This game starts promising but ultimately falls short of its potential. I enjoyed the basic premise, which is running around recording ghost messages, deciphering them, and then solving puzzles that give you clues to solve the greater puzzle of what happened in this parc. The message deciphering is pretty basic but enjoyable, and the puzzles are generally straightforward, but can be a bit obtuse, as they require multiple steps, backtracking, finding hidden things and using the gun to knock things over. You have the microphone to guide you to new recordings, which then can unlock waypoints for things you can interact with. The waypoints aren't necessarily a bad idea, but I think the way it's implemented isn't great as you often don't have to even listen to/read the clues you've gotten from recordings, because unless there's a puzzle in your way then you usually just walk directly to the waypoint, pick something up, then walk elsewhere, and especially in the central area it can be through pretty barren or uninteresting areas, or require backtracking through places you've already explored. It often just feels like busywork that is there to pad out the playtime, and also can feel like a bit of a crutch when it comes to level design, as there's no need to design the levels in interesting ways which draw the player in or guide them to their goal, you just set a waypoint and they turn their brain off as they walk to it.

Another issue I have with the game is the gun; it's an airgun with two types of ammo, potato/ball or metal, but I found it initially unclear what the mechanical difference between the two types of ammo is. I eventually realised that the potatoes are heavy and so are for knocking over things, whereas the metal stuff is for injuring enemies, but the clue at the start said something along the lines of potatoes are for shooting at friends in order to not hurt them, whereas metal is for enemies. I understood from that that the metal hurt enemies but I had no idea what the potato did, so it took me a while of experimentation and frustration to figure out how to use the potatoes to progress. It is also awkward to switch between ammo types as the gun shoots ammo in the order in which you loaded it, and ammo is either spread around the map in boxes, piles, or in your car, where there is an infinite amount of it. It's confusing because there's not exactly a scarcity of it, but you will also find yourself running out and having to run back to your car to reload. You need the metal ammo to hurt spirits who will otherwise knock you out and send you back to the car (no other bad effects, just annoying), and you need the potatoes to knock things over for puzzles, but you won't know which ones you'll need until you find the thing which you're going to use the ammo on. You can load ammo from your inventory if you've found a box, but that's a big if, and you might have run out by that point because also the aiming can be awkward especially as the ammo arcs differently based on what ammo you're shooting, or you might have (like me) forgotten/not realised that only potatoes knock objects over and so used all your metal shots trying to do that. The running back and forth to switch between ammo types is not fun, and I would also say that the gun in general is not a particularly fun addition to the game, which is why I'm glad they ditched it for the second game (I accidentally played that game first, enjoyed it but ran into a gamebreaking bug so couldn't finish it). The mechanics of loading the gun and also having to switch air canisters to propel the ammo feel like they were done for the sake of realism rather than considering what is fun.

Lastly, on the note of fun I will say that while I was initially enjoying the game I found that as it went on I was losing my interest as the pacing of the plot had slowed. There are long stretches of game where you are travelling between large areas of mostly empty land, either in your car (which is awkward to control) or by foot (where you can destroy the horror atmosphere by just running and smoothly zooming around the map. However even then it's a far too big map), but once the initial atmosphere of dread disappears it just becomes dull and repetitive. I started to lose my interest in what was going on with the plot, instead just zoning out and going from location to location while also solving more obtuse puzzles. So I stopped playing 6 hours in, which honestly I think is a shame because I really wanted to like this game. I hope that sometime I can play more of the sequel game when they fix the bug, as that one has more of what I enjoyed in this game without the worse aspects.