Parcel Corps review

There are plenty of reasons to appreciate Parcel Corps. Much like Crazy Taxi, Billy Goat Entertainment’s latest sends you careening through a busy city, dodging traffic as you navigate to the next waypoint. Echoing the spirited wall rides, grinds, and stunting that catapulted the Tony Hawk franchise to mainstream popularity, Parcel Corps ensures that role-playing as a bike courier doesn’t feel like a thankless slog.

Yet, Parcel Corps’ satirical spirit is my favorite quality. Opening with a mock-CNN broadcast, the game’s targets are copious, with everything from fitness nuts, influencers, and corporate culture getting a playful skewering. There’s even a Twitch-like viewer feed that extends sarcasm after every crash. Sure, the game might not offer a Grand Theft Auto-level takedown of Western absurdity, but wit is welcome. 2024 has been an overwhelmingly serious year for gaming.

Peculiar Physics Make for a Bumpy Ride

Despite these strengths, one of Parcel Corps’ core components is a bit botched. Even after a dozen hours, Parcel Corps never quite nurtures the sense of immersion offered by some of the best extreme sports games. The Tony Hawk titles made you feel like you were constantly skating directly on surfaces, walls, and rails. But biking through New Island feels like riding through a weird rubber world. Waist-high water barely slows you down while jumps and wall-riding will fling you off in unpredictable directions. Bails can be annoyingly erratic as well. And that’s a shame, as stunting is one of the best ways to shave seconds when you’re delivering packages.

While the execution of riding is a bit troubling, you can’t fault the game’s range of riding abilities. One of the larger deviations is maintaining momentum with a forward stick press, saving you from constant button mashing. Pleasingly, you can whip your rear wheel around corners, while braking to stop in those circular Crazy Taxi-style zones is both responsive and quick. And yes, even there’s a button that allows you to slide under barriers. It works as long as you aren’t holding your in-game mobile.

Multitasking is Appropriately Awkward

Undoubtedly, the concept of a bike courier relying on their smartphone for work-related tasks is clever. But using your faux-phone is cumbersome, with all interaction assigned to the right thumb stick. Yes, some tasks are automated, like when the game offers different replies to text messages. And certainly, the double-click shortcut used for scanning QR codes is crafty. However, the clumsiness associated with bringing up the navigation app meant that I relied on the non-phone mini-map. Its GPS-style directions were helpful, except when an objective was positioned at a different elevation.

But if Parcel Corps could overcome its physics and smartphone control issues, there’s definitely potential here. Autonomy is provided so if you just want to explore New Island, gradually recruiting new businesses to work for, that’s a possibility. However, if you need more structure, there’s a succession of missions that task you with stunting challenges, transporting fragile goods, posting flyers, or destroying drones. The developers keep things interesting by adding new wrinkles, such as police patrols that you’ll need to avoid.

A Sporadically Unstable Framerate

Flaunting cell-shaded visuals, the game is easy on the eyes, but tougher on hardware. Running on Unity, Corps revealed some conspicuous frame drops on a variety of rigs. Yes, there were even hiccups on high-end graphics cards. But Parcel Corps admirably attempts to scale down to portable PCs, striving to stay above thirty frames-per-second on the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally. That said, a few graphical slider options and some additional optimization would prove beneficial.

While many of Parcel Corps’ ambitions are noble, the physics modeling of biking riding is suspect. The result is an experience when enjoyment is sporadically undermined when making contact with odd parts of the environment. This metal horse still needs some taming.

Parcel Corps was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.