K-SCORE: 58
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment, South Park Studios
Publisher: Ubisoft
Directors: Chris Brion, Chris Parker, Zane Lyon
Writers / Starring: Matt Stone, Trey Parker
Spoiler Level: Moderate
“four classes: Warrior, Mage, Thief, and Jew”
This game made me smile right off the bat. Designing your own little South Park boy is really fun. I tried to envision what I would look like if Matt Stone and Trey Parker were putting me in their universe and made that kid. Then I woke up in the game, was told by my fictional parents to go out and play, and promptly met my favorite character Butters! Then we went to Eric Cartman’s house and he told me I was crafting a character in his RPG and that I should enter my name. I entered, Tibby (the universe already has a Kyle). Cartman said, “You’ve entered the name “Douchebag.” Is that correct?” I hit yes. Then I was told to pick between four classes: Warrior, Mage, Thief, and Jew. That’s about when I thought, “Oh man, this is going to be fantastic.”
Kyle as a South Park character
Kyle wearing some crab people claws and a tiara...
“at its very best when it’s satirizing RPGs themselves”
As I progressed through the game though, I lost my enthusiasm. It’s just too slow. There’s a lot of funny concepts in South Park: The Stick of Truth. Matt Stone and Trey Parker are too talented of writers for it not to be. The novelty of getting to wander around the town of South Park at your leisure wears off after a little while, and most of the concept is nostalgia rehashing concepts from the TV shows best (and worst) episodes. On the one hand, I’m happy they put Al Gore and his Manbearpig creation in there because they rip that man to shreds satirically and it’s brilliant. Plus, that story lends itself to potential RPG fights just fine. On the other hand, I’ve already seen that episode, and the game doesn’t do anything that different to make jokes out of it. Ditto Mr. Slave, Mr. Mackey and his hoarding problem, ginger kids, the woodland critters, Shelly, Chef, Mayor McDaniels, the goth kids, Lemmiwinks, the meth tweakers, Mr. Marsh, the aliens with their anal probes, the underpants gnomes, Terrance and Phillip who I’ve never thought were funny, Ike who’s my second favorite character, and so on and so forth through most of the South Park ensemble. The game is at its very best when it’s satirizing RPGs themselves, like when they claim the New Kid’s real name is Dovahkiin, or when the kids use some run-of-the-mill stick as the Stick of Truth that compels the government idiot to take his clothes off and try to rule the universe, or when you talk to Mrs. Cartman and Eric says, “Don’t talk to her; she’s not part of the game.” It’s also brilliant when it blurs the lines between reality and the kids playing a big town-wide role playing game of humans versus elves with wizard kings, and high jews. Having a meeting where Kyle is proposing an in-game alliance is made so much funnier when Butters shouts out, “The only good elf is a dead elf!” yet that’s basically just a cutscene, and if I’m going to watch a bunch of funny cutscenes then I could watch the show. So the formula is sound, but needs tweaking. (Teehee)
I can see what happened in the creation of South Park: The Stick of Truth. Matt Stone and Trey Parker wrote ideas for gameplay storylines for a ton of their characters that would be befitting a kid who gets to have hilarious and inappropriate adventures in the town of South Park. Then actually crafting all of those stories would have been impossible, especially given the game’s budget. So the final product is a short main questline, which is actually really good and funny, put alongside a bunch of little ideas that are barely more than easter eggs, in a game with lackluster gameplay and of course loot glut.
The combat system is fine, essentially utilizing the same turn-based combat style from games like Paper Mario and Final Fantasy, complete with special attacks, potions, mana, companion abilities, summons, timing attacks, etc. But of those games, it’s distinctly mediocre. It’s not balanced at all. There’s a “magic” system that is gaseous in nature, and it doesn’t work because mana doesn’t refill outside of combat like HP and PP so it’s just a waste to use those abilities, especially because the others are just as powerful if not more so. The relative power of attacks is completely out of whack and gets worse comparing companions, classes, and weapons. I chose to be a thief because I thought it was funny when Cartman said at the beginning, “Yeah, you certainly look sneaky enough to be a thief,” but then the class has mostly single-target abilities in a game where most of the battles are about killing as many of the enemies at once as possible. So, oops. Not that I was complaining too much. On hardcore difficulty, the game was a breeze. I realized bleeding did a percentage of the target’s life every turn so even on bosses I was ill-equipped to face I could just make them bleed to death and take multiple turns in a row by drinking speed potions (coffee). In a way, I’m glad it wasn’t longer. The gameplay isn’t good enough to sustain more content.
“fight Khloe Kardashian’s giant evil fetus”
Making that more fun would be step one. Getting rid of the bullshit RPG staples would be step two. Just because 95% of RPGs have stratified gear systems, complex formulae that dictate damage outputs and defense, huge amounts of armor, a distinction between abilities and perks, and barbaric amounts of consumables doesn’t mean it makes sense for South Park. I was so happy with my little South Park kid. Having to change his outfit to something else more powerful that always made him look less like the character I designed at the beginning really sucked. Sure, give him a cheap-looking child’s toy weapon at the beginning, maybe advance that to a switchblade and then end it with some fucking ninja stars, but don’t give me a three-piece set of crab people armor after the witch armor after the barbarian armor after the alien armor and so on. Even worse, the game has enchantments for all of that, so you have to constantly unequip old gear and remove those enchantments and put on the new gear with the old enchantments until you get better enchantments and sub those out. Ugh. I just want to get to the silly jokes. I bought the game so that I could laugh while fight Khloe Kardashian’s giant evil fetus, not so I could meticulously decide whether I should spec into a more fire-damage focused build.
Beyond that, the game just needed more focus. It’s a decent enough platform, but I don’t care whether they leave out three-quarters of the staple franchise characters if the other quarter have long and original South Park stories to explore. I don’t want to go on a fetch quest for Mr. Mackey just like I don’t want to do the simple little find Mr. Hanky’s kids in the sewer quest. There’s very little there for me to laugh at. On the other hand when you’re doing the main quest and the girls take you to their secret meeting chamber and ask your name and you don’t say anything (like RPG protagonists don’t) and then one of them says, “He doesn’t really speak,” followed by a pause and, “That’s hot.” That’s genius. Perfectly integrated RPG tropes and South Park humor along with effective satire of our society. If they trimmed the fat from the edges of South Park: The Stick of Truth, there could have been a lot more of that.
I’m not sure whether it was Obsidian Entertainment or South Park Studios or both that did come up with the one great innovation for this RPG. Facebook. The goal of making friends with the townspeople was a very clever way of getting you to explore and then a great way for them to insert random jokes that somehow made you feel like you were in on them, one of the ensemble. But those were too few. It was as if every character had to have one Facebook message and it had to come exactly two minutes after you befriended them. Still, I couldn’t help but laugh at Token posting, “My class is healer. You can’t just change it to blacksmith, Cartman,” or when Chickadee-y cordially invited me to join the blood orgy next Sunday.
The game also suffered mightily from a technical standpoint. A Blizzard-esque polishing would have gone a long way. Despite paper graphics of the South Park style, the game lagged as I ran between screens. The autosave system, checkpoint system, and manual save system were all atrocious. The game also didn’t warn you about when you wouldn’t be able to backtrack and thus a great deal of the content was potentially missable, which drove me a little crazy from a completionist standpoint. With better design, they could have had everything be revisitable thereby giving more freedom to the character to tackle whichever content he or she wanted at whichever time. And many of the quicktime events or out-of-combat world interactions just didn’t work that well. I also didn’t really notice this when playing, but did when I watched an episode of South Park afterward. The graphics are weird. They only ever give you one static view of the town or interior settings, unlike the show which isn’t afraid to flip the “camera” around and paint everything paper-flat but from a different perspective. So the game looks bad at times, especially if you’re travelling around the overworld too much. You can notice it if you compare the look and feel of the cutscenes, which are exactly like scenes from the show, to the rest of the game.
The Stick of Truth is funny in the way that I’ve come to expect from South Park, but too often it’s a greatest hits compilation more than it is original and new content from the creators. The main quest is short, but satisfying, and the writing is great, but it’s inserted over gameplay that’s lackluster at best, bloated and broken at worst. The gameplay itself needs to be simpler for the next South Park game, and what choices they make should be as original as possible with a focus on fun just as kids playing an RPG would be. Inserting the characters that populate the world is one thing. Making them into actual questing content is another. If they have a questline for a character, I’d like to see it be different from anything I can find in the show, otherwise I could have just watched the show without the wonky RPG mechanics. It’s really not a great game, but it’s an experience and not one I regret. Matt Stone and Trey Parker always impress me. You wouldn’t expect such nuanced commentary from guys that think talking lumps of shit and endless farting is funny, but that’s what they deliver. An undying Kenny as the final boss? Dressed like a nazi zombie princess? You’re just not going to find that anywhere else.