You Suck at Parking Review (Potatoes & Molasses)
Launch review
Ignorance is bliss. Could I drive in real life I’d probably despise Happy Volcano’s new party game You Suck at Parking. The premise is simple: park your car in the designated parking area. Sounds simple — it’s not.
From a top-down camera the player drives their car around the map avoiding obstacles, outrunning the police, and utilising environmental tools to their advantage. The only catch is you cannot reverse. Bringing the car to a complete stop means you have decided to park and, if you’re not in a designated area, the game resets you to the beginning of the level.
You complete the level by parking successfully in each spot before the main timer reaches zero. Additionally each car has limited fuel that, based on testing, is not conserved by going slower (a secondary timer)— it’s all about breaking the highway code.
Controlling the car feels snappy, responsive, and controls are easy to learn. For my playthrough I used the DualShock4 controller. Playing with the mouse and keyboard isn’t detrimental though I’d recommend against it for later levels that require precision.
Each level has multiple parking spots. Once you’ve successfully parked in the first, the player is spawned in a new car at the start of the same level and must navigate to the next. Some levels involve traffic or police cars that relentlessly chase you after jumping a red light.
Occasionally these AI vehicles will bump into you, making your car roll out of the parking spot meaning you’ll have to park another car there—you can even do this to your own parked cars!
On paper this sounds frustrating, but it’s not too bad as each set of levels have their own niche obstacles. You won’t see too many police cars outside of the police station levels.
Levels are a joy to play with each having unique thematic and mechanical designs. Carefully structured with increasing difficulty, levels allow you to learn and eventually master mechanics.
Developers often throw too many mechanics at the player for the sake of increasing difficulty. In You Suck at Parking mechanics typically build to a crescendo and are replaced with a new learning curve throughout the next set of levels.
Finishing levels places you in an overworld much like the original Super Mario Bros. where you drive around freely to select levels. However, with levels dotted sparsely, awkward terrain, and no quick access menu the overworld hinders the campaign by making level selection a tedious chore.
Playing through the campaign is short with only two worlds each with three islands. The developers include a roadmap accessible from the main menu promising more campaign and multiplayer levels, but I’ll have to see it to believe it.
The inclusion of a battlepass offers different colours, bodies, hats, and other customisation options along with some cosmetic items for free players. Two nice features include the ability to progress the pass in singleplayer and multiplayer, and that if you complete the pass it will allow you to get the next season’s for free.
Understandably, people will be dissuade by the upfront cost with additional in-game purchases for cosmetic appearances. While the cosmetics could be fun for others, I’m not personally excited about customising the car’s appearance.
I’m also not convinced Happy Volcano’s push for a live-service model with an upfront purchase will be sustainable for the player population. I’ve seen many studios from Valve Corporation to Carbine Studios pushing this model in the past, later turning free-to-play to sustain population. Consider this and hold back your wallet if you’re a sceptic like me.
Once you run out of singleplayer content, multiplayer will hold your interest for a while longer after the campaign. Admittedly a breath of fresh air, multiplayer takes the singleplayer concept and adds competitive-style scoring.
Multiplayer maps are created to accommodate eight players, so they’re slightly larger and less compact than campaign levels. Collision is enabled which creates hilarious chaos as cars attempt to boost their score by parking in spaces around the map — You Suck at Parking is a blast with friends.
A minor complaint is the soundtrack. While beautifully serene and well put together, it becomes extremely repetitive offering little variety. After only three hours of playtime, I muted the in-game music and played my own music in the background.
Aesthetically, everything is on point from the cute pocket-sized cars to the exhaust emission trail as you propel your car along. Colours are vibrant and the camera’s dynamic movement is never awkward resulting in an easy-to-read environment.
This is an instant purchase for party game lovers. As someone who’s played Wario Ware, Inc., Wii Play, and Super Mario Party I had a flash of childhood nostalgia playing You Suck at Parking. It’s conceptually easy to understand and provides enough depth to continually surprise — who would’ve thought parking could be this much fun!?