Pico Park 2 could be called a lot of things, but I feel – based on our playthrough in one evening with three friends – the best description of the game is AAARRGGGHHHHHWHYYYYYYY. It is a fun, frustrating, chaotic, hilarious time, and one that is easy to recommend for a party of players who all want a laugh, and to question their own existence.
I’m being dramatic of course, but Pico Park 2 is in that mould of games that fuck with players perceptions while also providing a compelling challenge. Up to eight players (either local or online) must team up to complete fifteen sets of four levels. Each of these have different rule sets for success, and it’s not always obvious what that is. For example, one early level sees us needing to knock a box off of a ledge before we go through a corridor with spikes on top. Rushed players may not think of the true purpose of the box, and very quickly get a spike to the head as punishment. Later on, things get far more An Impossible Game-like, with things like the screen flashing in and out of view, buttons egging us on to press them that may or may not kill us, and much more that I won’t spoil here.
Every player must make it to the exit door, so while it’s incredibly tempting to troll your teammates (and it will happen), we do eventually need to work together to proceed. This can range from simply all players playing a part to traverse the stage, to some players protecting others while they accomplish a task. No stage is longer than a few minutes at most, but thanks to the constant uncertainty – as well as more than a few rules twists and unpredictable moments – it can take many attempts to clear some of the trickier ones.
As I mentioned, we played with three of us and it was hard enough to communicate and get the trickier stages together as it was, so with a full eight I can only imagine the carnage. Voice chat is slightly a hindrance in some of the more timing based parts thanks to the inherent delay, but TECOPARK have implemented an in-game prompt system, including a 3-2-1 Countdown which proves invaluable for some of the stages.
There’s just the right amount of floatiness to the controls, with part of the unpredictability being in just how far we move or if a jump will be made because of our approach. On many, many occasions we failed a level because one of us fluffed a jump or a movement (such as balancing over a ledge), but even with this it was always at the very least a laugh to play, even when the insults began to start flying.
There are extra Dark mode variants to play once the main game has been beaten, although at this point it was the early hours of the morning so we only had a quick go – turns out, TECOPARK have saved some more devilishly tricksy stages for us to try, and we look forward to yelling at each other over them soon.
Conclusion
Pico Park 2 is fun, annoyingly moreish, and hair-pullingly frustrating yet hard to put down all at once. With a good group of friends it devolves into utter chaos, where we’ll be laughing and swearing in equal measure. One for those nights where you just want to have a good time with pals – the more, the merrier.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
