UFO 50 Retrospective Part 23 - Onion Delivery
This game has layers
Ahhh, Onion Delivery. This is one of the big ones in the collection. And by that I mean, usually considered one of the worst. People do not like this game. I’m people, in this instance. It WAS my absolute bottom of the barrel least favorite when I did my first two tier lists, but after cherrying everything, it’s now like… bottom 5. But why is Onion Delivery so maligned? It’s the directorial debut of Chiffon Bola, who used to work as a delivery driver, and I LOVE Bola, so this SHOULD be good, right??
In Onion Delivery you play as Woogy, an alien who lives in Zorrg City, in the seedy and dangerous occupation as ONION DELIVERER. You work for Onion and Sons and your job is to drive around the city, going to randomly selected drop off points on the map, and dropping off onions. It can be described as like Grand Theft Auto 1 or 2, with some Crazy Taxi thrown in. It’s really that simple. Drive around, going to the different drop off points that it assigns you, for five drop offs. Once you drop off five, it will allow you to either clock in for the day, or do some more deliveries. You have a limited time, but after finishing your alloted five, it gives you more time for overtime. Get through the week to win, get 50 deliveries (an average of 7 a day, plus one 8 day) to retire early and live out a life of vacay. The cherry win.
The game starts out normal, but every day a random Day Event is rolled, shown on the television at the start of the day. These events can range from incliment weather, backed up slime pipes, roving street gangs, or aliens trying to shoot you. Everyone in this city fucking hates onion delivery people, and if a gang is driving around and sees you, they will do everything they can to make sure you are fucking dead. It’s annoying as hell! Some events are worse than others, but the worst ones are prrrobably the chasing onion mom, and the two that make the game harder to control, backed up slime and rainy weather, because…
This game controls. Like. Shit. This game feels awful to control, and even once you start getting better and better, it doesn’t get THAT much easier to control. It legit feels like you taped a rocket to some ice and are trying to race around on butter. You cannot make sharp turns to save your fucking life from a stand still, you need some speed, which is really awkward in a lot of setups, ESPECIALLY because this city is FILLED with dead ends and wrong turns, and the arrow pointing you to your next destination do NOT help. You NEED to memorize this city. I looked at a map and kept pausing over and over to figure out my route to each area. EVENTUALLY I KINDA figured out some of the map, but it was… rough.
I seriously cannot over exaggerate how agonizing this game feels to control. You eventually learn strategies that will help. You can hold the brake and accelerate and turn for good 180 turns. You need to let up on gas for sharper turns. You learn the routes, where to pick up extra time, the shortcuts. But nothing will prepare you for just being fucking thrown around by random events and shit. You have three health, and you regain it easily by driving fast with no accidents, or delivering an onion, which is good cause otherwise I do not doubt this would be impossible.
In conclusion, Onion Delivery is a game that seriously grew on me as I got better at it, and I still don’t actually like it. The style and vibe is good weird space shit, and it’s goofy as hell, but god. It just isn’t very fun to play.
3.5/10