The Park Reviews
As a game, The Park's story doesn't feel fully formed - like a building crescendo that suddenly stops. That's not including the unevenness of its plot, average visuals and ho-hum frights. The Park isn't the renaissance of Funcom's adventuring prowess - it's a short, twisted, grimy tale that picks apart the human psyche and its failings. If only it had been so much more.
The Park is deep, complex and disturbing. With great themes and passive mechanics, The Parks invites you to create a seriesof images in your mind that will put you in the flesh of the main character, Lorraine, and question her continuosly. Its links to The Secret World make it a bit confusing for those who haven't played it, though.
The Park was a decent experience though far too quick to really offer a solid experience.
The Park doesn't really bring anything new to the horror table, but honestly, that's okay. Its 90 minutes are filled with an impressive atmosphere, interesting themes, and spooky places to poke around. While some of the attractions are a bit long in the tooth, The Park provides enough tension and scares to warrant a playthrough from any horror fan.
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.
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.
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.
The story at the heart of The Park makes it a worthwhile trip if you've got £9.99 to burn
At the end of the day, The Park has some really nice set pieces going for it. The mood it's looking for mostly achieves, and the voice work really hits the nail right on the head. The way the game moves isn't a chore like so many other First Person Experience games tend to be. It does some things right, just not all of them. If your expectations are in order, taking a trip to Atlantic Island Park may not be such a scary proposition after all.
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 tells a dark and very disturbing story, the park itself is a joy to explore, and the voice acting is top notch. I've played a few horror games already in 2016 but The Park is so far my favorite.
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.
Ultimately this is a bland experience with a runtime less than some actually scary horror films.
The Park is an absolutely terrifying game, but what's continued to haunt me about it long after I've put the controller down isn't Chad the Chipmunk, or the Bogeyman, or the Witch – it's how distressing and real the game and its themes are once you peel back those monster story trappings.
All in all this game was fun but it could definitely use more content and substance
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 an interesting experience, and one I feel glad to have had. Somewhere within it, there is an extremely good horror experience, and with some narrative changes it could be a truly excellent game. However, The Park fails to reach these expectations, which is a shame given how good some aspects of it are.
The Park looks like it was a more of a test than a game itself. It's confusing, simple and UI is useless for console players. You can't enjoy the story, because you will get lost. You can't enjoy backstory, because you need to stand against your TV to ready anything in-game. It's a quick completion though.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Undeniably a bit weird and creepy, unfortunately just doesn't make for many thrills with too much walking