South Park: The Stick of Truth (2014)

I have been a fan of the South Park show for quite some time now. I love how unapologetically it points out some traits of the adult world from the perspective of kids. And most of the time, the show concludes that the adults are even bigger.

The idea of an interactive South Park episode is great. The Stick of Truth definitely achieves an immersion in the silly world of South Park. Being able to enter most of the houses and institutions, packed with details and references to the South Park episodes, is stellar.

The Stick of Truth is an RPG with turn-based combat which, I admit, is not my favorite genre. But the game has a modern take on this mechanic/genre, which I appreciate a lot. You can pick your fights in an overworld, which is a must for me, and combat is dynamic and filled with entertaining humor. The game never feels grindy, which is a plus for me. Although the fights are rather easy. On normal difficulty, rarely does a boss fight feel like an actual boss fight. It's usually just an enemy with more health or a bit more damage. But the relaxed nature of the combat is also something that can be appreciated if you are mostly playing for the immersion and experience of the story, which I definitely did.

During the gameplay, you will collect a bunch of crap. Weapons, armor, decorations, and also junk. The game uses all these collectible items to further deepen the story. Junk is a great example. There is so much of it. You will find items like pubes, dildos, used condoms, bottle caps in various wardrobes, drawers, or other random places. And they are absolutely useless unless you exchange them for some change. But they add so much subtle humor to the places you visit.

The main story, on the other hand, is not my favorite. It is quite clear to me that the creators figured out the game mechanics and then stuck random story arcs around the gameplay in order to have a desired variety of levels and enemies. Which works, by the way. Environments and story arcs are definitely varied and keep the gameplay fresh. But for me, South Park as a show is genius because it usually picks a strong concept/problem/event and then cranks up the bizarre responses of people to that event. Of course, the game's story also has a hint of that, but it throws so many random events into the main story that exist only for the sake of game mechanics or for referencing the past episodes of South Park. The ending of the game in this regard was a total miss for me.

And why do I have a problem with that? Because South Park's toilet humor, paired with bizarre logic, is not that funny unless there is a clear and somewhat logical incentive to that response. My favorite episodes of the show are usually the ones with long plots, spanning over multiple episodes. Among them are "HumancentiPad" and "Black Friday." They all have a rather simple incentive, but they all have a very strong point that they want to make. They take a real event that is somehow believable, and then they crank up the stupidity of the characters to 100%. And with that stupidity, characters manage to fuck up even more things and create even more problems and silly situations.

And that's the magic of the show that this game failed to recreate. At least for me. But to be fair, the game's plot does stick to one strong concept. That's the concept of role-playing. And for that, I applaud the game. Everyone, no matter how violent, participates in this game. SWAT soldiers are waiting for your turn before they shoot you. That's funny! And a plethora of side quests works well because as side gigs, they don't need to be connected to the main plot.

So no matter what, this game is probably worth your time if you're a fan of the show. You will experience many laughs during the adventure, which you will remember for quite some time.

This is probably one of the easiest games to recommend if you’re both a South Park fan and into RPGs with or without turn-based combat. I don’t think I’ve watched the show once over the past 10 years, but I had an absolute blast with The Stick of Truth. The game is genuinely funny and almost nostalgic in the way it celebrates its aesthetically immature, over-the-top offensive humour. To me, it was a really enjoyable trip down memory lane.

Of course, just having an 11hr long SP episode wouldn’t be enough to seal the deal. There is a surprisingly solid game here that goes hand in hand with the faithful recreation of the TV show. I was impressed by how fluid and streamlined everything felt. There isn’t one hiccup in this game, the map is small yet packed with a decent amount of things to do (and the Canada portion is hilarious), and experiencing all the familiar SP scenarios with your own character was a joy. Alongside this, the RPG mechanics and turn-based combat are deceptively deep: you get a a bunch of ways to customise your character and a satisfying number of melee, range and magic tools to explore. And even though this isn’t exactly a challenging game, I found myself intentionally running into fights just to experiment with all different options and party members. The story is a bit crazy even for SP standards. If I’m being honest though, I would’ve appreciated a tighter focus on the kids’ LARPing story beats in favour of all the other shenanigans going on on the side.

The main caveat when recommending this game (assuming of course you’re a fan of the TV show) is its apparent lack of replayabilty. Comedy is the anchor here, and once you’ve experienced that once, the impact is gone. Even within a playthrough, there’s this feeling that the game starts off incredibly strong and slowly begins to lose its appeal (though it never outstays its welcome to the point where this becomes a problem). Besides, you can easily go through everything the game has to offer in about 12 hours. To me though, this was actually one of its highest selling points. I wasn’t looking for something long, and I wasn’t necessarily looking for something to go back to either. I just wanted a solid RPG experience and to reminisce about my SP days. And on this metric, The Stick of Truth absolutely delivered. 8.5/10

Throughout my 12 hour playthrough I rarely found a moment where I lost interest in what I was doing. The story though not the most difficult Is highly enjoyable offering plenty of interactions with characters I've come to love watching the TV show. Combat isn't the most fleshed out but has it's charm which I appreciated more as I progressed. For any South Park fans this is for sure a must play, for purely RPG fans however I don't feel there's enough there to keep you enticed.

South Park has always operated in some combination of four modes - absurdity, gross out humor, being offensive, and nihilism. I haven’t watched the show in years and years but I think it was at its best when it leaned into the first two categories rather than the latter. Philip Glass writing the music for the winter play, Mecha Streisand, and Isaac Hayes’ chef were some of the funniest moments on tv in the mid-90s. The offensive and nihilistic oh-don’t-get-mad-people-who-care-suck attitude encompasses some of the worst. Sia as Randy Marsh as Lorde=hilarious, especially compared with the bullshit cis/transgender storyline running through those episodes.

I’m happy to say The Stick of Truth nearly completely stays away from the nihilistic garbage of an episode like, say, ManBearPig (funny I should say that considering Al Gore and ManBearPig play a role in a minor sub quest) and even maybe the “offensive just to offend.“ However, I think the game leans a little too hard on the laziness of gross humor and offensive stereotypes. Anti-semitism wrapped up in this indie shtick of “oh look, Cartman is an asshole, isn’t he a jerk, don’t get mad it’s just a cartoon” is still anti-semitic. It’s a long discussed issue that’s hard to put in type. I support trans and Jewish people, is it okay to consume this media (rhetorical)?

Gameplay and story-wise, I had fun. It has a decent battle system, that system being Paper Mario. There aren’t many side quests, but there are lots of collectibles to delight series fans. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments. If you try to talk to Cartman’s mom when you walk by in the very beginning, he breaks character to tell you “don’t talk to her, she’s not part of the game.” Fart magic, the freaking entirety of Canada (which you only go to to translate a bit of French), the role of Taco Bell in the story, all really funny. I didn’t have as much of a great time in the more cringeworthy/intentionally shocking parts, including killing mutant nazi zombie fetuses in an abortion clinic, and frankly I’m amazed at how much of the game is spent inside a dude’s anus.

The game’s positives earn it a few stars, but the derivative battle system and the parts I mentioned that are offensive/shocking for no reason take some off. The bottom line is The Stick of Truth is a surprisingly successful blending of a well known IP with a game style you would never expect to fit.

While this isn't a perfect game it's a shining example of how to break genres and do things differently. It's also rare that I see a game based on a property and translates that well into a game. This one somehow manages to achieve both and do them incredibly well. It's far more entertaining and approachable than anything i've seen come from Tell Tale, but resembles their sort of style of adventure game with light puzzle solving. Time to time you see a (JRPG) game that has a gimmick or quirk but this was a grade above the rest for sure...

One minute you'll be exploring or collecting items and wander into a scripted cutscene event and find yourself seamlessly watching the show. I don't even like this show but I found myself incredibly entertained and pushed myself to uncover every bit of content in the game (narrative-wise)

The game itself isn't perfect, (I mean a point and click adventure game with light JRPG elements can only go so far) and the nature of this show is a polarizing one with it's political incorrectness, toilet humor (man some stuff here is gross), and at times absurd style of injokes and humor, but the only thing that this even is close to is the legendary Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden, and this has studio production refinement and quality!

This game is absolutely bonkers. I can't really give examples of the level of bonkers that this game goes to without giving spoilers, but just imagine the most bonkers things that happen in a South Park episode, and just assume this game goes there and then some.

The really fun thing about The Stick of Truth is actually feeling like you're in the South Park world. You spend your time in the game wandering around South Park, making friends and going on quests for people, eventually uniting the children of the city to fight as one. The customization is really fun as well; not only do you fully create a South Park character, but throughout the game you get to deck him out with all kinds of gear and flair. They did a pretty good job of making your combat customized to your style of play; there isn't necessarily one piece of armour that's better than everything else, it's just about figuring out what kind of build you want use. In that sense, it's role-playing at its finest.

However, the game is pretty easy, and the gameplay gets kind of monotonous sometimes. I started getting bored about a quarter-way through the game. I rarely felt challenged in combat, even though I was playing on hard mode. This is exacerbated by the interesting decision to make every combat reset your health and power. Most RPGs drain your health the longer you grind, forcing you to constantly use health items or go to an inn of some sort. In this game, you're only concerned with the battle at hand. Again, this makes the game quite a bit easier, but I actually didn't mind the decision too much, as it simply cut out a lot of the time-consuming parts of grinding, being the constant return to the inn. The game was decently balanced to make every combat a threat, but still, it was never overly difficult.

I felt that the game picked back up around the halfway or three-quarter mark, and it ended on a pretty good note. I didn't have the time of my life playing this game, but it was a pretty fun journey that encouraged me to explore and do side quests.

I haven't watched South Park in about 10 years. Coming back to the series as an adult was a strange experience: on the one hand, I could recognise the many problems the show has with political incorrectness, characters who were created decades ago who were questionable even then stand out as shockingly offensive today. And yet on the other hand, it was surprisingly comforting to delve back into the small country town, whose characters and anthems felt warm and nostalgic to me. To my surprise, I got about half of the references to obscure episodes I'd seen in my childhood, and it felt surprisingly good to return to a fandom whose lore I was unexpectedly familiar with.

Gameplay wise, I have to admit it was very basic. As per usual, I was meticulous in my exploration, opening every drawer and interacting with every person multiple times. Even on the hardest difficulty, I rarely used any consumables, and I only saw the game over screen when I made some questionable story decisions. The block system was surprisingly satisfying, but the combat was an uninteresting mix of one-hit-kill abilities, or very boring "Press X for bonus damage", chipping away until the enemy died.

One thing that wasn't clearly explained was the role of armour in the game. I'd fight enemies and would be doing 1 damage to them with every attack, and it was only at the end of the game that I noticed a small armour indicator next to their health bar (which would reduce the damage I could do to them with light attacks).

Furthermore, the equipment ("costumes") available were all pretty poor: they did almost nothing to change the gameplay, because they barely reduced damage and only occasionally had a useful buff associated with them. Low level gear often had better effects than high-level gear, so at the end of the game, I just put on my nicest-looking low-level armour and weapons and had no difficulty beating the final boss with abilities alone.

Overall, this was a pretty dull game with a huge amount of backtracking, but I loved it anyway. It hit me right in the nostalgia, like returning to old friends who hadn't aged a day. I recognised its problems, but it didn't stop me from smiling when I heard the Sexual Harrassment Panda themesong, or saw Mr Hanky living his best Christmas life. In terms of plot and characters, this really was just an elongated, interactive episode of the series, so I expect long-time fans will love it.

3.5/5 from me.

This game was far more enjoyable then it has any right to be.

It is basically like playing thru a collection of great South Park episodes, and even as someone who is not a massive South Park fan, this was fun. Particularly fun was seeing the ways the game integrated common RPG tropes, but in a ridiculous, young child, imagination way.

The gameplay itself is fun, but not terribly difficult or challenging.

My biggest complaint was that while there were a LOT of side quests, a lot of these were actually pretty boring, and since the core game is relatively easy, the "reward" for beating the side quests were often not worth it.

Well worth a play if you are looking for something fun, short, and hilarious.