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Courier Crisis review

Game: Courier Crisis
Platform: Saturn
Genre: Action
Developer: New Level Software

Reader review by pickhut

June 26, 2011

Bluberry, The Legendary Reviewer, responsible for penning masterpiece reviews for such games as Ninety-Nine Nights, once joked that some development team should make a game about bicycle couriers. Imagine the shock when I told him a game like that has been in existence for well over a decade. To be fair, in the video game medium, where crazy concepts are churned out on a daily basis, like a woman attacking angels with hair or a General doing... things... to Native American females, a bike messenger idea is pretty tame in comparison. Still, who thought this concept would make for an awesome video game? Well, Russell Patterson (not the artist) thought so, since he is credited in the manual for basically making the game. Though, I have this sneaking suspicion this was a prior job of his, and one that he hated.

How so? Play Courier Crisis for 30 minutes and you'll know. The game's world is very... angry. For some reason, everyone is trying to kill your messenger as you go to one destination, grab a package, and send it to another in a set time, like Crazy Taxi. From pimps and crabs, to old ladies and a gang of dogs, they just want to murder your ass whenever you cross their paths. You do have the option of punching them for points, but it's rather useless since you can just plow right through them. Some vehicles are pretty dangerous, as well, thanks in part to the developers channeling their inner dickery by programming specific cars to rush out at the last second as you try passing them. Hilariously, too, when you're on the Skid Row levels, bullets appear out of thin air and kill random civilians.

Considering the content, how the ESRB even gave Courier Crisis a Kids to Adults (KA) rating is beyond my grasp...

However, as fun and amazingly stupid as all that sounds, Courier Crisis' beginnings are remarkably tame. You won't have much problem delivering items on time with your slow-moving, licensed bike. This gives you the opportunity to reflect on the game's small issues, like the clunky movement of the bicycle, the annoyance of sticking to the side of objects you thought you passed, crashing into trivial stuff like trash cans, and listening to the mind-numbing 90s punk/grunge/rock music in the background. You also take note at how most of the city streets are so condensed, so tight, which would make navigation difficult if the game made you upgrade to faster bikes with stricter time limits to contend with.

Oh, I'm sorry, Courier Crisis actually does that. Later levels expect you to be near flawless in execution, and yet, the game does everything in its power to make sure you fail. The destination arrow that you rely on screws you over most times with confusing pathways, and all those small flaws mentioned have now been magnified. The worst, though, is having to turn every. single. corner. See, there's always going to be a 50/50 chance of running into an unavoidable car as you make a turn. There's really nothing you can do about it, because time is ticking down and you need all the speed you can gain. There was this one level I played that should've lasted 3 minutes tops, but it went on longer due to this corner nonsense. How long? Over 30 minutes.

One of the things I really despise seeing in a video game is that, no matter how skilled you become, how well you know the layouts of a stage, you still fail miserably thanks to luck. Look, Russell Patterson, I'm sorry you had a terrible experience as a bicycle courier, but that doesn't give you the right to make the rest of us suffer. Not only did you let your fellow couriers down, but you're going to make Bluberry cry when he eventually reads this expertly-written review.

So with that said, I dedicate this review to Bluberry.

Cry!

Rating: 3/10

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