What I Think Of...South Park: The Stick of Truth

After spending around 6 hours with Obsidian's new RPG South Park: The Stick of Truth, I am happy to report that there is indeed a fantastic South Park game! I will try to avoid spoiling jokes or plot points as best I can, but keep this in mind: if you like South Park AT ALL, then you should be playing this game....

The beginning cutscene, which is in a style straight out of 1970's era Dungeons & Dragons cartoons, lays down the game's premise: Humans and elves are waging an epic war for possession of the most sacred of relics: The Stick of Truth. You play as "the new kid" who can change the tide of battle for good.

You start with a pretty robust character creator. You can let your imagination run wild with clothing options, color options and facial features. Of course your character will change his look over time, you are given a pretty good foundation for your adventure.

You and your family have just moved to South Park, Colorado and your parents first ask you to go out and make new friends. You walk out your front door and see 2 kids locked in a fierce battle, you intervene and make your first friend: Butters!

Side note: I think Butters is one of the best characters on the show.

You are then led towards the Grand Wizard's (aka Cartman's) house. You are initiated into the Kingdom of Kupa Keep (yep, that joke comes up). You are then asked to choose your class: Fighter, Mage, Thief, or Jew.

The Kingdom of Kupa Keep...you see where that's going, right?

As of this writing, I have only played Fighter and Mage. Next playthrough I think I will try the Jew class to see what exactly sets that apart.

Combat works like it does in a Paper Mario game: Turn based combat where you need to hit a specific button to deal maximum damage. You also hit a specific button to block incoming attacks. You have your basic attack, abilities that take up Power Points (PP....yep that's a joke) and magic that uses mana. By "magic" I of course mean the power to fart on people. There are also hilarious Final Fantasy-style "Summons" which you can use once a day from characters like Mr. Hankey and Mr. Slave.

There are also the traditional "status effects". You have your basic Burning damage from fire, Poison damage comes from "grossing out" your enemies, causing them to throw up every round. "Pissed" mode will cause the opponent to target the character that caused it, also hinders that opponents stats. You also have to worry about Bleeding damage and there are items that clear your debuffs or add buffs to your party.

It all makes for enjoyable combat that keeps your engaged throughout the fight.

The look is SPOT ON. You will feel like you are controlling an actual episode of South Park. I have not watched the show in a while but even I got a lot of the references they were making and knew most of the characters I was interacting with. This does begin my quest to start buying the seasons on DVD and watch them until the discs catch fire.

The best thing I can say about this game is that it is beyond funny. Since this was written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, I can't say I am surprised, but it is still worth mentioning this game made me laugh OUT LOUD several times. Example: You can go into anybody's house, use the toilet to take a shit, collect that shit nugget and use it to "gross out" enemies. There are a lot of "Oh my God HAHA" moments in this game and they are best left for you to find out for yourself.

The only thing I am not loving about this game is how cumbersome it is to get to the map to see where to go for quests. A lot of quests get thrown at you and to get your mind on where you want to go you have to pull up the menu, scroll over to the quest log to see which one you want to do, scroll over to the map and look for the exclamation point, back out to the game and hope you remembered where to go. Travel is made easier with "Sir Timmy's Fast Travel", but it would have been nice to have some faster way to track quests.

That is my only issue with the game so far though. I am absolutely LOVING my time with this game and I can not recommend this enough. If you even remotely like South Park, you owe it to yourself to play this game. I have a feeling I will be talking about this game again when my "Game of the Year" list comes up.

It literally looks this good.