South Park: The Stick of Truth is not the first time that South Park has made the leap to the video game medium, but it’s easily the best available. With a story written by the series writing team, and an art style that seamlessly fits with the show, The Stick of Truth is like playing through a season of the show.
Using story beats established in the series most recent to the release of the game The Stick of Truth sees the children of the town playing a huge LARP game, allowing the game to intertwine traditional fantasy tropes into the South Park we all know and love.
Creating a brand new child that has just moved to town, you have the choice to join Cartman’s Humans, or Kyle’s Elves, all dressed in bad cosplay outfits. You even get to choose what class you want to play as: Fighter, Thief, Mage, or Jew. From here the game goes wildly out of control, featuring aliens, zombie Nazi’s, Underpants Gnomes, Crab People, and an 8-bit excursion to Canada.
The game’s combat plays like a typical RPG turn based game, though at times with characters reminding each other mid battle that they have to wait their turn to attack. The combat may be simple, but it’s a style that has worked well for decades within games, and it fits perfectly within this game. The usual turn based fighting tropes are all present, with class specific attacks, summons, and magic (fart attacks).
Despite a large number of attack options, classes, and quick time events the game is incredibly easy to get to grips with, though with enough differences and options available in the class systems to be able to try something different on a second, third, or even fourth playthrough. The basics are quick to learn but with enough options that you can tailor your character to your own way of playing.
The game even allows you to customise your character via unlockable armour, weapons, hairstyles, and accessories that allow you to make your character unique, though players wanting to make their character female do have to wait until a mission where you’re sent to infiltrate the girls in order to unlock female clothing and hair options.
The town of South Park itself is also well recreated within the game, allowing the player to explore iconic locations such as the school, the kids homes, and the park. Each area is lovingly recreated to look just like the show, and exploring the town is genuinely enjoyable.
A well made and surprisingly competent game, South Park: The Stick of Truth manages to recreate the look and feel of the show so well it’s a surprise that it took seventeen years to make a good game out of the franchise. The game isn’t perfect, there are some occassions where the controls don’t feel as good as they could do, but the flaws are small in comparison to everything that the game does well.
Fans of the show are sure to have a great time playing one of the most ridiculous games around.
Are you a fan of South Park: The Stick of Truth? Let us know!