year now as I write and I've come across no real bugs. Overall I'm enjoying it, don't expect the world. If you are in to bikes and arcade-like basic Tony Hawk-esque or crazy taxi like stuff it might be for you.

The core of the game is essentially "Crazy Taxi on a bike, with grinds and wallrides", the controls are tight and responsive, and each of the level layouts are fun and have a lot to learn in terms of the best routes between each pick up point and drop off point, and they stay engaging even after you have learned everything because of the different challenges and levels of risk and reward offered by each route. The game is at its best when you are doing Delivery Rush, which is the purest form of Crazy Taxi arcade gameplay on offer here - 2 minutes on the clock, get points and extend the timer by finishing deliveries, maximise route efficiency and capitalise on map knowledge by taking on multiple deliveries at once from different pick up points to different drop off points, plan your pick up and drop off order to minimize time spent without a delivery in progress, etc. The major caveat is that the game really doesn't seem to understand that this is what you are here for. Instead of just letting you get stuck in: It has an extended tutorial/onboarding process that goes on for far too long, and is packed full of painfully unfunny dialogue. You have to grind one-off deliveries that lack the depth and excitement of Delivery Rush just to get all of the pick up points in a level to become available. You have to endure yet more onboarding, dialogue and grinding every time you go to a new level just to unlock Delivery Rush for that level. I am giving it a positive review because it is really fun when you have gotten past all of that and are doing Delivery Rush but man, committing more to the arcade core would have made for a vastly superior game. If the game stripped out all of the progression and everything it makes you do that isn't Delivery Rush, it would be a near-perfect spiritual successor to Crazy Taxi, rather than feeling like it doesn't have confidence in its own strengths. Also I can't not mention the fact that you are stuck with a fake livestream chat pinging away in the corner of your screen that cannot be disabled. I don't know what kind of Zoomer brainrotted broccoli head of a designer decided that this should be in the game, or that there should be no option to turn it off, but I sincerely hope they quit their job and go back to huffing the Galaxy Gas that undoubtably gave them that idea.

Wow so sad to see this sitting at "Mixed" reviews. I'm having a really great time so far. Thoughts on my first hour with the game (Played on Steam Deck): Yes, it does start with a just little too much talking: introducing the setting, controls, mechanics, locations, modes, etc., but it was done with some style and a bit of humor. Personally I find the dialogue and pacing a lot better than it was in other, currently higher-rated games that may be coming to mind as you watch the trailer. On-boarding may have worked better if you had a chance to mess around a bit before being required to follow semi-strict tutorial courses, or at least if you could freely mess about between segments of the the tutorial, and proceed the the next part when you were ready. My first hour with the game was a blast, and I'm looking forward to playing a lot more! It plays great on Steam Deck (text can be a bit small (as is noted in the "Steam Deck Compatibility" rating), but you don't really *need* to read anything so far anyway. The gameplay and vibes are a bit of a mix of Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi, and the difficulty within my first hour of play has been comfortable- nothing that required me to retry multiple times. I love the vibrant colors and art style in general, and the funky music has been a perfect complement to it. So far, two thumbs up, but I'll add to my review later if my opinion changes.

The riding is good, but the personality of the characters are annoying, and not too well optimized. My PC is Ryzen 2200 Vega 8, it is not powerful, it can run risk of rain 2 and ghostrunner easily, but can't run this game on minimum. It stutters, 15fps and has lag input. The tutorial is too long and can't skip it. You can at least skip the dialogues. The music is too energetic and generic.