And meet some friends of mine. It's been a long time since the iconic juvenile's have shown their presences on a home console (with the exceptions of the XBLA games). South Park: The Stick of Truth is a brilliant and joyful experience from start to finish that will have you laughing all the way through.
The team at Obsidian, under the watchful eye of the creators of South Park, have created an game that replicated the show down to the tiniest of details. Most noticeable is the games visuals as it retains that 2d cardboard cutout look that is true to it's episodic counterpart. It looks absolutely fantastic and has that cardboard texture to make it that much more authentic. Now it has the look, but does it have the feel of South Park? Well of course it does when you have Matt and Trey behind the script. One of South Park's biggest draw is it's vulgar dialog, outrageously exaggerated script, and continuing to push the limits of censorship. Countless of times they hit the right notes, as they somehow always manage to make references to past episodes, or strategically placing items in specific locations that make the most sense, like finding a Faith +1 CD in Cartman's dresser. Even hearing theme's found in their show make an appearance. There are so many little things here and there, like the ability to skip Jimmy stuttering shows how intelligent and well thought out everything is.
Cartman, Kenny, Butters and others belong to the Kingdom of Kupa Keep...or simply KKK for short and possess the powerful, and plain looking stick of truth. They do battle with the Elvin Kingdom who is looking to take the stick. In typical South Park fashion things just can't ever go peacefully without some crazy turn of events making things unnecessarily difficult. The two Kingdoms join forces eventually as the plot thickens once you progress, thus becoming so outrageous and ridiculous that you cannot help yourself but think, "Wow, this is outrageous and ridiculous". If you hate laughing, please forget this game because that's all you'll be doing.
I knew I was going to get an experience unlike any other because of the shows track record, but there is also a nice amount of depth the actual game itself and that was a bit unexpected. For instance the town of South Park isn't enormous, but it isn't that small either. It's pretty neat to walk about and see how everything is connected, even if it might not be truly accurate. Everything is here that is recognizable to the fans like the kids' school, Tom's Rhinoplasty, Unplanned Parenthood, Tokens' huge ass mansion, and many others. You can traverse a sewage system and a forest that open up the game even more. You also can visit the flappy heads in Canada that totally bring some brilliant, 8-bit nostalgic laughter.
Throughout the world (and by world I mean town) you will come across a lot of memorable characters, many of whom you can interact with, do side missions that may result in acquiring a summon that will hilariously not aide you in battle. You will also friend them which will give you perks that will help you in battle by buffing up your character.
The design of the game is sort of based off an old episode that has the boys spoofing the Lord of the Rings. This opens up the fantasy aspect to the gameplay and fits the RPG mold perfectly. It's your traditional turn based strategic game, that kind of borrows some elements to the fighting system like the ability to interact with your attacks, or ability to block on the fly. Similar to Super Mario RPG that has the same mechanics, The Stick of Truth spicens it up a bit as it isn't so easy to perfect it. The number of enemy attacks vary so learning tendencies is a bit difficult, and timing differs too. There are tons of weapons and armor in the game that can be costumizable to give weapons some elemental effects, think Final Fantasy 7's Materia system. Instead of Materia, they come in the form of stickers and depending on your weapons/armor, you can equip up to 2.
One of my few gripes with the game is that you cannot have more than one (out of 6) other character in your party at a time. I found myself sticking with Butters, and later Cartman because in game switching yields a turn, and switching characters through the menu would be breaking up the gameplay. A party of 2 is no party at all, but a party of 3 would be good for you and me. There are also some glaring technical flaws with the game as well. The transition from going place to place causes a momentary lag in which the game kind of becomes unplayable, but thankfully it doesn't happen in battle. Audio not syncing up to the sound or lips not moving accordingly happened on occasion. I have also heard of some other glitches affecting other players. My experience, however, was not hindered as these issues were nothing of the game breaking variety.
South Park: The Stick of Truth is a perfect game for fans of the series. It retains everything you love about the show, from characters, to places you visit, to the brilliant and vulgar dialog, and the overall look and feel. As a game and an RPG, it's just as good with some surprising depth to gameplay, and even though it has some minor annoyances, its still very much enjoyable.
The South Park team and Obsidian did an outstanding job keeping the game true to what it is, respecting not only the show, but the fans as well.
Over the last 25 years, there has been a fair few South Park games, and here GameSpew has ranked them all from best to worst.
We are going to see a lot of crap South Park products since they sold out to paramount years ago. It's their IP they can sell out, of course; it just means the quality of their show has tanked and other products as well. Nevertheless, they put on excellent musicals, but those haven't been sold to a mega corporation.
They said awhile ago that Ubisoft holds contract rights to the main flagship South Park games. So like stick, fractured and phone destroyer.
Snow Day was handled by THQ and Question and is a random spinoff. Hopefully Ubisoft is cooking something.
Loved the RPGs but never played the others. Have to track them down. Still not sure about Snow Day though.
The South Park series has somehow managed to stay relevant for over 25 years, but which are the best games based on the TV show?
The only two worth playing are Stick of truth and fractured but whole. The rest were garbage except snow day which I can't say anything about yet. But with that said, unlike stick and fractured which debuted as AAA full priced titles by ubisoft, snow day is a new developer and publisher and has a budget price at only $30 soooo
From Xfire: "Anyone who's played video games for a couple of years has stuck around long enough to stumble across a few weird ones. Some are even quite popular, which is all the more reason why you'll wonder what made the developers think about making such a game and why people are loving it, despite its weirdness anyway. Not all weird video games are head-scratches. Some are actually quite good."
The stick of truth is a must have for any South Park fans. I spent a good afternoon on Goat simulator, a rare real open world. I planned to try hatoful boyfriend since it was free on Ps Plus. Disco Elysium is on my radar since the final cut came out; as soon as there is a discount, i will take it. Like movies, i like weird games too :)
