South Park: Stick of Truth - Quick Review

I've been waiting years. Through all of the ups and downs of development, the original publisher closing its doors, and fears that I might have to re-live another version of my early N64 South Park game disasters, I waited. But it's finally here.... and its amazing (as clearly shown by the screenshot below).

NBD, just me fart-battling a wizard Cartman.

The Good
The most outstanding feature about this game is the look. It's been said in other previews and reviews multiple times but I can't stress enough how much it feels like you're really playing an episode of South Park. The paper-cutout style and animations are just perfect. Even dumb tasks like going up or down stairs comes with their signature 'crappy' bouncing animation style, and I could watch it all day.

The level of detail in the game is fantastic. Not often am I the type to "stop and smell the roses" when there's a story to get through, but I find myself exploring every inch of the map in this game. There's plenty of surprises to be found and it's absolutely shocking how current to the show some of the in-game references are. Also, wandering around the town and through houses that I've seen on TV for years really adds a new perspective to the town of South Park.

In addition to the great visuals, sound in this game is absolutely perfect. Of course all of your favorite characters are there and voiced by Matt & Trey themselves. The writing is on-par with what you'd expect from a solid TV season of the show. Main dialogue is hilarious, and even the meaningless interactions with random NPC townsfolk just fits the world so well, even if you're not busting a gut with laughter the entire time.

Gameplay is pretty fun too. Normally turn-based combat gets to be boring for me but the battle system in this game keeps you active and involved, a good combination of strategy and button-timing. Sometimes damage output can be a bit confusing and it can be difficult to see why a particular attack does next to nothing to an enemy though.

Character creation is great. Simple to use thanks to the South Park art style, but plenty of options allow you to put yourself in to the game easily and interact with the entire SP gang. This has been really awesome for me. I've been a massive fan of the show forever and to finally get my ginger-self in to an episode is a dream come true!

The Bad

I do have a few gripes with the game, but so far it's been nothing that made me regret my purchase. There are a few parts that require button mashing (as seen in my first screenshot in this article) that just seem out of place and incredibly difficult/annoying. In fact, in the fight with Cartman shown above, you have to hold off his fart attack with your own and (I'm assuming) push it back on him. I mashed the button for a good minute or more and could never get to the point where I defeated his attack. I ended up giving up and letting Cartman blast me and fortunately had enough armor to survive the blow. I've also hit a couple of game-stopping bugs where dialogue won't continue and you're stuck (one at the very beginning of the game) however after a quick load of my previous save, things got back on track quickly. Kind of frustrating because everything I've come across should have been pretty obvious in testing, but again, only slightly slowed me down and there's been nothing that totally breaks the game so far.


The Bottom Line
South Park: The Stick of Truth is absurdity at its finest and any big fan of the show will be extremely happy with the purchase, even at full price. A few bugs here and there on my PC version but nothing I couldn't overcome with a quick re-loading of my previous autosave. If you're the type of person who fell off the South Park bandwagon a while back and need some groundbreaking, original gameplay to carry you along then you'll likely be disappointed, however I can see the game be fun/ridiculous enough for you to justify picking up down the road once heavily discounted.



*In spirit of full-disclosure, I wrote this while 8 hours in to what I've heard is a 10-12 hour game. I'm playing on PC, with a PS4 controller running software to map it like a 360 controller. Can't wait to see what else is in store!