I have
had South Park since it was released
but have avoided it while I finished up other games, hoping to play it through
without stopping and starting like I did for many of the other games on this
list. Having some free space in my
gaming schedule, I decided to pick up South
Park and give it a shot. Not being a
huge fan of turn-based role playing games a la Final Fantasy, I was a little worried, but hoped that the writing
and familiar characters would help me overcome that distaste.
What I
got was a game that, while it was still a turn-based RPG, it did not make those
turns as painful as I remember them being from old Nintendo games of yore. The action was fast paced and interesting,
the looting was epic, there is literally (that’s a pun) garbage all over for
you to rummage through and turn in to the various vendors out there in South
Park. There were also plenty of
collectables to gather in this game, from Chinpokomon, to Facebook friends, to
all of the weapons, armor and enhancements scattered throughout the town
(including the forest, farm and Canada – yes, Canada). Searching for all of the collectables takes
up a good amount of your time itself, but the bulk is obviously devoted to the
missions.
Being that this is an RPG, the
missions are broken up into both story missions and side missions that don’t
require you to beat them but that offer plenty of incentive to do so. Not only do you acquire experience points by
completing side missions (an important thing to do during an RPG, even if you
are capped at level 15, a level I achieved long before the final stage, let
alone the final battle) but you also get better loot and even summon abilities
(Jesus, Mr. Hanky and the owner of City Wok to name a few) which provide a
powerful ally that basically kills anyone you are fighting (except
bosses). The kicker with the summon
buddies is that you can only use their ability once per “day” (there are three
days in the game).
The writing is exactly what you
would expect from a South Park game that is unrestricted by censors of any
kind. While the unfettered cursing and
suggestive items are funny enough, the nudity for nudity’s sake (even if it’s
cut-paper animated nudity) seems a little ridiculous. I could have done without those instances,
but overall the majority of the interactions involve the usual gang of kids
from South Park and in that respect it is just like an episode of the
show. Everything fits together quite
nicely between the quests, the cut scenes and the battles and it all works well
within the general framework of the game, which basically pits two factions
against one another who then need to come together to fight a common enemy at
the end. While that is a traditional
comic book/fantasy trope, it is wholly believable here because these kids are
all friends and we know that going in.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone do an
incredible job of creating the town of South Park within the game and getting
us to care about the town we live in.
The only problem I have is that we do not spend enough time in the
town. Even completing all of the side
quests and finding probably 75% of the collectables, I was still able to finish
the game in roughly 12-15 hours. The
last part of the game was a cakewalk as I had already reached my max level and
had powered up my weapons with add-ons that basically made the fights
incredibly one-sided. While I’m not too
mad about that last part, I put in the time to get to that level after all, the
fact that one slow, lonely day could provide me with enough time to beat the
game feels like a bit of a ripoff in this day and age of 50-60 hour game
completion times.
Beyond the painfully short play
time, this game was everything I was hoping it would be when I heard that it
was coming out. I’m glad I picked it up
and will definitely be doing so if they ever get around to making a
sequel. Even if you are not a fan of
turn-based RPGs, I would advise you check this out.
No comments:
Post a Comment