South Park: The Stick of Truth (PS3)

Despite facing numerous setbacks in development, the bankruptcy of its original publisher THQ, and various other delays (in Germany), South Park: The Stick of Truth is actually here. But beware – while fans of the TV series will soon discover the game to be a sort of Holy Grail of South Park trivia, people unfamiliar with the series are likely to find it confusing or even revolting. This truly provocative title pushes the limits of good taste, and has fun doing so.

The Lord of the Sticks

You’ve probably already seen the basic storyline of South Park: The Stick of Truth in numerous episodes of the TV series: a group of elementary school kids in their hometown of South Park, Colorado play a live action role-playing game à la The Lord of the Rings according to their own rules and with all the stuff that goes with it – costumes, makeshift fortifications, toy weapons, etc. In this case, Humans compete against Elves to find the Stick of Truth and defend themselves from the other side. Instead of playing as one of the well-known characters like Cartman, Stan, Kyle, or Kenny, you begin as the New Kid, who is really just trying to make some friends. He ends up on the battleground between the two sides, as what began as a harmless game has long since erupted into a great conflict between good and evil that now involves aliens, Nazi zombies, Underpants Gnomes, goth kids, and even girls; always with a very self-aware sense of irony, and totally absurd situations like you’ve never seen in any other video game.

From the very beginning it’s clear that this is a game made for South Park fans. To do this, the developers worked in close cooperation with series creators Trey Parker and Matter Stone, resulting in a game that really does well what it sets out to do. Even if a supporting character or two gets too little screen time, this adaptation is overflowing with love for the source material, and every part of the game is full of inside jokes and clichés that fans of the series will eat up. The bizarre, provocative, and quite often perverse humor is definitely not everyone’s thing, especially when it’s all so intentionally blunt, naïve, and immature. And there’s no shortage of exaggerated social criticism, cheap shots at current events, cockeyed situation comedy, and absurd scenarios, either. If you’re interested, but never had much to do with the TV series, you should definitely try to catch up before purchasing the game; otherwise most of the jokes and references will go over your head. It takes a good 15 to 20 hours of game time to get through the highly entertaining main storyline and all the side activities; after that, the story’s over, but you can keep playing until there’s nothing left to do.

One RPG to rule them all ...

In terms of gameplay, South Park: the Stick of Truth has just about everything that makes up an RPG nowadays. At the beginning, you create your own character with his own unique appearance, though the options are pretty straightforward in this case. After a few moments in the open game world, you’re asked to choose your character class – Fighter, Mage, Thief, or Jew (!). The class you choose really doesn’t have much of an effect on character development, but it will affect your five special abilities, all of which require precious mana. For example, the Jew can use Jew-Jitsu, a devastating martial arts attack that stuns enemies, the Sling of David, or Circum-scythe, which slices off the Armor and Shields of opponents and inflicts Bleeding damage you-know-where.

The game’s combat system is easy to learn, an has a good amount of depth. In general, they could have done a better job balancing the difficulty of enemies, as they’re either too easy to defeat or extremely hard. Fortunately, it’s always easy to adapt to difficulty, and you can often manipulate the game environment to weaken, stun, or even take out enemies before you actually confront them in battle. When you do confront enemies, the action immediately switches over to the combat screen with a flash of lightning and thunder, where you enter into turn-based combat with your foes. Characters take turns selecting actions from a menu of practical symbols, and timing your attacks and other moves is the key to winning the battle. At the right time, the character will start blinking or a circle will appear beneath them, and you can press a button at this time to make attacks more powerful and defensive actions more effective. You should also make regular use of the “examine” option, as it will reveal your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses.

So it can’t hurt to use a tactical approach – quite the opposite. Stun the first enemy, disable the second by gross-out, fire, frost, or shock. Most of the time it’s a matter of having the right equipment – a melee and a ranged weapon, along with armor slots for your head, torso, and hands. These items can also be upgraded using “equipment patches” and “weapon strap-ons”, giving them special features or higher damage values, among other things. You cannot change equipment during combat, however. Potions can also be quite helpful, and come in several types including revive, cure, strength, speed, power, health, and mana. When facing really tough enemies, your magical farting abilities are particularly effective. These include the Cup-a-spell fart grenade, the Dragonshout, the Sneaky Squeaker, and the most powerful, Nagasaki, which can blow up even solid walls. No less devastating are summons, which call upon the powers of certain supporting characters including Mr. Hankey and Mr. Slave to wipe out opponents in battle. The companions in your party, including Kenny, Jimmy, Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Butters, are available in the open world as well as in combat, and can be switched out when you need them. They each have a range of special attacks and abilities that they’re always happy to use. Unfortunately, they can’t be customized, so you just have to take them as they are.

You gain experience points by successfully completing battles, and you can invest them in your character’s attributes. You can also get them by completing missions, and a relatively open game world like this one will have more than its fair share of NPCs and side quests in addition to the main storyline. There’s a lot to discover in South Park, and the fast travel system makes it so that you won’t be walking all over the place, but walking is also pretty practical, as your characters move at a nice pace. A map of the game world helps you get your bearings, but there is no minimap. You can make friends with the locals on Facebook, which will unlock certain perks. Some of them will send a friend request right after you meet them, others will only become friends with you at their own leisure. Gun nut Jimbo will send you off to kill ferocious beasts, Al Gore is constantly on the lookout for Manbearpig, and the Kindergartners will have you playing a lively game of hide and seek. In general, side quests are basically errands, and many well-known RPG clichés are included, such as the old “rats in the cellar” gig and “find the right key”.

You’ll also collect a ton of useless junk which you can sell to NPCs and use the money to buy useful objects. To get ahold of all the collectible objects and treasures to be found on the game, you’re going to have to use all of your skills – shooting, deploying your companions, using an anal probe to teleport, shrinking, and of course, the fart magic already mentioned. South Park: the Stick of Truth also has its conspicuous downsides, though. The open world concept means you’ll end up facing very powerful enemies early on, and objects and enemies you’ve already destroyed respawn pretty quickly. This often means you’ll have to refight the same battle several times over. The automatic save points in the main storyline are also not always convenient, as this typically leads to déjà-vu. The lack of a day/night cycle doesn’t really matter all that much, but I found it pretty disappointing that there aren’t really any consequences to choosing a faction in the main campaign. This is a place where they could have easily done a better job; as it is, the decision you make has very little impact either in terms of gameplay or in terms of the storyline.

Snipped

South Park’s issues with censorship are as old and as well known as the show itself, but this time it takes on a new flavor, one which most European buyers are unlikely to be happy with. This is because some scenes have been cut. According to series creator Matt Stone, the scenes make up only about 30 to 40 seconds of the whole game, but the cuts are still “lame, ridiculous, and stupid.” It’s well known that German versions of video games invariably have Nazi symbols removed, so it’s no surprise that these have been scrubbed out of that version, except for one swastika that apparently made it through. This led to a quick postponement of the release date so that they could clean up the first run of the game. But instead of replacing the symbols with other ones like they usually do, in South Park: The Stick of Truth, these symbols are covered up in the most obvious way possible – with black bars.

This deliberately ham-fisted solution is topped only by what they did with the scenes that were censored throughout all of Europe. These include cut scenes and mini-games having to do with anal probes and abortion. Without going into too much detail, the way they replaced the scenes can best be described as curious. Michelangelo’s David is shown facepalming while a sarcastic text describes the omitted scene and mocks European censorship laws. Of course, this completely reverses the censors’ intent, as the imaginations of many players can be way worse than anything actually shown in the game. Unfortunately for players in those countries that had scenes censored, these little digs at the censors tear you away from the otherwise fluid and immersive gameplay. The North American version of the game is the only one to be released uncensored in all formats. Despite the controversy surrounding these scenes, they had astonishingly little impact on the age ratings the game ended up receiving. Publisher Ubisoft apparently opted to cut it down even more in order to get a more financially lucrative rating. This means they wanted to be able to sell the game to as big a market as possible. These changes affect console versions available in Europe, but PC versions have an adult rating. The ESRB rating in North America is “M for Mature”.

Looks just like the show

The game’s graphics, based on the Onyx engine, need to be viewed and evaluated from two separate perspectives. All locations, characters, and animations are very simple in their design. An honest observer would conclude that the color palette is clear and basic, the graphics offer little in the way of complexity, and everything gets repetitive after a short time. The buildings you can enter are particularly lacking in interior décor and in the variety of objects inside. Well at least that’s how things look from an objective viewpoint; on the other hand, fans of the TV series will hardly believe their eyes. There’s never been such an accurate depiction of South Park itself, and everything looks like it was taken right out of a South Park episode, right down to the tiniest detail.

It’s also amazing how the gameplay blends in with the numerous cut scenes. All characters are instantly recognizable – they behave how you’d expect them to from the series and can be found in their usual locations. Future video game adaptations of TV series should take note, as this game really sets new standards for faithfulness to the original. In every corner of the game, whether it’s a garage or someone’s closet, fans will find the stuff they love in abundance. The gameplay animation is marred only by numerous loading times and occasional glitches.

Original voice actors

No expenses were spared on voiceovers, and the English version of the game features all the original actors from the TV series, who fit right into their familiar roles with no discernable loss in quality. The player character stays mute throughout most of the game, until right before the end, which is probably done to allow the player to identify with him as much as possible. The music fits the game well, and includes some well-known songs from the show. Sound effects are also well done, and contribute to the quality of the game as a whole.