South Park through-and-through, great visuals, exactly what a long-time fan of the series would want, authentic RPG gameplay
Fans of neither South Park nor RPGs probably should avoid, technical bugs quite common, combat often tiresome and repetitive
"What did you do this weekend, Nate?" my team asked. "Oh you know, slaying Nazi zombie babies, traversing the lower intestine of a man called Mr Slave, performing quests for a dollop of talking faeces, rescuing a man from an alien anal probing in space, beating up underpants gnomes, narrowly avoiding being thwacked by the giant testicles of a man mid-coitus, and playing hide-and-seek with Jesus Christ," I answered. "The usual."
I could have just said "I played the new South Park game, Stick of Truth" but it wouldn't have had the same impact.
Frankly, nothing could generate the same eye-widening silence as describing some of the activities possible in The Stick of Truth, the comedic role-playing game just released by Obsidian (Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) and South Park Digital Studios. It marries a relentless obsession with the absurd to an enormous cast of characters and series tropes -- the offspring is, if nothing else, best described as a gift to South Park's biggest fans.
What may be less obvious to video game virgins is how authentic it is as a role-playing title. The RPG is broken up into quests -- some advance the main storyline; others, such as one in which you help Al Gore hunt down ManBearPig, serve as entertainment and levelling-up opportunities. You need to explore the whole of the town of South Park to discover and complete these quests and thus increase character strength and skills. You'll collect piles of weapons, armour, accessories, bonuses, attack styles and special moves; and, true to a classic RPG, managing your inventory and learning to combine all of these abilities at any one point is key to success.
The story is framed within the minds of the children of South Park, who believe themselves to ostensibly be playing witches and wizards. In actuality, a government cover-up operation is taking place in town and both child and government end up twisted together in the plot. It's very, very South Park.
In fact everything about this game, in which you play "the new kid in town", is shrouded in authenticity borrowed from the television programme. The art style and animation is identical to that seen on TV and all voices and script-writing come from South Park Studios itself. Characters major and minor -- from Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman through to Shelly Marsh, the Frog Prince and Principle Victoria -- all get screen time. It effectively plays out like a 20-hour episode of the show itself, which will sound like either Heaven or Hell depending on your views of the South Park brand of mockery (you can play as a Jew, thus battling Nazi babies is already pretty close to the bone -- doing so with a weapon called the "Circum-scythe"... well, you get the picture).
Censorship
Some of this humour was considered too offensive for European censors -- the console versions (as reviewed) have certain scenes removed. The game presents a comic apology screen whenever one of these scenes appear (about five over the course of the game), with text like: "I don't know what to tell you anymore, Europe. In this scene you would've been performing the first-ever interactive abortion in a video game, on Randy dressed as a woman, to convince the Taco Bell guys that you were a real doctor. You would numb his scrotum, dilate his anus, and accidentally suction his balls." What appears to be a statue of Michelangelo's David is seen in the background, face buried in his palms, which is presumably a reference to the prudish Victorians requiring a fig leaf be placed over David's genitals to avoid his penis offending the locals. And you thought South Park had no artistic merit? Pah!
Elsewhere in the game the humour succeeds in avoiding censorship from the taste and decency brigade. One scene requires you to shrink yourself small enough to climb inside the anus of Mr Slave -- the local S&M enthusiast -- and navigate your way through his bowels to disarm a nuclear device lodged up there. A homage to GLaDOS in Portal perhaps, the robotic female voice only seems too willing to have you "abort" the bomb. So, for future reference: pretending to abort something from a man's anus, wrong; actually aborting a bomb from a robotic womb, a-okay! Glad we got that cleared up.
The Stick of Truth is littered with homages to video game nostalgia and trivia. Your magic attacks are actually farts, with "Dragonshout" an obvious reference to a magic attack of the same name (not anal in origin) in *The Elder Scrolls V:
Skyrim*. You'll discover audiologs in one part of the game, each self-referentially questioning the point of audiologs in games. And let's not forget a trip to Canada in the second half of the game, which is depicted entirely as an 8-bit RPG from the NES era, complete with chiptune soundtrack and super low-fi graphics.
As a gamer, the parodic elements are well-executed and hilarious at times. Although like pantomime through the eyes of a child, much of the humour may be lost on inexperienced gamers -- if you sense no comedy in audiolog parody, you might find yourself in this camp.
But perhaps you'll find fun in the torrent of tropes culled from a rich South Park encyclopaedia that soaks every corner of the game. Whether investigating trophy cabinets in South Park's elementary school or checking out community message boards outside the City Hall, you'll find references to South Park episodes that date from the first series to the latest. "Need to tame a horse in Minecraft?" reads one poster, which will be familiar to anyone who has watched the most recent season of episodes; "Missing: Damien Thorn" reads another, which references a character from the very first season broadcast in 1997.
But perhaps my favourite example here of how much South Park history is in Stick of Truth is the Junk section of your inventory. As you defeat enemies (kids) and loot their bodies (trouser pockets) you'll salvage hundreds of nostalgic items. Like any RPG you'll sell these in shops to afford useful items, but this is the first time in my history as a role-playing gamer that I've read the description for every item of junk. Items like "The Poop that Took a Pee" (a book the character Butters wrote in one episode), Faith +1's debut album (from the Christian pop group Cartman once formed) are two of what seem like hundreds of examples. "The Spirit of Christmas film reel" is another favourite thanks to its description: "A very crappy animation" (The Spirit of Christmas was the short film
South Park Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker created that ultimately was commissioned as the series we know today.)
It's not all rosy. While the game is rich in content and beautifully presented, it's technically quite buggy. Frequent loading screens break up exploration and sound regularly seemed to go out of sync with the animation. There were a couple of occasions a character would get stuck in the terrain as well -- once because an NPC followed the lead character up a ladder, but wouldn't move out of the way to allow us to descend the steps afterwards. A reload was required here.
I would also question combat. True to classic RPG style, battles are turn-based. You'll need to keep a sharp eye out for visual clues that indicate when you should hit the attack button. Even by the end of the game it was a bit tedious, and that's coming from someone who enjoys turn-based combat. A rich variety of attacks will be available by the end of the game but as a result the early battles you'll face may feel repetitive and unexpectedly challenging. Trial and error is due in equal measures as patience.
Conclusion
All this combined, South Park: The Stick of Truth is a game that fans of both role-playing games and South Park will love. To fans of either RPGs or South Park, there's still plenty to enjoy. To everyone else, we'd hang a question mark over the box.
The most admirable part of The Stick of Truth is really just how well it demonstrates a TV show can translate into a video game. It's a masterful execution, faithful to its source in both content and tone and worth South Park fans watching someone else play on YouTube if they don't have a console -- even just to see a child dressed as a fairy walk into a nymphomaniac's rectum to unearth a lodged iPhone (a 5c in white, for those curious).
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
