Funcom·Released Oct 27, 2015·Single player
Set in a creepy amusement park hiding a dark and sinister secret, The Park is a first-person psychological horror experience focused on exploration and storytelling.
While it doesn't reinvent the wheel, The Park manages to deliver a ton of great scares.
The Park is a bit of an oddity. A walking simulator with an incredibly brief runtime – 90 minutes at a leisurely pace – that nonetheless has some fun ideas sprinkled in. Actually riding the amusement park rides is a lot of fun – and effectively creepy in a couple of instances – but the rest of the game has nothing to offer other than walking really. Toss in some less-than-ideal performance hiccups and mediocre voice acting, and the title doesn't feel like it comes anywhere near justifying its price tag.
The Park is filled with very creepy moments but relies too much on a story which suffers from disjointed pacing.
The rise of the narrative adventure presents fresh challenges for both developers and reviewers alike. The reliable old…
In The Park, players are in for a disturbing psychological ride that deals with depression, loss, and the dark feelings that parents might not discuss in polite company.
At only a couple of hours,The Park doesn't linger or overstay its welcome. It makes smart use of established horror tricks and tropes, and gave me a character that I immediately liked and cared about, even though I recognized I'd been on this ride before.
For all of my complaints, I'd like to see more. More explorations of the weird places that we scrap, shoot and claw our way through as we play games. More short stories. More horror. If Funcom want to flesh out their Secret World with a few more side projects, I'll be a the front of the queue, even if I'm not convinced I'll enjoy the ride.
