A funny romp that will leave you in stitches, but it's a far too easy ride coasting on poop jokes

User Rating: 7 | South Park: The Stick of Truth PC

I'm a huge fan of South Park. I almost instinctively put a random episode on every time I do my laundry. I know most of the in-jokes and running gags throughout the series, and the show still makes me laugh even when I've seen an episode half a dozen times. Unfortunately, every game that has used the license (with the exception of the N64 FPS) has come up short as either a ripoff of another- more successful- game, or a hackneyed attempt to cash in on a recognizable license. Now we have Stick of Truth, a dyed-in-the-wool South Park game from series creators and writers Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Does their control over the project elevate the game, or does the formula fall flat?

I'm happy to say that this is a good example of doing the source material justice in an RPG format. The story is simple enough: you are a new kid, and you are drafted into a pseudo-D&D/Lord of the Rings fantasy game being played by the lovable 4th graders from the iconic mountain town. Sure enough, eventually things get out of hand and it falls to you and the boys to solve a massive problem threatening the world. Classic South Park.

You are the new kid in town, known only as Douchebag (and boy is that joke tired by the end of it). You can customize your appearance with a staggering array of "flare" and create a pretty unique South Park persona, although your character never speaks- which is obviously a dig on mid-90's Square RPG's with silent protagonists. I went for a goofy emo character, because why not? You perform quests around the town such as finding Jesus in a church, fighting homeless people, or delivering meth to Tweek's family coffee shop, and all the quests are presented with all the absurdity and joviality you expect from the show.

The graphical presentation of the game is quite possibly the greatest thing about it. It looks precisely like the show, no better and no worse. You feel as though you are actually in a living, breathing, fully realized South Park, Colorado. Despite being a huge fan of the show, the actual layout of the town was often pretty nebulous and unclear, and being able to see all of the iconic locations from the boys' homes to the school grounds the experience and fleshes out the world for mega-fans. There were a few issues with the graphics, like the main character disappearing in some cutscenes and some items flickering in and out, but the overall graphic presentation is crisp and solid.

The voice acting and audio is equally superb, with all the voice work done by the team at South Park Studios. All the voices are the same as the show, and there are some fabulously hilarious bits as well, like how Nazi zombies only recite dated recordings of Adolf Hitler's live speeches. The music is also wonderful, hitting great notes that build the fantasy of the game the boys are playing, evoking such things as Lord of the Rings and Elder Scrolls. There were some issues with lip-syncing during some cutscenes, but it was often hard to notice, and not altogether cumbersome.

By now it seems I have nothing but good things to say about this game, but here is where I get into the gameplay, and this is where it's kind of touch-and-go. The combat is dumb-as-rocks easy once you get the hang of it. It's actually a pretty robust system, taking some cues from Final Fantasy VIII and other turn-based JRPG's, implementing timed button-presses, summons, and status ailments, but the combat can be a slog at times, especially during boss fights. The summons are unavailable in boss fights, and there were times when I was dealing next to no damage with my primary weapon with no explanation as to why. Bosses are also immune to farts (the most powerful abilities in the game), so I would often just use special abilities and ranged weapons until they died. I often had so many healing potions, I could just wear any boss down with ranged attacks until they keeled over, although some bosses trigger interesting moments that require mental functioning just one notch above auto-pilot. Weapons and armor are often hilarious, like anal probes and the like, and they can be upgraded with patches and strap-ons (lol) which offer buffs and new abilites. As funny as some of them are though, some of the abilities trigger such long animations I wouldn't even bother, as the humor had worn off hours ago. I found myself avoiding some fights because it just got to be tedious. The combat system takes a lot of elements from a number of other games, but doesn't do enough with those elements- despite the interactivity- to make them interesting or unique. One thing that is unique is how the menus in the game work. You access your entire menu system through Facebook. As you travel the town and meet people, they send you friend requests. Every so often, reaching a certain number of friends on your social network will unlock a battle perk, such as increased damage against bleeding enemies, or random buffs. You also access your inventory and quests through the social network as well. I thought this was clever, and the posts you receive from your friends can give you hints about gameplay, which I thought was interesting and unique.

One of the hallmark topics that dominates any discussion of this game is often lauded as its greatest strength while simultaneously being derided as its downfall: it functions primarily as a drawn-out episode of the show, and this is absolutely the case. The show works remarkably well because it compresses its comedy and social commentary into 22-minutes blocks of programming, but here we are faced with a 12-15 hour game that attempts to deliver the same density of comedy throughout; and, while it is largely successful in this regard, the story and cutscenes do have a tendency to mire themselves in pointless exposition for extended periods of time. Don't get me wrong, it's a knee-slappingly hilarious experience, but some may find that its lack of brevity can cause the comedy to have less of a payoff than the show does due to the game's length.

So in the end, what we are left with is something quintessentially South Park. It's a hilarious ride, and if all you want is the comedy, this is a solid bet. I will certainly replay it just to see the funny moments again, and to choose a few things differently to see what happens. While the narrative is pretty linear, there are a few moments where you have a few choices for some short-term comedic gold, and it's in those hilarious moments that this game shines. It's unfortunate that the gameplay is so robust at first glance and yet shallow in practice, but that isn't to say that the game fails at anything in particular. Despite all my quibbles, this is the best South Park game ever, and it's not a bad RPG. If you chuckle at poop jokes and you're a fan of the show, this game will certainly tide you over until the rest of the March lineup starts hitting store shelves. Just don't forget to bring a towel.