anonymous
Apr 11 2005, 06:35 AM
Game: Alone In the Park
Creator: Ottoman
Genre: Horror Adventure
Description: South Park meets Resident Evil in a good but very flawed game.

Rating: 69%

Review:

I reminisce the time when Resident Evil came out; I was only 12/13 years old and not allowed to obtain a copy (due to an stupid rating system in my country). Me and my friends borrowed it from a gaming geek. We closed all the curtains and darkened the room, started playing and were scared by the game. It's really funny when I play the game today because it's pure comedy! Anyway, survival horror went on to become one of my favourite game genres so I was even more eager to play this game which I'm going to review now!

Nice eerie music starts off the game with 3 selections: New Game, Load Game and Exit, for the last one I always wonder why people bother to include that option. Choosing New Game lets you see the whole beginning cutscene which can't be skipped which applies for all other cutscenes. When you choose Load Game it switches to a frame in which you have to press a Load Button again, makes no sense in my opinion as the same event could have been copied to the Load Game selection. You can view also a more detailed story by pressing the 1 key. Speaking of the story, well just think of a B-Movie version of the already B-Movie like plot of the first Resident Evil, but this is not entirely like the real story with some tweaks here and there and plus it makes no sense in some areas. While playing you have nice bars, displaying your status and your ammo, which look quite professional.

Visually this game is very appealing. Your character has 8 directions which are quite rare for a South Park game and most of the weapon choices alter the appearance of the weapon that you've selected - that's cool. Enemies splatter blood (which stays on the floor) when you shoot them and they have quite a bunch of different death animations specifically for the different weapons you've used on them. Backgrounds have lot of variety in them; it even rains in a specific outdoor area. Sadly I can't give this graphics area the top mark because there are some graphics from Click libraries and the bosses look really uninspired and crappy.

Midis consist mainly of tunes from the 2 first Resident Evil games. Enemies have different sounds so do the weapons. This area is quite above the average South Park game, nothing too spectacular but it nicely gets the job done.

Gameplay is where the game has its many problems. Your character is really slow, this wouldn't be a problem but some passages are so small it's very hard to dodge the enemies. If you can't dodge you must shoot them, most of the time with your Pistol but it's so ridiculously weak that the zombies come munching for you. When a zombie makes contact he will chew for a brief moment on you and you'll lose a bar of your energy, but this situation also has its share amount of glitches. If the zombie is stuck in a loop and you manage to escape you will keep losing energy even if you're not overlapping one and if the zombie dies while you're in the zombie biting loop you won't be able to move away anymore (thus being forced to restart the game). This game has a save option but it is completely useless as the last save spot is at halfway through the game but more to this later. The game has some puzzles; they are very easy but are a nice addition nevertheless. After you beat the second boss, which is way too hard if you don't know its moving patterns and there's no save point right before him, you are treated to enter a door. Well, nothing wrong with it, but it sets you to somewhere in the beginning of the game, that means it's impossible to beat. I once managed during the last fight to get set into another frame that I haven't seen before but only fate knows how I've done that and unfortunately I was so brutally wounded by the boss that a stupid zombie killed me right away in it which killed the only chance to see what the ending has to offer.

The replay is none I guess because I was really pissed off of all the glitches it had and haven't touched the game for months as it doesn't offer anything for completion because you can't finish it.

This review ends with my obligatory conclusion: I think it really hurts to give this game not a top rating because you can actually see that much work went into it. Graphics and sound have high values and the gameplay doesn't as it's way too flawed. I can give the gameplay some credit because it tries it a bit different than most South Park games but it should have been worked on more. Alone in the Park is a good game, unfortunately one with many glitches and if it wasn't for the horrible glitch in the end I would have rated it at least 5% better, if not in the 80% to 90% area.