I’ve had a long standing love-hate relationship with The Secret World. It was an MMO that tried to innovate and bring new ideas to the RPG arena, and at the same time paradoxically stumbled with attempts to make the game appeal to the mainstream. These conflicting design approaches reflected in both gameplay and story.
The general gist of the Secret World was that every myth, legend, folk tale and horror story was real, and that you were part of a secret society meant to save the general populace from the things that go bump in the night. For every exciting encounter with Lovecraftian entities and malevolent Arabic spirits, there were swaths of the typical zombies or vampire for you to kill. One of The Secret World’s more enlightened areas was a zone called The Savage Coasts. It included colleges and amusement parks haunted by the worst of what Maine had to offer, and had you unraveling genuinely spooky mysteries that could make one flinch at their house settling. So when I learned of The Park, a spin-off title based on one of the darker locales The Secret World had to offer, I couldn’t wait to give it a shot.
So right off the bat you should know this narrative jaunt fits in more with the likes of Gone Home and Her Story than it does Amnesia or Five Night’s At Freddy’s. In fact I would say it’s even more on-rails than most narrative adventures. it’s pretty difficult to miss anything, and though the game introduces a ‘sound based’ navigation system (you have to call out to your missing child to find him, in the vein of JASON!? or CHERYL!?) you quickly realize the game is on a pretty set narrative path. This title does have humble origins, Funcom admittedly points out that the game began as an in-house tech demo to explore the Unreal 4 engine, but they soon dedicated more people towards creating what they dub an intense narrative experience.
As you play as Lorraine, the worst mother ever – and I call her this because she’d much rather ride amusement park rides than search out her missing son Callum, you find yourself sucked into the horrific history that is Atlantic Park. Secret World players aren’t going to find many deep revelations here, but it does a good job of adding a bit more narrative flavor to the other game’s already well fleshed out locale. Meanwhile new players shouldn’t fret, as The Park does a good job of being contained and focused, easily filling in the blanks you might be missing. In fact I think The Park is comparative to a fairly straight forward short story. There isn’t much left open to interpretation or to ponder, it’s more like a camp fire ghost story meant to make you squirm in your seat.
The Park is very much modeled like an amusement park ride. As you explore each of the decrepit rides within the park, you the player are carefully guided on an adventure meant to entertain, thrill and give the occasional jump scare. My initial first reaction was one of slight disappointment at the lack of real threats and annoyance at the lead’s first person purple prose narration. However once I realized what The Park was attempting to get at, being its own self referential video game equivalent of an amusement park ride, I strapped in and found myself enjoying it much more. Lorraine’s moments of poignant dear diary moments also devolved into angry, disturbing ramblings, making for a nice little payoff to her earlier poetic speeches.
For fans of The Secret World you’re going to find a ton of cute easter eggs here that are custom made just for you. The references will probably be lost on new players, but you don’t really need to understand them to enjoy the narrative. The map of Atlantic Park has been recreated for the first person experience, and there were several areas I walked into where I said aloud to myself “It seems like a real bad idea to step in here without an AK-47.” The bumper cars and the games area come to mind and, as it turns out, anything that was particularly twisted, haunted and jacked up in The Secret World was equally so in The Park. Though rather than overwhelming you with a homicidal maniac or vengeful spirits, The Park will jump you with attacks on sanity that include being stalked by plastic swans and gravity choosing to break.
My only major disappointment with The Park was the fact it was over so soon. Towards the end of the title it began to have a psychological impact on me in the same vein as Spooky’s House of Jump Scares or Silent Hill 2, where the title had done so well at building up the atmosphere the game itself had to perform very little to make me jump in my seat. It wasn’t particularly scary, but it was tense with a few moments I found to be quite frankly, awesome. Then just as it’s getting good the game ends. Even if this was mostly narrative and even if it’s a verbatim recreation of a locale in another game that only had so many features, this title could have easily gone on for another hour before I got sick of it. I can only hope Funcom plans to release more narrative adventures like these – Innsmouth Academy anyone?
The Park emulates an amusement park ride in almost every way. It’s a fun ride but a short one, and the second it’s over you want to get on again even knowing some of those initial thrills will be lost and you might raise an eyebrow at the price of admission (though it’s on par with most of Secret World’s content issues price wise). For having such small beginnings I believe the folks behind this have pulled off something to hold up with pride. It’s a great little “Halloween tale” that can be enjoyed by all audiences, but most likely the individuals getting the most out of this will be Secret World fans. I mean this quite literally too, as there are rewards you can get via linking up The Park to your Secret World account. I do wish there were more to it, at least length wise if not gameplay or content wise, but man did I enjoy the ride it took me on.
