Pumping The Brakes
HIGH Sliding into a delivery with one second left on the clock.
LOW Trying to turn around in a dead end.
WTF Mr. Wiener.
When I think of compelling mechanics, braking isn’t typically the first that comes to mind. Nonetheless, the developers at Billy Goat Entertainment have worked some kind of magic in translating the universal experience of riding a bicycle over to a controller, and the surprisingly nuanced process of bringing my bike courier to a skidding halt in the streets of Parcel Corps will go down as one of my favorite moments of 2024.
Parcel Corps is played from a third person perspective. The left and right triggers control the front and rear brakes respectively, and there is a subtlety in learning how to use the two in concert. On the approach to a destination, I’d hit the right trigger to throw my cyclist into a skid, turning ever so slightly as I slid into the delivery. Hitting the left trigger at just the right moment brings me to a halt. Doing this in such a way that I was perfectly positioned to pull out toward my next destination became a meta-challenge unto itself.
Beyond the joys of deceleration, I was equally impressed with Parcel Corps’ approach to speed and momentum. Mashing the X button to gain speed, I crest a hill. Holding down the right shoulder button leans my courier forward, increasing velocity as I come down the other side. I hold down the X button to maintain my momentum as the road levels before me. There is an ebb and flow to this process that perfectly mirrors riding a bike in real life. The intentionality of these design decisions shines through perfectly, and speaks to the developer’s attention to detail.
Unfortunately, this clarity of vision and execution does not extend to the remainder of Parcel Corps.
Beyond my infatuation with bringing my bike to a stylish halt, the majority of Parcel Corps revolves around gaining the business of local pizza joints, hospitals, furniture stores and more through successful deliveries in the fictional city of New Island. Sign up enough, and the player can participate in a Delivery Rush. These rush events involve making as many deliveries as possible in a two-minute span — each successful delivery netting additional time on the clock. Completing enough of these unlocks the next area of the city.
There is a thrill in the speed of these rushes, and a feeling of tension as I whip around corners, dodging traffic and courier-hating police attempting to beat the clock. Unfortunately, this exact same process repeats in identical fashion throughout each of the city’s boroughs with little sense of evolution or progress. No amount of precision braking and acceleration were enough to alleviate the repetition of making the same deliveries from the same restaurants, to the same characters. While the varied cityscapes do offer some antidote to this monotony, their design is rife with its own issues.
Each area functions as a small open-world with players being explicitly encouraged to blaze their own trail. The streets and sidewalks are often the least efficient paths and typically a haven for the over-zealous police force. Alternate routes are suggested via yellow paint and graffiti that highlights rails and architecture the player can grind or wall-ride on to reach new heights.
The level design starts off well enough with wide, spacious early areas. In these initial stages, navigation was a joy as I bounded over hills and made split-second decisions to take a jump over the lake, or bound off of a tent as a shortcut. This flexibility lends itself to the time-based delivery challenges, and melds well with the expressive mechanics as I lock in delivery after delivery.
The traversal, however, becomes far more complicated in later stages as the player moves into congested and vertically-oriented areas of the city. While this shift certainly adds challenge, an unintended side effect of this structure is limitation of player agency.
Suddenly the yellow-laden pathways felt less like opportunities, and more like bounding boxes. Trying to cut through a construction site to deliver some noodles becomes a sisyphean task as I miss the jump onto a suspended girder for the third time, only to wheel around and try again. Compounding my frustration, there is no instant restart for deliveries, and with tight deadlines I spent much of my time waiting out the clock on a hopeless assignment, only to begin the cycle anew.
Parcel Corps is ostensibly a satirical tale of capitalism gone awry, with its antagonist, Rich Villaine (get it?) hell bent on ruining the environment through corporate greed. However, beyond the interstitial newsreels that play between stages, this narrative almost never informs the actual play in Parcel Corps. Apropos of nothing, in its final moments, Parcel Corps suddenly shifts into a completely different experience as I’m suddenly battling an attack helicopter on the roof of the oil company’s sky-scraper headquarters, all while pedaling furiously atop my trusty two-wheeler.
These segments play out as a linear, precision platformer, and are absolutely the best moments of Parcel Corps. Requiring a keen understanding of the mechanics, I was surprised and delighted by the implementation of the core abilities in Parcel Corps’ climax. Sliding under helicopter blades and bunny hopping into a wall ride to avoid rocket fire from a gunship is infinitely more engaging than delivering pizza to the denizens of New Island. This disparity is even highlighted in a fourth-wall breaking cutscene where the developers lament a restrictive budget and unrealistic timeline!
There’s an apparent tension in what Parcel Corps wants to be and what it actually is. The moments where it shines — the early, flexible stages and the later, hyper focused boss battles — are tactile, engaging and nearly worth the price of entry alone. Unfortunately, the current version hosting repetitive and frustrating design, never lives up to that potential. While it’s clear that Billy Goat Entertainment weren’t able to fully execute their vision of Parcel Corps, based on the parts that do work, I sincerely hope that someday they get to.
Rating: 5 out of 10
— Ryan Nalley
Disclosures: This game is developed by Billy Goat Entertainment Ltd and published by Secret Mode. It is currently available on PC, PS5 and XBS/X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 16 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 0 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Drug Reference, Mild Violence, and Use of Tobacco. There is mild violence as the police across the various stages will attempt to shoot at and tackle the player as they ride through the city. This violence is highly stylized, there is no blood or gore, and the player is never killed — only temporarily arrested or sent to the hospital. A character is seen smoking a cigar in several scenes. There is a character named Mr. Wiener (a hotdog mascot for a food company) who speaks in innuendo, and while his dialogue is never sexually explicit there are lines with suggestive meaning such as, “Oh, well hello there little person! Your friend Mr. Wiener has a deliciously saucy treat he’d sure love to place inside your lunchbox. Te he he.”
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. All audio cues are represented through on-screen indicators. This game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.
Following this introduction, Ryan dove headlong into the 16 and 64-bit eras, culminating in the year 2000 with a fateful visit to the local game shop.On the recommendation of a saintly store clerk, Ryan picked up a copy of Deus Ex and, shortly thereafter, embarked on the vain quest to find a game that tops it.
This journey has led Ryan to GameCritics where he attempts to articulate why he still finds this medium so compelling.When not playing or writing about games, Ryan can be found watching competition reality television with his wife, their dog, and three cats.
- Blood West Review - November 23, 2025
- Easy Delivery Co. Review - September 30, 2025
- Misc. A Tiny Tale Review - September 23, 2025