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dkirschner's South Park: The Stick of Truth (PS3)

[January 14, 2017 05:10:01 PM]

Tore through this the last couple days. This had no right to be as great as it is. I read the reviews and still approached with a grain of salt, but damn if this isn't like playing a South Park movie. It's hilarious (if you find South Park funny) and it's actually a fun RPG too.

My favorite thing about the game is all the memories it conjured. I watched South Park when it first came out. I think I was 16. I remember sitting in my mom's room on the couch watching it (not with my mom though; she tried to hate it, but eventually admitted she liked it). Every week, my friends and I tuned in to the new episodes. This lasted at least through high school, and I kept up with it pretty good through a few years of college too. I haven't really watched it since, but this was so familiar. So much from the old classic episodes are here. I helped Al Gore find ManBearPig. I rescued Mr. Hanky's children. I helped Stan beat up Shelly for stealing his iPhone. I shot magic missles with Cartman. You can look in all the boys' closets and poke around their rooms and see years of South Park paraphernalia.

The other best thing about the game is traveling to Canada. It typical South Park fashion, they poke fun at Canada, but you'll have to travel there for yourself to enjoy it.

The game is fun to play too. You explore the town of South Park and have varying access to people's homes and iconic stores. To enter a number of secret places, you'll need keys, but they all open up. Side quests are fun, but the real joys are the main story and also trying to "friend" as many people as you can on social media. You play as the "new kid" and your first quest is your parents telling you to go make friends. You meet Butters, who is role-playing a paladin, and he takes you to Cartman's castle, where you realize that the neighborhood kids are playing a humans vs elves larp. You get drawn into it, and the game goes from there.

Battles are turn-based, but active kind of like Paper Mario. Your moves require you to input various commands to make them successful, so the combat isn't button-mashing action-RPG fare or menu scrolling. It's solid, if easy. You choose a class. There is fighter, magician, ranger, and...Jew. I chose Jew because I was curious. Turns out all your class gear involves you doing more damage the more damage you've taken. Ha. I assume the other classes were straightforward. Anyway, you can equip anything you want and your class luckily doesn't restrict you, just determines your special abilities and standard equipment.

A couple things I didn't like about it include an early level cap. I did the last two or three areas at max level. I mean, sure I was already a badass who couldn't really lose, but still. Why not make the max level higher if people are reaching it so early? Give me some more ability points or something. Then, selecting special actions outside of combat is cumbersome. Every direction on the D pad enters a menu, and holding or pressing R1 and L1 also bring up radial menus. But you have to select with the left stick. Right stick doesn't do anything, and trying to select with the D pad brings up one of the other menus. There are more efficient ways to toggle special abilities that are less confusing. Aside from that stuff though, it's mostly great!

Definitely worth a play if you ever enjoyed South Park.