The Park is a pulse-quickening funfair where all the attractions are allusions to other, better works of horror. The Switch port, out now, faithfully maintains the excitement of the original 2015 release, as well as its uncritical embrace of the touchstones of the wider genre.
It borrows its pall of mourning, monster design and parental anxiety from The Babadook, shrouds it in an ichor-drenched Lovecraft-style descent into madness and sets it against the dark-secrets-in-small-town-Maine backdrop of the works of Stephen King.
And, on the off chance you didn’t catch these allusions, The Park riddles its world with explicit references. A kid in a Cthulhu t-shirt. A brochure mentioning the “Overlook Motel.” Tophats, trench coats and pointy fingers. It even offers up some mascot scares and teddy bears for the Five Nights at Freddy’s crowd.
The Park arranges these themes and story beats like Imagineers might map out rollercoaster placement at Disneyland. They don’t always make sense in conversation with each other; what’s this spooky New Orleans mansion doing next to the Hall of Presidents? You might wish that the developers at Funcom had picked a lane and stayed in it. But, each subgenre of horror is brought to life entertainingly enough on its own. And, against the odds, The Park manages to hold together thanks to an engaging story, some smart design choices and, crucially, a short runtime.
You play as Lorraine, a beleaguered single mother wandering a theme park after dark in search of her son, Callum, who, likewise, is searching for his lost teddy bear. Lorraine makes the rounds from ride to ride, calling out to her son — there’s a dedicated “yell at Callum” button — as things in the park go increasingly sideways.
As you walk through the park, the big beats of Lorraine’s backstory (as well as the backstory of the park itself, and the land it’s built on) are revealed through narration and text-based pick-ups. This story involves mental illness and grief, and doesn’t handle either especially sensitively. But, Fryda Wolff gives a terrific vocal performance as Lorraine, and the writers did a pretty good job with the exposition (even if they didn’t do enough work interrogating some of their themes). I enjoyed exploring the park, finding what the developers had left waiting for me.
That exploration is, thankfully, unhurried. The Park takes, at most, about two hours to complete, and it was a surprising joy to play a first-person horror game in which I spent zero minutes running from monsters. Instead, The Park guides players from horror set-piece to set-piece. It takes cues from its setting, allowing players to — as riders on a rollercoaster — sit back and experience the ride, rather than forcing them to Interact. Horror games, far too often, feel like Flinstones cars, needlessly propelled by their passengers’ efforts. The Park neatly sidesteps this, embracing the follow-the-leader model of high spectacle first-person experiences like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. As a result, its scares remained scary, rather than becoming the annoyance that horror monsters often morph into when we’re forced to escape them in exacting, automatic game over chase sequences.
You’ll stumble onto a park map early on that makes clear the scope of the game, laying out the attractions you’ll explore before The Park reaches its conclusion. Each is distinct and memorable, but none outstay its welcome. Each ride reveals its horror like a flashbulb, disappearing immediately, but leaving shapes swimming before your eyes.
But, The Park’s horrors are at times undercut by its unattractive presentation. This has never been a good looking game. By the standards of its contemporaries like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (2014) and Firewatch (2016), The Park is ugly, with consistent pop-in, PS3-era environmental art, and unimpressive character models. It looks more like Dear Esther, the mod for Half-Life 2, than Dear Esther, the game that got a console release. When docked, The Park’s graphics are on par with the original PC release. But, in handheld (where I tackled my first of two playthroughs) the already-weak graphics take another hit. This isn’t always a big deal — the strong voice work and well-written documents do enough to sell the story — but it is a problem whenever the camera lingers on a monster. These are not creatures that should be viewed at length, and The Park, unfortunately, lingers too long, at times.
Generally, though, The Park is an effective experience. It avoids the first-person horror genre’s worst habits while conveying an engaging story. It leans hard on horror tropes (and fails to interrogate well-trod stereotypical presentations of mental illness) but manages to unearth something potent in the process. Your mileage will certainly vary; roller coasters are thrilling for some, nauseating for others. I enjoyed this ride.
The Park review code for Nintendo Switch provided by the publisher.
The Park is out now on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
