South Park on TV can be a vulgar and shocking show. It can be crude yet hysterical, poking fun at celebrities, social trends and issues, anything and everything under the sun. When the released their movie in theaters back in 1999, having more freedom from censorship, the movie reached new levels of raunch and shocking their audience. Even now the show finds new ways to shock people. However, this game blows all of that out of the water! If you are someone who doesn’t like how far South Park pushes the limits, let me give you your review, stay away from this game. For all those who like South Park and RPGs and want to know if this game is any good, the answer is…
Yes, not only is this game fun, its hysterical and outright shocking at times. And I mean seriously shocking, I hesitate to mention to mention some of these moments as it would take away knowing what you will see. But there were a few instances where I had to pick my jaw up off the ground due to what I was looking at. But a game can’t survive on shock factor alone, how was the actual game?
The game starts with you creating a silent protagonist who moves to South Park with a mysterious past. From there you meet the other kids who happen to be having a LARPing session. You can choose from one of four classes; Fighter, Mage, Thief, and Jew. Yes, Jew. They all play pretty similar aside from their special abilities and attacks. You play with Cartman’s faction of Humans and Kyle’s faction of Elves and eventually decide who’s side you want to join. From there you get involved in an adventure way bigger than you and meet just about all the colorful characters of South Park. From the goth kids, to Al Gore, just about every South Park Character is in this game. This game is also filled with tons of easter eggs long time and even short term fans of the show will be able to appreciate.
The mechanics of the game is like Paper Mario. You and a single partner fight in turn based RPG style battles, Cartman remarks that it’s lame but that’s the way they are playing. In battle, you choose an attack, magic, buffs/debuffs, or super and either hit the on screen buttons or press the attack button when you character glimmers for adding attack power. There are some magic effects such as gross out and on fire that add strategy to your battles, overall it’s a pretty simple battle system just about anyone can pick up. Outside of battle you can explore a fully realized South Park. You can walk around, enter people’s houses and businesses and such for a plethora of collectables and surprises.
This game looks just like an episode of the show. If someone walked in on you they might think you’re watching the show, if the FCC just decided not to care about them anymore. As mentioned before, if you dislike the show, you’ll hate the game. The vulgarity will turn someone people off, and that might be the only downside I could find about the game. It was reported some players experienced a lot of bugs and framerate drops. I can say that for me the game never crashed, though sometimes in exiting one part of the map and entering another there was a little drop in framerate.
South Park: The Stick of Truth is a fun RPG that took me roughly 15 hours to complete. With tons of collectibles and side missions, easter eggs, social commentary and even jokes on the video game industry itself, this game will having you either laughing on the floor or backing away in disgust. If you know this type of humor isn’t for you, stay away. However if you can get past that type of humor or enjoy it, you’ll be presented with a fun hysterical game.
