The Park

Welp, here I am returning to this blog, and yet I probably won’t do another one after this until next year. Ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Anyway, nobody cares about that, so let’s just get into it, shall we? A walking simulator/first person adventure/whatever you like to call the genre game by the name of The Park, which going in, I didn’t really know much about other than it’s set in a park, and it’s one of those spooky parks. And that makes sense, that’s a decent enough premise. Why not?

First impressions #

So what it’s actually about, ostensibly, is that you’re a single mother and your kid who’s like 5 years old? 8? Shit I dunno how old kids are runs off into the park as it’s closing, because he lost his teddy bear or something. And then you have to go after him, because that’s how parenting works, and then suddenly everything goes spooky and dark and looks like it’s been abandoned for 5 years. Hate it when that happens. You get to use the B button to shout at him (not angrily, just like “Stay where you are! I’m coming!”) which would be a fun thing in itself, but it’s also the hint system, and also you don’t get penalized for using it. And then there’s blood and murdery scenes.

The graphics and sound design are nice, and it captures the atmosphere of what being in a haunted amusement park is like… well I mean it looks nice. You know what I mean? It’s spooky enough in an interesting way, which is how I go about enjoying horror games, like it’s not one of those games that aren’t even scary but they just go “BOO! Scared you, didn’t I? Yeah I bet you were scared” and they’re just made that way to get annoying streamers to play them for 12 year old audiences. None of that, it’s perfectly competent. Yay!

Most importantly, you can ride the rides. I mean yes, it’s a horror game and not just some 3D spiritual successor to Theme Park, but actually riding them is part of the story and a thing that you do. Though, it does lose points for the long ass-Hansel and Gretel (hmm XKCD 37 doesn’t work as well there) boat ride early in the game, which can easily turn people off. They do tie it into the story somewhat, but does it have to be that long? Oh well. At first it felt like it didn’t tie into the rest of the game, and each ride was just sort of one story/idea and they shoved them all together, but it starts making sense. So that’s good. Kinda.

It is quite short, less than 2 hours if you get all the achievements the first time round or don’t care about trying to do that, and maybe like 2 and a half hours if you do aim for 100%. I didn’t mind that, but yeah you probably want to get it on sale. It is also very linear as the genre tends to be, I like to think of it as a visual novel but in 3D.

Hmmm… #

There is an air of unfinishedness to it, and yeah I get that not all mystery/horror stories are the type where every mystery is explained at the end (I’m attempting to be vague about how much is left unanswered to try and avoid spoilers), and it’s like sure, okay. Maybe you can come up with your own interpretation? I liked doing that for a while after I finished the game. And then boom. You find out the real plot twist in real life, that wasn’t mentioned in any of the marketing blurbs. This was a spinoff game of some MMO called “The Secret World”. And that in itself could be fine, if it’s a standalone experience. If! But for some reason, this had a sequel that was a time limited event in that MMO. Ech! Blech! Why would they do that?

From what I can gather from TVTropes, this seems like it would explain everything that’s going on, and they deliberately decided to put all of that in there and not in this game. Which I think is a bit rude, especially as even if it wasn’t against my religion to play MMOs, I don’t think you can play that one anymore. So it’s like Funcom decided to cheat everyone out of a full experience and it feels like it’s kind of scummy, to be honest.

Concluderoo #

It’s decent, it’s still not terrible, but I think the only way you can really enjoy this game in 2024 and beyond is if you pretend that none of this MMO stuff even happened, and it is a 100% standalone experience. I also prefer that because it made some of my theories about the unsolved mysteries of the game wrong, and I don’t like being wrong. But otherwise it doesn’t feel right to give it a particularly high rating… I was going to give it a 5, but I changed it to a 6 because I felt like I was being kind of a bitch.