by Grim Shea 03/12/2014
In the press leading up to this often-delayed and even once-rumored-cancelled release, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were vocal in their acknowledgement that previous South Park games had been sore disappointments displaying none of the show’s signature soul, but that this game was being made to turn that trend around. I’m pleased to say that they’ve finally succeeded, but it’s a qualified success.
Matt and Trey talk to IGN about both their intentions for and their frustrations with The Stick of Truth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHYcPAqIDX0
Mild Spoiler Alert
With many strong influences from other role playing video games that are so obvious they’re not even veiled (ahem, Dovakhiin), you might be fooled into thinking that this is just some Cartman and Kenny skins slapped onto a turn-based Skyrim quickie knockoff, not unlike what Nintendo 64’s disappointing South Park was to the glorious Turok template. But you’d be so very wrong. This game was built and coded with South Park DNA from the get go. It thankfully does not exist in a cutting-edge three-dimensional game-engine world any more than the show itself does. In fact, someone walking into the room in the middle of your game would have no idea that it isn’t just another episode until you run into a (frequent) loading screen. Between the many short cutscenes which blend right into the action and the constant hilarious non sequiturs peppering the (limited) free roaming, this is easily the closest you can come to playing an episode — the humor is spot on, the beloved characters are perfectly consistent, and nothing that happens in the game wouldn’t be right at home on the show itself.
And maybe that’s not quite as good as it sounds. They also went to the trouble of making an actually decent game to prop up all of this pitch perfect atmosphere, but it quickly becomes painfully obvious when you’re enjoying yourself some good South Park comedy versus when you’re simply playing said game. As far as the turn-based RPG combat goes, it’s more than adequate and balanced quite nicely, and anyone who has played this style before will have no problem picking it right up. However, once you’ve mastered a few of the simple abilities, it quickly turns into a grinding chore in between the superior cutscenes. Plus, full disclosure, the tutorials could be a little clearer and every now and then the dialogue track lags a bit behind the animations, but that might only be noticeable because we’re so used to such razor sharp timing coming from these characters on television. To their credit, Trey & Matt and company do a great job of sending up standard video game tropes and subverting years of our collective RPG fatigue (just some of the many highlights: early on you are given the chance to name your character but, since that has never mattered in any game ever, Cartman will simply dub you “Douchebag” no matter what you finally decide to type, or when one character hilariously laments the fact that Nazi zombies keep getting shoehorned into games, or during the final boss battle, after you’ve defeated the enemy three times in a row already yet he keeps getting back up with full health, and Cartman finally shouts “It looks like killing him is making him tired, keep going Sir Douchebag!”), but by necessity the game then needs to lean on those same devices to fill out the experience, so at some point during your twentieth identical battle against Nazi zombies you might start to wonder if the joke is over yet. More than once in this situation I just turned off the game and switched over to Hulu to watch an actual South Park episode instead. In fact, as a result I think I watched more South Park episodes over just this past week than I have in the last two years combined, which is not a complaint exactly, but still…
The story itself is solid as far as South Park stories go, and even though the long production schedule of video games against the typical six-day timeframe in which the show is usually produced does rob the writers of their chance to be scathingly topical, they still manage to skillfully work around that limitation and craft a framework of the show’s trademark satirical twists and turns. If you saw last year’s Black Friday/Game of Thrones trilogy then you’ll be instantly familiar with the medieval fantasy mode this is set in, but the game itself is in no way connected to that narrative. You’re the New Kid, silent and a little mysterious, and you arrive in town just as all the other neighborhood kids are starting a massive LARP*ing session (*“Live Action Role Play”, as grown-up nerds call it. Kids just call it “playing”, and — despite the $60 irony — that beautiful sentiment shines throughout as the driving suspension of disbelief which makes this whole inappropriate thing work.). You will laugh along as your character then eventually gets anally probed, performs an abortion on Stan’s dad, finds Jesus (hiding in the church, duh), does battle with underpants gnomes in front of some of the worst and funniest background scenery ever to be loaded onto an HD screen, uses farts to break into a CIA briefing room, and naturally engages in many many more perfectly normal scenarios for this quiet little mountain town. You’ll find a decent handful of simple entertaining side quests, but mercifully nothing in the vein of The Elder Scrolls series’ hundreds of fetches and errands. You’ll progress and customize your character, but only to level 15 and never find yourself over- or underpowered. A dozen or so hours with minimal replayability, but it feels like more than enough.
Yes, this is officially a “good South Park game.” Hell, a great one even, if you happen to be both a South Park fan and a turn-based RPG fan, but to the average gamer I promise that this one actually has that South Park “soul.” It is jam packed with winks and references, it clearly knows that it’s primarily a game about a TV show and acts accordingly by trading in just enough gameplay depth for fan service, all while keeping itself credible and comfortable. Despite this being the first South Park game to accomplish all these lofty goals, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had been down this road before. Then in the third act I had to walk to Canada and upon arriving found that, perfectly in line with the show’s overarching theme of Canada being a simpler and almost unfinished place, the game graphics there were downgraded to literally be more simplistic and unfinished by replicating the look of an old 16-bit RPG world covered in trees and streams and caves and dire wolves. I laughed at the cleverness of the gag and then immediately remembered laughing exactly the same way a few years ago, while playing 2007’s “really-good-after-so-many-other-failed-attempts-at-a-decent-adaptation” The Simpsons Game, when Marge and Maggie hilariously stepped into a GTA: San Andreas clone in order to ironically clean up the streets. And that’s when I got the biggest reference of them all, perhaps even an intentional one, but surely the one that makes Trey and Matt’s hair stand on end whenever they hear it… I just can’t not say it… sorry guys, hope you know it’s still a compliment… but…
…Yup, Simpsons already did it.
Still though, as a South Park fan and shameless gamer, I’m giving this a solid 8.5/10. If you don’t know your Mr. Twig from a Chief Wiggum in the ground, you’re still looking at a decent 6.5/10, so seriously consider a rental.
