The Park Reviews
The Park has solid atmosphere and pretty good scares, but it also has an unremarkable heroine and an inconsequential plot. It might be a decent curiosity if you're looking purely for the video game equivalent of a haunted house, but its high price and short length make it difficult to recommend.
Despite how [The Park's] conclusion stands out as both horrifying and emotionally resonant, the plot suffers in a lead-up that can feel a bit aimless.
It's a short experience but if I had to score it out of ten I'd give it a solid 8 purely for the tension I felt throughout. It's strange that something so inspired by and owing so much to The Secret World actually suffers slightly from being linked to it instead of standing alone, in the dark.
A chilling story about simple horrors, strong art design, and voice acting help tie together this horror short into a package worth checking out for horror fans.
The Park is a tale of tragedy that takes you on a literal and metaphorical roller coaster. Although the game lacks in the graphics department and sticks to the bare minimum in terms of gameplay mechanics, it is one that story seekers will probably want to check out. Get your box of tissues ready.
Exploring the destructive psychosis of a plaintive individual is a noble, if not precarious, responsibility. The Park, however, can't decide if its manic behavior is either a means of identifying with its troubled protagonist or a symptom of its own decent into chaos.
The Park's best moments come from the sense of dread and uneasiness in an abandoned amusement as you search for your kid. I wouldn't call it a scary experience, although there are a handful of jump scares, it's more unnerving than anything else. The climatic area drove home the narrative; however, if you were rushing to the end, you may not appreciate the message it is trying to convey.
The silver lining of The Park's poor showing is that it could lead Funcom to try harder should it attempt subsequent single-player adventures. In the meantime however, The Park is one attraction you should definitely skip out on.
The Park succeeds in being an unsettling jaunt into madness, but could have been much better if its developers had done more with their premise. As it stands, though, this is a title worth playing, so long as you're okay with a short runtime and little replay value.
The Park is a great piece of psychological horror, one that doesn't dip into jump scares or excessive grit. Instead it introduces a playable protagonist you can't rely on, in a discomforting situation that smartly paces itself and holds back from excess. For anyone who wants to feel perturbed and have a hard time sleeping immediately afterwards, The Park is definitely for you.
The Park may be very short, but it certainly leaves an impact. Taking a trip to Atlantic Island Park will reward horror fans with an unsettling tale of emotional trauma adorned with a number of well-orchestrated frights. As the game itself so ominously suggests, you should turn off the lights, plug in some headphones, and enjoy the ride.
A fantastically crafted psychological horror that places huge emphasis on story and narrative to drive the game.
Ultimately this is a bland experience with a runtime less than some actually scary horror films.
There will come a day where The Park is available on PS4 for peanuts, and that day is when I'd fully recommend trying its fresh, but flawed, brand of horror out. Until then, the price of admission is too high for the brevity of the ride. Especially for one that has more than a few nuts and bolts missing from it.
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.
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.
Having recently reviewed Layers of Fear, a game which also dealt with the themes of mental illness and horror, I was expecting a lot more from The Park. Walking around a fun fair for an hour with a shouty, sweary woman who is only interested in herself is about as much fun as it sounds. I suggest you save your money for a ticket to a real fun fair and hope you get stuck on a rollercoaster for an hour. That would be much more thrilling than The Park.
I don't want to give away too much as The Park is only an hour long, but I admire Funcom's effort with this experimental take on the genre. It really does try something different, even if you can feel the core themes sneaking up on you a mile away.
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.