Quiet little mountain town – South Park: Stick of Truth review

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been the creative minds behind Comedy Central’s South Park for 17 seasons now, starting back in 1997. Since then, the award winning adult comedy cartoon has poked fun at tons of hard hitting subjects. The show is loved by many and has gone on to win some awards.

With Trey and Matt working with Obsidian Entertainment, the team behind Fallout New Vegas and Alpha Protocol, they have created a game dedicated to the fans and South Park’s  17 years of being on air.

Following the “Black Friday Trilogy” a three part episode that involved Kyle, Cartman, Stan and Kenny starting a war over what console they should buy. South Park: The Stick of Truth has you starting out as the new kid in South Park, who is told to join a side in the battle between the High Wizard Cartman’s “Kuppa Keep” Kingdom and The High Jew Elf Kyle’s Elf Kingdom.

Of course, shenanigans ensue which sends you on a RPG quest for missions between the two kingdoms, which brings to recruiting other factions to the war, getting abducted by visitors, uncovering an evil Taco Bell conspiracy and fighting Nazi Zombies. In other words, the game feels like a true South Park episode, only being 14 hour long rather than 30 minutes.

The bread and butter of the game is it’s RPG system, taking ques from Nintendo’s Paper Mario series, Stick of Truth follows a turn based battle system that allows you to control your character (who will from here on be called Sir Douchebag) and a companion character. What is great about this battle system is it’s set up, you are given the ability to melee strike and range strike enemies depending on their position in battle, some enemies can defend against specific strikes (like stab to defend against melee and bounce a range attack back at you).

Attack strength and combos are based around timed strikes, where the weapon will flash when a button press is needed to bring more damage, this happens for both range and melee. On top of the basic attacks, Each character class (Warrior, Mage, Thief and Jew) has different power attacks that require specific timed attacks, these strikes use up Power points or PP and can usually turn the tide of battle.

Sir Douchebag can also use special magic attacks which are all based around farting. Fart strikes give opponents Gross Out damage (Stick of Truth’s version of Poison damage.) Farts can be used two ways, as a combo enhancement for melee and range strikes, or as a full attack which requires a reaction command using the analog sticks to find the correct frequency of the fart. Farting requires Mana and when your Mana is filled out for too long, it’s possible to crap yourself and cause damage.

To me, the best part was the exploration of South Park, throughout the game you are given new abilities and powers to help roam around the 2D Colorado Mountain town, this includes the ability to launch farts at fire to create an explosion, use an Anal Probe to teleport yourself to a different location, use your range attacks to knock down specific items and shrink yourself with the Underpants Gnomes shrink powder. Using these abilities, you can dispatch enemies before getting into a fight with them, this can great much easier fights or avoid them altogether.

A lot of time has gone into the content and character management system. Almost every weapon and armour can add a special bonus called a Strap-On, these includes breaking armour, adding bleed, Gross Out, fire, electric and more. Adding to your normal “Level Up” bonus is a friend counter, this gives you specific abilities such as higher defence, more damage to status ailed opponents, more health, etc. These are unlocked by adding Friends on Facebook, a task that requires doing sub missions, befriending a specific amount of friends in the town and more.

If there is one thing that I have to complain about is the game’s length, the main story is very short and maybe possible to beat it on a speed run in about 2 to 4 hours. However the rest of the content can push the game up to at least 14 hours. Aside from that the pacing does seem to be slow however that can be a fault of the genre itself.

Much like the show, South Park: The Stick of Truth is not for everyone, and those easily offended would not appreciate the jokes that the team has set up.  The game has a specific audience and that is the fans of the show, which makes it one of the best licensed games on the market. If you are a South Park fan, Stick of Truth is for you.