The Park (Xbox One)

The Park is a psychological horror adventure that takes place within the universe of The Secret World, an MMORPG created and maintained by the Norwegian studio Funcom. This spin-off has been described as “experimental”, and fans of The Secret World looking for combat, missions, sweeping storyline, and the like are not going to find them here. Instead, The Park is a “walking simulator” that follows the story of one character’s descent into madness – or maybe she was already there?

No Griswolds here

The player takes on the role of Lorraine, a single mom who’s just about to leave an amusement park – Nathaniel Winter’s Atlantic Island Park – when her son Callum informs her that he’s left his teddy bear behind. Lorraine crosses the now-empty parking lot to speak with one of the employees who’s still manning the information desk. The employee knows her name – apparently Lorraine and Callum come here a lot, and she mutters as much to herself. But while they’re talking, Callum rushes past his mother and back into the park. The employee allows Lorraine to go in after him, and that’s where the adventure begins.

While you’re on the escalator up into the park, everything suddenly goes dark, and you enter an amusement park that seems to have been abandoned long ago. There’s a sign showing you where you are on a map of the park, and all the cool rides and other facilities the place has to offer: bumper cars, a roller coaster, a huge ferris wheel, the Tunnel of Tales (featuring the story of Hansel and Gretel), and more. The park’s rather creepy mascot, Chad the Chipmunk – who looks more like a squirrel had a baby with a Care Bear – appears on everything, and references to the works H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and various other hints indicate that something’s not right about this place. I mean who wouldn’t want to stay at the Overlook Motel?

The story is told mostly through Lorraine’s introspective mutterings to herself, as well as through scraps of paper and other documents strewn about the park, including police reports, maintenance forms, etc. The whole time, Callum is just ahead of you, and you can call out to him and he’ll call back. Over time, Lorraine’s little soliloquies get stranger and stranger, and the connections between the park’s dark past and Lorraine’s own family history start to become apparent. All in all, the story has about the same runtime as a movie – I finished it in under two hours.

Walking and reading simulator

Lots of people like to hate on so-called “walking sims”, but I don’t see the reason. The Park is essentially an interactive cinematic experience rather than a game proper, so the lack of combat, puzzles, or any real challenge other than your own nerves shouldn’t be held against it. The controls are very basic, allowing you to move in all directions, interact with objects (mostly reading things), and get on and off or rides. You can also call out to Callum, and there’s a mechanic where shouting can help you see objects in the environment you can interact with. It’s possible to toggle walk/run, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason to not just run all the time, since it’s not like stamina or stealth play a role.

Like the amusement park rides themselves, the game is pretty much on rails. You make your way through the park, riding each of the rides, and things get progressively weirder. The rides are a really cool idea, and each one features a few jump scares, but one thing I didn’t like is that they artificially limit your field of vision while you’re on them, making it impossible to turn around. Another issue I had was that there’s no way to zoom in on the notes and other things, which forced me to sit really close to the screen just so I could read them.

The horror element of the game is mostly in the form of jump scares, some of which really did have me feeling chills. As to the psychological part of it, the descent into madness is depicted pretty well, and one particular sequence where you keep re-entering the same room, only to find small differences each time that eventually add up into full-blown craziness. But about halfway through the game, the ending starts to become obvious. What this means is that the whole ”messing with the player’s mind” thing doesn’t really work all that much, in my opinion.

You ain’t been to an amusement park till you’ve been to an abandoned one

The game’s depiction of the environment actually looks really good, considering the indie nature of the game. The designers have certainly managed to capture the creepy vibe of an amusement park that’s been abandoned and left to rot. The only problem is that there really isn’t much there – like I said above, in less than two hours you’ve seen everything. Still, they nail the image of a rickety ferris wheel and a dubious-looking roller coaster, and the Hansel and Gretel Tunnel of Tales thing is actually pretty spot-on for the kind of thing you’d expect from a lower-budget amusement park. But no matter how creepy or run-down everything looks, the fact that you can’t die or even make any wrong choices really detracts from the feeling of danger, and the emotional investment is even less than what you’d expect of a horror movie.

The character models themselves could have been better, too. While there aren’t that many to begin with, the main character model features some jagged edges and other bits of unpleasantness you shouldn’t expect to see in a modern game on a modern console. In fact, there’s one sequence where you can see yourself in the mirror, and Lorraine’s face is dead and expressionless, her eyes like glass orbs, even if she’s talking to herself at the time. Now, it’s telling that I could not tell if this was intentionally done or whether it’s just an actual quality issue. I’m leaning towards the latter.

I really enjoyed the voice acting – mostly it’s just Lorraine doing the talking, but the actress who voices her does a wonderful job, with the less sane parts periodically breaking out through an otherwise normal-ish façade. The sound effects and everything else are pretty standard – nothing to write home about, but also nothing to criticize.