Parcel Corps Review – Pedal to The Metal

In the busy late year calendar of game releases, I admit that Parcel Corps wasn’t a game that was on my radar. I had no knowledge of it other than a trailer which showed off crazy Tony Hawk-style bicycle tricks as you raced across a city to deliver packages. After finally playing the game, I can safely say that it has won me over – even if it feels quite derivative in its gameplay and unpolished in other areas.

In Parcel Corps, you play as a bicycle courier whose ultimate objective is to win local businesses and companies over and sign them up to your corporation’s delivery app. The only way to impress them is to deliver packages speedily on your bike and show them that you mean business.

For the most part, the gameplay of Parcel Corps has you cycling across semi-open world areas to deliver parcels and packages before a timer runs out. Along the way, you can pull off various tricks like grind on rails, bounce off wails and get air time on ramps to unlock the quickest routes to your destination. Mapping shortcuts is the best way to get a feel of the city’s layout, especially when it gets fairly challenging in the later sections of the game that requires no wrong turns or accidents.

There are, of course, plenty of obstacles and obstructions that stand in your way too. Busy intersections with moving cars means you have to be mindful about travelling on the streets, which is often faster but more dangerous due to the risks involved of getting your momentum completely stunted by a passing vehicle. Traversing the backroads, side walks and parks are all great for avoiding the obvious hazards – the game encourages you to go out of your way to find the easiest, safest and fastest path, trusting players to figure things out on their own.

Racing against a timer as you zip through busy suburbs, towns and parks while avoiding obstructions is a lot of fun. There’s a great sense of speed as you build your momentum by pulling off tricks and getting air time or speed boosts on slopes. The layout of the city is designed (in that odd Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater kind of way) to maximise your tricks and speed, with ramps, rails and destructible objects littered everywhere.

The core gameplay for Parcel Corps is rock-solid and very addictive. The bike handles extremely well with tight controls, allowing you pull off tricks and wall bounces with precision. The animations look fantastic while you’re on the bike, though sections where you’re off the bike and walking (?) look a bit wonky with stiff, unnatural character movements.

Beyond that, the presentation for Parcel Corps is excellent. Going for a more cel-shaded look was the right call as it allows the world of the game to take on a distinct, unique aesthetic. As a result, character designs can look as zany as the developers want because the world doesn’t take itself seriously at all. It’s meant to poke fun at corporations, constantly breaking the fourth wall with its quippy dialogue and bizarre real-life news segments which, shockingly, fit the game well (and they’re freaking hilarious too).

Parcel Corps is a lot more satirical than I was expecting. It’s clear that the local businesses and their colourful mascots and spokespeople are designed to emulate or mock real-world companies, though it never strays far into intellectual property theft. Hell, the developers even call them “legally-distinct-from-recognisable-IP-but-just-in-case-our-legal-email-address-goes-to-a-defunct-inbox side characters.” These characters are quirky, charming and well-acted thanks to some surprisingly great voice acting.

However, Parcel Corps also stumbles in key areas. If the gameplay and presentation all sounded familiar, that’s because you’ve seen it all before. The cel-shaded look, while inspired, can’t help but feel heavily borrowed from other games with similar presentations like Jet Set Radio, Borderlands and Hi-Fi Rush. The gameplay is also reminiscent of Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland in a lot of ways – sometimes it plays it a bit too close to the chest.

After completing deliveries, you’re rewarded with currency that you can use to customise your bike. Unfortunately, the bike customisation is a bit lacking. It’s only surface-level, meaning you can change your bike’s colours and add a variety of cosmetics to it. Sadly, there was a missed opportunity here to add performance improvements to your bike like abilities that let you ride faster, take tight corners more efficiently or help you pull off tricks easier. None of that is present with the bike customisation which would’ve been welcomed. After a while, it all becomes a bit stale and you’ll rack up money without having anything meaningful to spend it on.

Parcel Corps also has a number of weird graphical issues and hiccups. Texture pop-ins are frequent when you’re going at high speeds and noticeable stuttering halts any sort of momentum you might have going. The frame rate also struggles to keep up during busy, chaotic sections with a lot of visual confetti. The game can definitely use polishing with a few more patches.

Overall, Parcel Corps is a highly enjoyable bicycle courier game with a great sense of humour, excellent satire, colourful characters and addictive gameplay. Sadly, some of its best elements are undercut by a feeling of deja vu as it borrows from several popular video games without necessarily bringing anything new to the table. Performance issues on PC also need addressing. If you can look past its flaws, you might find a really fun way to spend an afternoon. Just don’t expect it to move the needle.

This review is based on a PC code sent to us by Secret Mode. It’s available on PC via Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.