South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play First Look

While the South Park TV series has more or less become a model of longevity since it was introduced more than a decade ago, video games bearing the South Park name haven’t exactly shown that same staying power. A handful of poorly received games were released in a flurry by Acclaim early on in the life of the series, but we haven’t seen a major console release since 2000. That will change when Microsoft releases South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play this October to coincide with the release of the new season of the show. Here at Comic-Con 2009, we took a bit of time to check out the Microsoft booth and see what this game will have to offer.

Let’s Go Tower Defense Play is a game that will blend the traditional tower defense elements of unit building with the ability to move a number of characters around on the map to manually attack the enemy. Of course, when we say “characters” and “enemies,” you can rest assured that these are all taken directly from the South Park universe. You play as one of the four big names from the show--Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny--and the bad guys seeking to invade your theoretical tower include ginger kids, hippies, cows, and underpants gnomes. Altogether, there will be 16 enemy types.

The defenses you can build to withstand the onslaught of these comic targets are limited to the theme of what the four guys might be able to build on their own...sort of. One we saw was a makeshift baseball pitching machine that launched baseballs from an apparatus that looked like a mangled mess of cardboard. Another one actually shot lasers from an ingeniously modified (but still pretty rough-looking) telescope. So while some of the weapons are a bit beyond what the boys might piece together, they all have a backyard-made look to them.

You play by running around the map and hitting X to pull up the list of defense units you can build. They’ll instantly show up near the spot you’re standing, quickly allowing you to run about building defenses prior to and during the match. You can also hit a button to fling snowballs at the enemies and another button to switch from one character to another. Each character has his own special ability, too. For example, Cartman can call in a carpet bomb to clear the screen of enemies, while Kyle can boost each of his teammate’s attack skills by a significant percentage over a brief period of time. In typical tower defense style, you’re judged on how many enemies sneak through to the end of the fixed path, with a ranking system that judges you on a scale from platinum (the best) to turd sandwich (need we explain?).

The game is spread across 11 multistage campaign levels and five challenge levels, each featuring a different environment, such as the schoolyard or the junkyard where poor Kenny lives. If any of these stages are causing you fits, you can actually elect to skip that stage, but you'll miss out on all the bonuses and unlocks you might get for them. Some of the more intriguing of these unlocks are the South Park videos that come with the game. There are more than 80 videos containing moments from the show that are offered as a viewable reward for doing well in a stage.

Finally, the entire thing will support co-op play for up to four players both locally and online. If that sounds like something you and your friends will be interested in, you can expect to see South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play arrive on Xbox Live Arcade this October.