13 Points on The Park - Funcom - 2016 [PC]

1. The Park is a quick first person horror game than can be played in about the same amount of time as it takes to watch an episode of American Horror Story. If you are into horror, it is a perfectly reasonable way to spend your evening.

2. You have about an equal effect on its outcome as you do a television show as well. Yes, folks, this is a walking sim. If you don't like it, head on home.

3. It's set in the world of the MMO Secret World Legends. As such, it kinda feels like a bit of fan fiction but it's made by the original developer. I am not sure what this makes it. Official fan fiction? A very special episode? Who knows for sure.

4. The setup is you are, for some reason, the last person in a vacant parking lot outside of an amusement park after it closes. You are a single mother, Lorraine, and your son, Callum, is telling you he forgot his teddy bear inside. You go to ask the information desk if they've seen it and, in the meantime, the little bastard runs inside. The helpful man at the desk lets you in to go chase down your son in the now vacant amusement park at night. Horror ensues.

5. As you might expect, Callum proves rather difficult to track down. You can see the sucker but if you could catch up to him as easily as an adult could actually catch up to a small child, there wouldn't be much of a game here. You'd be in the car and driving home in two minutes. Instead, you lose him in the shadows and are forced to shout and try to track him down by following his responses.

6. This is one of those games that takes it upon itself to tell you to play wearing headphones but even with them on--and even w/ following Callum's voice being a central mechanic--the directional sound is still not very good. I'd have to turn myself perpendicular to the path I was following and shuffle along sideways in order to track which direction the sound was coming from.

7. As you awkwardly shuffle through the titular park, you come upon rides, which you ride because apparently it is more important to create storytelling moments than it is to find your son.

8. The overall story that gets told is not really about your time in the park but the events in your life that lead up to you having a kid and raising it on your own, which are revealed through said storytelling moments. Your time in the park seems like it might just be the ending of that story.

9. There is really only one voice actor with significant lines in this, Fryda Wolff, who plays Lorraine. She does excellent work, I think, but unfortunately it was wasted on this script. It's riddled w/ angst-laden, over-the-top monologues on the trials of life and child rearing. It feels like someone peeled a chewed piece of gum from a goth kid's boot in 1995 and translated it into English.

10. The fact that this was made in the constraints of an existing IP takes away from the story somewhat. The Park is psychological horror but since the story is tied to Secret World, you know it's in a setting where all the supernatural stuff is at least possible. Had it been ambiguously set what might be the real world, you'd get a lot more questions in your head about what's going on and consequently a lot more tension.

11. Credit where credit is due, this had one of the best jump scares I've ever experienced in any media. I was looking around, sliding deeply into a stupor of boredom and readying myself for a very obvious jump scare which did not come until a few seconds after I decided it was a false alarm. The timing on this was immaculate. Unfortunately, I don't think it would have worked had I not been extremely bored beforehand so whatever.

12. The ending sequence is really cool in concept, you explore and re-explore an area as you gradually either fall into insanity or actual reality is revealed to you depending on your interpretation but, like many things in this game, it is not executed all that well. It winds up overly drawn out which severely softens any impact it might have had. For what it's worth though, while not everything is tied up in a neat little package, the ending does pretty much complete the narrative making the game a complete experience on its own.

13. I guess it should be pretty clear by now that I did not think too highly of The Park in terms of being a good game. I will say though that I did enjoy its atmosphere and, faint as this praise may be, it is a reasonable stand in for a horror flick when you might be in the mood for a bad movie night. I can't give this a full-throated endorsement but if you already picked it up in a bundle or it's on sale, it might still be worth checking out.