South Park: The Stick of Truth Review - Fart to Win
South Park: The Stick of Truth is a continuation of the 17th season of the show, with many characters maintaining their Game of Thrones-esque appearance and mood from the last four episodes. Obsidian Entertainment did a remarkable job at making the game look and feel like an episode straight from the show; it’s rude, foul, full of inappropriate jokes and shocking scenes. In other words, it’s just like South Park , and it’s hilarious.
You take the role of a mute new kid who just moved into South Park for some mysterious reasons and, after a short bit of character creation, you are free to explore the town of South Park; it won’t be long before you meet with popular characters from the show such as Butters, Cartman and Kenny and battle next to them in glorious, turn-based combat. Just like they did it in the medieval ages.
South Park‘s combat system is just like your classic turn based combat with the exception that it requires the player to actively block and hit the right buttons in order to land the attacks properly. Think of it like the combat system from the Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. This small addition makes the combat much more engaging, as a perfectly timed block can really turn the tides of battle in both the smallest and biggest fights. As you progress through the story, you will gain access to more characters which can join your party and help you in battle. You are only allowed one extra party member at a time which you can switch at will out of combat but will cost you one turn in combat. Each character has his own specialty and can assist you in different ways.
Despite being engaging, the combat system is really quite simple and you rarely have to change up your winning strategy in order to proceed through the fights. In this case, however, the fact that the combat was simple and more on the easy side (you can change the difficulty at any time using a slider in the menu, I always kept mine at the default) wasn’t a particularly bad thing, as I could not wait to see what would happen next in the game’s exhilarating story. Without dipping into spoiler territory, a series of events leads you to battle everything ranging from aliens to Nazi zombies, from laser-shooting bears to crazy hobos and much more.
The game’s story is easily its strongest point, clocking anywhere from 10-12 hours; the experience never overstays its welcome and is an absolute blast to play through. In typical South Park fashion, things escalate quickly and plot twists, no matter how crazy or absurd are inbound. Anything and everything is fair game in The Stick of Truth so be prepared to witness some truly shocking turn of events.
South Park: The Stick of Truth is truly a treat for fans of the show. References to previous story-lines and events are everywhere and it’s almost a guarantee that the game features a nod towards your favorite episode. This is mostly due to the fact that the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, were heavily involved with the game’s development and managed to help make the game a seamless transition from the show. The downside of this, however, is that people who aren’t big South Park fans may feel a bit disappointed by what the game has to offer. The bigger a South Park fan you are, the more you will enjoy the game; luckily for me I have been an avid fan for many years and have seen every episode of the show so part of the appeal was trying to catch all the nods and references to previous episodes, almost like a treasure hunt.
For people who aren’t very familiar with the show, they will still be able to follow and enjoy The Stick of Truth‘s story, assuming they can handle South Park‘s raunchy humor; however, a lot of game’s more subtle jokes and references will probably fly right over their heads.
Despite being a fairly simple looking game, I did find some performance issue and bugs in typical Obsidian fashion. If you try and run through the mountain town of South Park to quickly get to an area just a few screens away, you are likely going to run into some very noticeable frame rate drops and slow downs (at least on Xbox 360, which is the version I tested). I also ran more than once into a very annoying bug which made all characters disappear during cutscenes except your own, mute protagonist. In addition to that, no audio would play during the cutscenes - luckily I had subtitles turned on so I could still follow the story, but otherwise these bugs could have left me seriously confused, not to mention I never got to see how those cutscenes played out. Lastly, the menu system is very slow and clunky which can get annoying seeing as you constantly need to open it to equip and unequip items and gear, modify your party, and check the map and your quest journal (there isn’t a HUD whilst wondering around South Park).
Despite these flaws, South Park: The Stick of Truth is the South Park game fans have been waiting for. Aesthetically, it looks identical to the show and, more importantly, it feels just like it. If you are a fan of the show, this game is a must have and you will enjoy every second of it. This was one of the few games I played which didn’t really have a “bad part”; from start to finish, every part of the game was very fun. The great story and engaging fights easily make up for the game’s shortcomings, however this may be a deal breaker for players who aren’t familiar with South Park and are just looking for a good RPG to sink a dozen hours into.
For me, as a fan, South Park: The Stick of Truth could not have been any better.