Konami have not endeared themselves to PC gamers in recent years, but offered a nice surprise when they made Deliver at All Costs available for free on its release day. This unusual, madcap driving odyssey is the debut project by Swedish outfit Far Out Games. Built on impressive technology and solid gameplay fundamentals, it is frustratingly undermined by its oddly uninvolving story.
Part of what makes Deliver at All Costs distinctive is its historical setting. The game begins in 1959 and continues into the early 1960s – a time of rock and roll, changing social conventions, and Cold War unease. The player takes on the role of Winston Green, a recent arrival to the island of St. Monique. Having left his previous employment under a cloud, Green becomes a courier for an eccentric local delivery company and this is where his troubles begin.
At first glance, Far Out Games seem to have replicated something a bit like Grand Theft Auto 2. Green’s adventures are viewed from a comparable perspective, and while he can move around on foot, driving is the name of the game. St. Monique is a friendlier place than Rockstar has ever taken players to, a colourful and inviting web of small, interconnected regions. Pedestrians hit by careless drivers – Green included – will quickly pop back up, annoyed but unharmed.
Gameplay consists mainly of amusingly oddball delivery missions. These include transporting a huge live marlin, a bizarre scheme to pass off rotten watermelons as fresh produce, and moving a shipment of exploding fireworks. The driving controls are straightforward, if a little erratic. What makes driving fun in Deliver at All Costs is the studio’s main technical achievement – the wonderfully destructible and fragile environment. Green sows chaos in his wake wherever he goes, up to and including demolishing entire buildings, and it is consistently entertaining.
Sadly, the same cannot be said of the story. Too often, games have underwritten narratives that feel like afterthoughts. In contrast, Far Out Games seem to have poured a huge amount of misdirected effort into this leaden and bizarrely aimless tale. At first, Green’s story is mined for humour – a wise course. Quickly though, Far Out Games expect players to become deeply invested in the internal politics of a courier business. A saga with almost no real interest takes up more and more of the player’s time.
Even those players who seldom do so will find themselves skipping the almost Hideo Kojima-esque weight of cutscenes. What is worse is that the story’s pretensions impact gameplay too often. Green is constantly forced to drive back to the courier company HQ purely in order to trigger another tiresome, confusing scene of human resources melodrama. It is a genuine struggle to imagine what the developers were going for here, but all it serves to do is rob their game of any sense of momentum.
All of this is unfortunate because of how competently much of the rest of the game is made. While the frequent (brief) loading screens between areas are a little annoying, it is a lot of fun to cruise around St. Monique, inevitably causing mayhem in this comically fragile world. The period atmosphere is well-executed, and many of the missions are almost inspired. At one point, Green must deliver several remote control cars by driving them into the homes of their purchasers. It transpires that the local police have RC patrol cars of their own, resulting in a laughable suburban chase that recalls Micro Machines or Hot Wheels.
It is encouraging that Konami saw fit to pick up this indie project, but Deliver At All Costs is more admirable than it is truly engaging. The tin-earned narrative and patchy voice acting take up far too much of the game’s focus and the player’s attention. This odd imbalance causes what should be a refreshingly easy going experience to become something of a chore.
