Insert Your Funny South Park Reference Here
The first thing I did in South Park: The Stick of Truth was create a character and watch a small cutscene. The second thing I did was walk into a bathroom and mash the “A” button to take a shit on the toilet, then I grabbed the “turd” and put it into my inventory. In many ways this was a perfect introduction to the often crude,funny and surprisingly deep South Park: The Stick of Truth.
Developed by Obsidian, Stick of Truth is the South Park game fans have wanted for a long time. Since the N64 shooter game, South Park has a had a poor to OK history with video games. Series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were never involved with those games and with Stick of Truth they decided to be greatly involved with the game. They wrote it, voiced it and their studio even handled animation duties for some cutscenes and characters.
What this means is that for the first time a South Park actually looks and feels like the show. The game’s art style is identical to the show, everything looks like pieces of construction paper laid flat on to a crude paper background. The animations of the characters is just like the show, with people hopping around instead of actually walking.
Stick of Truth not only looks like the show, but it sounds like the show. Matt and Trey’s voices along with the other actors from the show really help sell the illusion that you are watching an episode of South Park. In fact when someone entered my room and saw me playing the game at one point they looked at it and asked “You watching South Park?”.
But Stick of Truth doesn't just LOOK like or SOUND like the show, it feels like the show. Its hard to call a game “funny” , that is such a subjective thing. But if you enjoy the show’s humor the Stick of Truth will more than likely cause you to laugh. A lot. Though I must point out that the game might offend some. From Nazis, abortions, Jesus, Gay jokes and more Stick of Truth never shies away from anything. Even going farther than the show on some occasions.
At one point I was playing a Simon Says like minigame which controlled an anal probing machine. Another time I was actually getting an abortion. All of this is done in trademark South Park fashion, over the top and filled with self awareness. But I could see some not enjoying these more grotesque moments. South Park Stick of Truth also makes fun of video games, from boss fights to weird collectibles and more.
The story of South Park The Stick of Truth starts pretty innocently enough. Your the new kid and your neighbors are Cartman, Kyle, Stan and the other kids from the show. They are all playing a large scale role playing game. Quickly you get involved in the war between Cartman’s humans and Kyle’s Elves. But soon the story begins to involve aliens, zombies, magic and secret government organizations. Overall the story feel like 3 episodes of South Park, which is nice. But the ending felt rushed and out of place. But besides that I enjoyed the story and the places it went including an amazing visit to our neighbor in the north, Canada.
I wasn't surprised that Stick of Truth was funny, but I was surprised by the game’s combat and RPG mechanics. None of the combat features or gameplay is hugely innovative, if you've played a few turn based RPGS in the last 10 years you will quickly be able to beat up Gingers and goth kids in Stick of Truth. Combat is turn based and uses timed button presses to block and add bonus damage. There are summons which include Mr.Slave and Jesus, buffs, debuffs, simple party management and all the usual turn based RPG mechanics.
But while the actual combat isn’t new or fresh, it’s still fun and Obsidian did a great job translating these classic mechanics into South Park. For example, that turd I grabbed at the beginning of the game can be thrown at enemies to put them into a “Grossed out” state. Kick them in the balls to stun them, use a basketball as a range weapon or a broken crutch as a sword. Every part of the combat feels like it fits perfectly into the wacky yet mundane world of South Park.
Getting around the world isn’t as fun. The map is a bit vague as to where you are, only putting an arrow in the general location. But that’s not a huge issue as a generous fast travel and appropriately sized world kept me from ever feeling lost. There is a nice amount of stuff to find and do in the world and it felt fairly dense. From Chinpokemon to collect, side quests that have you looking for underwear or little references/Easter Eggs from the show- the town of South Park is a fun place to explore.
Exploring is fun. But actually walking around the world can be a pain. While the game looks like South Park, this sometimes led to weird issues. Not being able to go up a ramp, or hitting the wall when I meant to hit something else were problems I ran into often. On top of this there is a weird teleporting mechanic that feels out of place.
A big part of traversing the world and combat is farts. Using different farts in different ways. Quickly the joke of farting on enemies got stale and when the game started asking me to use certain farts to sneak around in a few forced stealth areas I became frustrated at the inconsistency of the mechanic.
Another inconsistent aspect of the game was the framerate and sound. At times the game would stop playing music or voices would repeat at the same time giving a weird echo effect. Worse is the framerate dips when entering a new area or during some combat. Nothing too bad, but it was noticeable and quickly reminded me I was playing a game on Xbox 360. I would love to see the game move to PS4/Xbox One at some point.
South Park The Stick of Truth succeeds in so many ways. The game looks like an episode of the show, the combat is varied enough that it didn't get stale, the inclusion of Facebook and how the game uses it was a nice surprise as well. But exploring the world using mechanics like teleporting felt inconsistent and not very fun. The story feels rushed towards the end and some technical hiccups like framerate dips did disappoint me.
But issues like this never felt bad enough to keep me from putting 16 hours into Stick of Truth and I’m a fairly casual fan of the series. And if you’re a diehard mega fan of South Park you will almost certainly love this game. So why don’t you come on down to South Park and meet some friends of mine..
[This review was originally posted on my personal blog on June 2nd, 2014.]
