The Luv Shack is a little old place where we can get together. OK, now that the token B-52's reference is out of the way, South Park: Chef's Luv Shack is a loose combination of You Don't Know Jack-style trivia and Mario Party-style minigames. The result is a game that manages to amuse with its questions, but the lame minigames, lack of varied speech, and generally slow pace of the game make it short-lived fun at best.
The game is set up like a game show hosted by everyone's favorite chef, Chef. Chef offers the player in control a choice in three trivia categories. The categories manage to be pretty funny, with topics like Sucks or Canadian, Giant Japanese Monster Bad, The 1991 Denver Broncos, and West Siyeeeeede Story. The questions are occasionally funny (for instance: The rock band Loverboy: Sucks, or Canadian? The correct answer is, of course, both), but after two or three days you'll start to see some questions repeated. Speaking of repeating, the game's speech gets old pretty fast. It uses all the real voices, but there isn't enough variation. The game's intro is the same every time, the announcer says the same things, etc. A few different intros and quick jokes would have gone a long way here. The load times are brief, but they really break up what should be a fast-paced trivia game. Having to wait between questions and minigame rounds really has a noticeable effect on the overall flow of the game.
The minigames are extremely basic, some taking on elements of classic arcade games like Asteroids, Warlords, Super Sprint, Tapper, and Kickman. Others are oriented toward button mashing. After seeing each of the minigames once, you'll probably wish there were a way to disable them altogether. The trivia and the game's warped sense of humor are the main draws here, and the minigames really take away from the overall presentation. Graphically, the game looks just as you would expect it to. The simple style of the South Park characters is well represented, albeit a little on the pixilated side, and the animation closely mirrors the show, even in the minigame rounds.
This is a game that you may want to rent, but the repeating questions, repeating speech, and dull minigames keep it from being a game you'd want to pop in whenever you need a simple party-style game.
