3D Platformers have always had a special place in my heart. Games like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Super Mario 64 etc. Every time I try a new one I end up liking it, now, I don't know if it's because of nostalgia or because they're really good games, but I was thinking the same is going to happen with Paperman - Adventure Delivered. Boy, was I wrong? This game was a pain to finish, and even more of a pain to play.

3D platformers should be a joy to play, you should be able to just kick back and run around open areas collecting different collectibles and solving puzzles, throw in a simple boss fight every now and then and you got a winning combination. But when the most important part, the movement, is straight-up not enjoyable and really janky, you know you're in for a hell of a ride. Nothing in this game made sense to me, nothing felt good to do, collecting everything on a level felt like a relief, like I fully completed a souls game, because of how clunky everything felt. 

The game begins charmingly, with a fairy-tale-like story of a dragon stealing gold letters and Paperman and his friends need to take them back. It's not overly imaginative, but most of these types of games have stories like this, the gameplay is what drives platformers. You have four characters that you can change at any mailbox found around levels, each with their own ability which honestly could've been one character, it was just another design choice to prolong the gameplay with no real reason to do it. You have Paperman, his ability is that he can double jump and teleport to a piece of mail, I know it doesn't really make sense. There is Express and his ability is literally that he can sprint, and by sprint I mean run slightly faster than other characters. Scrolly has an ability to glide, that is also the only thing he does and lastly, we have Carl, who can push boxes around. All of these abilities are done differently, so why couldn't it be on one character I have no idea. You wanna progress to the next level but you got to a puzzle you can't go through without the guy that can glide? Well, run all the way back to the mailbox, wait 30 seconds for all of the animations to finish, then run all the way back to where you saw that "puzzle", do it and collect the collectible, find some new puzzle and rinse and repeat.

And don't even get me started on the gameplay. Jumps manage to feel both weightless and plodding - you feel both floaty and like a dead weight at the same time, which I didn't even know could be done, but hey, they delivered. The physics also just feels weird. You can never tell how far a jump is going to go, nor can you tell where you're going to land, a simple shadow could fix that issue, but it can't fix the weirdness of it all. Running? It shouldn't surprise you to hear that it also feels awkward and ungainly, with directions from your thumbsticks feeling more like suggestions than anything else. Combat? You're basically throwing a die and hoping that the game will register if you hit a bad guy or not, and also there's no feedback if you hit them or not, they just flop to the ground after a second or two.

Is Paperman the worst game I ever played? It's really close, it feels more like a pre-alpha demo rather than a finished product, the more I played the game, the more frustrated I got. I really can't recommend this to anyone, especially for a price of 20 euros. I literally can't find a single redeeming quality about this game, and even in the first 20 minutes of it I had three game-breaking bugs where I needed to respawn with my character to proceed. Avoid this one, it's not worth it. The only reason I'm not giving it a one is that at least you can play it, it's not completely broken.

2/10