Welcome Park Review

 Hello Everyone. I recently 100%ed the game Welcome Park and would like to talk about the game,

The best way to describe Welcome Park is that it is to the PS VITA what Astro's Playroom was to the PS5. A short game included with the system to introduce you to its features. Though unlike Astro, Welcome Park is just a collection of gimmick minigames/tutorials. No Easter Eggs or anything like that. The game doesn't even use any of the buttons of the VITA except the start button to pause the minigame. So it's all touch, motion and camera control.

The minigames themselves were quite fun to play and 100%ing them was both quick and enjoyable (too bad the game doesn't give you a platinum for 100%. Only a Gold Trophy 😤) . The game also has a really nice and beautiful aesthetic that feels like a "kiddy version of Apple". It was honestly quite relaxing at times.

So the game has 5 sets of minigames: Digit Chase, Snap + Slide Puzzle, Skate Axis, Sound Loop and Hello Face. Let's start with Digit Chase

Digit Chase is subdivided into 3 sub minigames you have to play in order though you can restart an individual minigame without it affecting your progress in the others so you don't have to get a good time 3 times in a row. There's a trophy for each of the individual sub minigames where you have to get a good time on each of them but also one where you have to get a cumulative time of less than 1 minute on all 3 of them together.

One of the 3 sub minigames is Tap Stage. Here you have to tap on number tiles ranging from 1-5 appearing on the screen in the correct order. However, some tiles have specific properties. Some titles (indicated by having 2 circles) require you to tap them twice. Some tiles have 2 copies on the screen so you have to press them both at the same time. So if there's one 1 tile, two 2 tiles and a double bound 3 tile, you'd tap the single 1 tile once, tap the two 2 tiles at the same time and double tap the double bound 3 tile.

This one was quite fun. The "order" of the tiles is the same but the position changes every run which means you can only memorize part of the process. You get a trophy for completing this under 30 seconds, but for the Digit Chase cumulative time trophy, I recommend getting at least under 26 seconds for this one. My best time was around 25.031 seconds. I recommend setting the Vita down on a table and using both hands for this.

The second sub minigame is "Flick and Drag". Here you have to spin a carousel of pages containing numbers from 1 to 10 in random order and flick them in the correct order. Each number has a different colour. This one can take some time at first because the position of the numbers is random and spinning the carousel is inconsistent. But it's still fun. The game helps a bit by having the next page curl whenever you flick the previous one. So instead of needing to spin through and find the next number or memorize the pattern, you can just look to see which paper curls in the background. You get a trophy for completing this under 20 seconds, but for the Digit Chase cumulative time trophy, I recommend getting at least under 16 seconds for this one. My best time was around 14 seconds.

 

The 3rd sub minigame is "Rear Touch Panel". Here, Your aim is to shoot a ball either on the left or the right side of the screen through numbers 1-5. You have to touch the left or right side of the touch pad to launch the ball. I like the idea of this minigame but it's too easy to cheese by just alternating left and right since many of the puzzles only ask you do that. I suppose just doing Tap Stage again but with the Rear Touch Pad might be too imprecise. How about there's a pizza and you have to slice it by swiping on the Rear Touch Pad and the game tells you which direction to swipe? I feel that might be a more interesting minigame.

Anyway, You get a trophy for completing this under 20 seconds, but for the Digit Chase cumulative time trophy, I recommend getting at least under 18 seconds for this one. My best time was around 17 seconds.

 

But yeah, these sub minigames aren't too bad (minus the Rear Touch Pad one). I could see myself maybe returning to the first 2 at some point in the future for a nostalgic trip. But then again, I could find mobile games like Piano Tap which scratch the same itch but have more content and songs to try out.

The next minigame is "Snap and Slide". The way this works is that you use the VITA's 0.3 megapixel camera to take a photo. The minigame then turns that photo into a sliding block puzzle. You then have to solve the puzzle. You can choose between a 7, 8, 14 and 15 block version of the puzzle. And each of these have a trophy for completing the puzzle in under 20, 30, 40 and 50 seconds respectively.

I am terrible at sliding block puzzles. So my trick was to take a picture of a 4x4 grid of numbered squares I drew to help me out a bit. One catch I noticed was that unlike other Sliding Puzzle games, after a couple seconds, the game lets you rotate an entire row or column. Allowing you to solve even impossible arrangements and save time on possible ones. It took me around 45 minutes to solve each set of puzzles under their allotted times. I eventually reached a point where I would reset the puzzle until I got starting boards where the 1, 2, 3 and 4 squares were close enough to be lined up so I'd only have to solve the remaining ones.

This is a fun minigame and I do enjoy this. But the VITA's camera is a bit too low resolution so actual pictures are made harder by default.

The next minigame is Skate Axis. Here you control a skateboarder. You move him left or right by tilting the VITA and you make him jump by quickly rotating the VITA. You earn points by dodging bouncing balls and collecting stars. There's a trophy for getting 500 points. You earn 10 points by dodging under a ball, 50 points for jumping over a ball, and 10 and 20 points for collecting bronze and silver stars.

I know many people dread such motion based minigames but this one was actually quite decent. I found I had great contol when tilting. I never missed or accidentally did a jump when I didn't intend to. I found it quite easy to get to 500 points. I honestly wouldn't mind an expanded version of this. This was quite fun. I guess all that time I spent using Gyro Controls on Switch really helped me out here.

The next minigame is "Sound Loop". And this isn't really a game. Here, you record segments of audio using the VITA's mic and they show up as these coloured balls orbiting around. You start a recording by holding down on the touch screen. You can tap icons to vary the pitch and tap the rear touch pad to add effects and music. To be honest, I didn't spend much time on this so I can't review how easy it is to create sick beats using your VITA. There's a trophy for recording 20 balls worth of audio.

The final minigame is "Hello Face". And this isn't really a minigame either. Here, you once again use the camera but you have to take pictures of things that resemble faces. These photos then come to life and emote which is quite cute. So basically it's a tool for Pareidolia. There's a trophy for bringing 3 faces to life. I took a photo of my electrical socket 3 times since it looks like a face.

So yeah, that's Welcome Park. Overall, it's not a bad way to introduce the VITA. The minigames are short and don't overstay their welcome. The aesthetic is quite relaxing. It uses the features of the VITA well. I'd say I wouldn't mind a WarioWare style game on the VITA but I've already played Frobisher Says which is that style of game and it was fun and free so it's not like there weren't minigames for the VITA to show off its features. I do wish there was platinum for 100%ing it though

But as I played this nostalgic game I first tried out in 2012, I felt oddly melancholic. Welcome Park was supposed to introduce people to this brand new futuristic system with all these bells and whistles. But the VITA is long since dead and been abandoned by Sony. It feels like playing a multiplayer game nobody plays anymore. All these mechanics and potential, never to be seen again. Even Welcome Park itself is no longer novel. All of its minigames can be replicated on my iPhone. Future handhelds like Switch dropped most additional features in favour of a more traditional control scheme.

Though sadly, I feel no matter what Sony did, it would have been an uphill battle for the VITA. Like yes, Sony didn't help themselves with the memory cards but even if Sony made the VITA use microSD cards and lower the price by removing the touch pad and camera, the VITA likely still would have struggled. The VITA's biggest issue were the economics behind developing for it. It is expensive making AAA level games back in 2012. The 3DS got away with weaker specs since that meant it didn't the best graphics to succeed so developers could afford to make cheaper games for that which had a better return on investment. The VITA's biggest selling point was being able to play console quality games on the go, but it was too weak to run most PS3/PS4 games well but making games for the level the VITA could run was too expensive and risky given the few sales and limit the scope of the game even if it was released on PS3/PS4 as well. That meant there wasn't many games for the system which started killing it. Of course, Indie games and Sony's Cross Buy system was arguably the thing the VITA needed but that happened years too late.

 

 Still, At least Welcome Park was a fun time.