You Suck at Parking Review

You Suck at Parking – either a snappy game title or a commentary on fellow Tavernite Ian’s driving (jk, Ian, jk). What we have here is indeed a snappy game title, wherein we control a car around many devilishly designed courses in order to stop in several designated parking spots. It almost becomes an arcade version of the movie Speed (ask your parents) as the car must remain in motion until we reach the spots, with even a brief pause sending us back to the start. It’s decisively more-ish fun, albeit pretty damn tough at times.

Each level has between two and five parking spots to land in, but along the way we’re faced with winding roads, fire, explosive mines, jumps, ice, and much more. As mentioned, we can’t come to a standstill until we’re at least a bumpers width inside the spots, so we often found ourselves snaking around a spot as we found the ideal speed and angle to approach.

It’s not like we need to go full pelt all the time – analogue control of throttle lets us calm the pace to almost stopping if needs be – but we also need to be mindful of the timer constantly counting down, as well as the fuel gauge. Each levels car has a custom amount to use and this is generally just enough to get to the furthest spot, though getting stuck or taking a less than ideal route will drain this fast.

Add these restrictions to some very floaty, bouncy handling and we get a game that is just as happy testing us via design as well as random luck. A slight flick of the stick might see us careen around a corner one moment but cause us to spin out on the next. Undulations in the road can be hard to see thanks to the top down camera, with a few levels catching me off guard and ruining an attempt.

For me, this looseness of the physics is a bit of a downer as when it works, You Suck at Parking is really quite fun. The level designs are clever and constantly surprising, and nailing a run by parking in all of the available spots in a row first time grants us extra points to unlock even harder levels. Each level is like a little diorama, with us able to check it out prior to beginning by rotating the camera about looking for the nooks and crannies hiding parking spots. Aiming for perfect runs became quite addictive early on, though I must admit the harder levels soon had me glad to just get by.

While I’m on the downer part, I’m not a fan of the overworld map used to access each set of levels. I found myself pining for a simple level select screen, and am sure there’s a couple of level sets I’ve missed thanks to simply not coming across them yet. Something like Overcooked got away with this map type as it was simple to read and get around. You Suck at Parking is almost anything but – there’s no penalty for falling off the map other than the few seconds it takes to respawn, but likewise there’s no real incentive to explore other than to find the next thing to do.

As a solo game (and outside of the above paragraph) there’s much to like here; a lot of levels to take on, perfect runs to complete, extra hard levels to unlock and beat, all wrapped up in a charmingly cute art style. When the physics aren’t working against us, there’s a good sense of satisfaction in beating a stage, with some genuinely creative set-ups testing our minds as well as our reflexes. Each stage is also fairly short, so even a failed run is not a huge set back in terms of time taken.

We can also quickly reset should things go awry with the press of a button, but be warned: the previous car will remain on the track for a time, potentially blocking our route. On the flip side, should we reset or our car get blown up, it could still roll into position to park saving us a repeat journey ( flip/flip side, it’s possible to knock our car out of a spot too).

Online Play Update – As the game is now live, we’ve been able to check out the multiplayer mode, and, as with the solo game, it is a lot of fun. The same physics issues are present, but with up to 8 players battling it out to be the first to park in all of the available spots this feels less of an issue, especially as we only need to land in a spot to register it, before our car disappears. Unlike the solo play, we don’t lose our spot once we’ve claimed it.

There is some collision between players, though I found this added to the gameplay as we’d lightly jostle back and forth around corners. The clever level designs carry over too, with packed layouts full of twists and turns to navigate. Hazards such as mines are present for all players, and consistent too – once a mine is destroyed by a player, it is gone for all.

Played best of three rounds, this is a solid additional mode to enjoy when the solo game gets too much. At present we’re unable to party up with friends, though an in-game message says this is coming soon.

Conclusion

All in all, I enjoyed my time with You Suck at Parking. Its clever mechanics and designs outweigh my niggles with the physics and overworld map, though they aren’t to be discounted entirely. As a game to unwind with after a long day, this is a great pick up, and a good example of the kind of game Game Pass suits to a tee.