There are games which look all cute, cuddle and family-friendly (and are true), but have the most intense level of stress, and tension and require an ungodly level of skill to accomplish the goals. Games like Overcooked and Moving Out look all sweet and innocent but boy, they are tough muddas. You Suck at Parking joins that list, but do these highly stress-inducing games of high skill and reward still have relevance in today’s gaming, or has the appeal won’t off?
What is You Suck at Parking? 
The goal of You Suck at Parking is simple enough. Players are tasked with driving and parking their tiny, adorable car through various adventurous tracks and parking their car in a number of spots to earn points. The better your driving skills, avoiding certain hazards and parking on the spot in a singular run will earn you much more points. Sounds easy? (Internal manic laughter) No, no. Because like so many other cute games (those mentioned in my intro), there’s a sinister and depraved nature behind that cuteness … Okay maybe not that dark. But like so many other games, You Suck at Parking requires a lot of patience and skill but is a massive hoot when everything clicks together you finally achieve your perfect run through a deadly track filled with fire pits, giant magnets, and death-defying leaps … after the 18 attempts.
Players will take their tiny car across a beautifully, polygon island and discover a series of wacky and insane challenges, featuring said giant magnets and things much worse. The aim is to complete these challenges, usually with the highest score possible, to progress, you’re ranking as “Best Tiny Car which parks Well” (I made that title up but it sums up the end goal nicely) so you can explore further and park to your heart's content.
As said, the parking sounds a lot easier than it actually is, and with such a simple concept, I did admire the many, many creative obstacles and moments I nearly pulled my hair out (ha, I’m joking … I have very little hair to pull out nowadays).
Refresh your Driver’s Ed 
On the surface level, You Suck at Parking is quite a simple game, but there are many elements which give it a lot of depth which creates an immense challenge overall throughout the campaign. Driving around feels very arcadey, almost like how you would imagine a cartoon car would drive, being floaty and often feeling as though you could lose control at any given moment or sharp corner. It feels somewhat like 1991’s Micromachines, a game I despised as a child, but playing in recent years did enjoy its novelty. There was a slight learning curve and understanding the speed and general grips I need to undertake to fully become accustomed to the cartoonish driving simulator.
Generally, You Suck at Parking has a good sense of pace and allows enough time for newcomers to join in and grasp the controls in a friendly enough manner… before it throws lots of crazy things at you.
While parking is the absolute goal for each challenge, even to park multiple times in a single level, there are various factors to consider, aside from the floaty driving mechanics. Your car has fuel, which is a massive game changer and adds an immense edge to the task at hand. You can’t simply just drive around as you please and even stopping before the parking space will result in a failure. Things indeed crank up the difficulty, but I really felt these were great additions and kept you going, making sure you didn’t just cheese it. It's something you get used to and adds in a tactical edge as you ensure the distance you drive is measured properly, that each turn you make matters and planning out the order of parking spots becomes an interesting factor for the more complex tracks which interweave and allow for backtracking.
There’s also some light physics embedded into the driving, as your car can make epic jumps over massive gaps, and certain environmental factors like wind can either aid your driving or damn you. There’s not a whole bunch of mechanics revolving around wacky physics, but there are some cool ideas, such as avoiding massive fans while driving over a bridge with no rails or using said big fans to make a gigantic leap to your goal. Drifting and speed also come into play, usually taking the form of a classic speed boost panel laid on the track for you to use. This help to reduce the amount of fuel you use, cutting corners and time, but the control of your car can drop to zero, and danger can easily follow. Again, a neat idea.
So, the driving in on itself presents an exciting challenge, with neat little factors to keep in the front of your mind as you drive to that golden parking spot!
And of course, there are plenty of death traps to avoid and drive by as quickly as possible, before your car is sucked up, crushed, burnt to a crisp or thrown out to sea. These are again a nice addition to the level design, and for the most part, the levels present these challenges in exciting and fun ways. There are a few levels dotted throughout where multiple traps were used and not used as well as the majority of the game. Leading to various retries and pure frustration as the game will suddenly inject a massive boost to the difficulty. Like using mines, magnets and flaming track edges, all the while your fuel for the level is reduced significantly.
Thankfully these were not frequent, and players can take on what challenges they feel more comfortable with and come back to others when they feel like it.
Check your mirrors, check the oil light, and avoid those mines! 
You Suck at Parking does a great job at setting up a solid gameplay loop, and like other games such as Overcooked and Moving Out, it presents a gratifying sense of accomplishment through some brutal challenges.
But while I enjoyed the various obstacles I had to overcome in each track, along with the neat physics and factors such as Fuel. There wasn’t a whole host of goals to work towards. I gather that parking is the point, as the title of the game involves parking. But I feel there could have been much more varying goals or fun mechanics to incorporate with the notion of parking. Even the main multiplayer mode is just a race to the parking spot and beat the competition. There are no interesting or innovative workarounds to up the stakes of parking or even to find more creative end results for parking.
One mode could be you have a number of parking spots, enough for all players, and with each round, those parking spot numbers reduce, leaving only one parking spot in the level for the champion to claim. There, three sentences and a new game mode are born.
And this was the big problem for me, as the level design and all the fun ways to perish are great, it’s just after a while the only goal of parking in a predetermined spot just becomes massively repetitive.
Games like Overcooked had the same issue with the core gameplay loop, but with the sequels added in new modes and exciting objectives. Moving Out again has multiple game modes, and lots of interesting dynamics for the core gameplay loop, plus lots of cosmetic goodness to unlock.
Well, You Suck at Parking has some great unlocks and cosmetics to equip, but there is a lot of it hidden behind a season/battle pass and paid premium currency. I am not a fan of this, and this really didn’t push me to go further than I was in achieving or earning high scores when a lot of cool stuff is locked away behind paywalls and trends in gaming which need to die off. Especially as this is not a free game to play.
But credit where it’s due, as the cosmetics I unlocked were extremely cool, with a lot of variety in car designs, hood ornaments, and even the car exhausts being stylised really helped flesh out the sense of progression and earning a high score when possible. But plenty of that coolness is locked away and the multiplayer is a little flat.
Overall?You Suck at Parking is a neat little game to play, especially if you’re a fan of ultra-challenging, ultra-skill-based, cute and colourful games. While not as high or on the same level as Moving Out or the Overcooked sequels, this was still immensely enjoyable at times, with a great gameplay loop, great level design and a neat array of cosmetics. But overall, is held back by its season pass, locking lots of cosmetics away behind paywalls, and the lack of depth for multiplayer might mean it won’t have the lasting appeal of say Overcooked. But still worth checking out for a few laughs.
++ A novel and neat gameplay loop
+ Visually adorable
+ Driving feels good, and the sense of challenge is super cool
-- Lacks any variety in goals
- Multiplayer has few modes and little depth
- Lots of cosmetics locked away behind season passes and paywalls
An Xbox Series S/X review code of You Suck at Parking was provided by the publisher.
