Truth be told, I had grown a little worried about South Park and The Stick of Truth. Delays are never a good sign, and then a matter of weeks before release we here that Ubisoft had taken the decision to censor the game themselves, cutting out scenes they thought were a little close to the bone. ‘Oh that’s a shame’ I thought to myself ‘they’ve got cold feet at the last minute, what sort of state is this game going to be in when they eventually release it?’ Boys and girls, there’s no need to worry – it’s fantastic.

To save a little time, here’s a link to my preview article. As you should know by now, South Park and The Stick of Truth is an RPG set in the town of South Park, where all your favourite characters are playing out a Lord of the Rings style role-play game. The overriding feeling I got from the first five minutes gameplay was that this did not feel like a game in any way; more like an interactive episode of the show. Graphically, it is done in the same two dimensional style as the show and Trey Parker and Matt Stone lend their voices to the characters, giving the whole game a nice warm feeling of authenticity. The soundtrack is deep and atmospheric, and the environment is genuinely huge; there’s as much fun to be had in just wandering around interacting with the non-playable characters as there is strictly following the quests.

Cartman takes the role of the grand wizard, and you take the role of Douchebag, the new kid in town. Cartman teaches you new skills and magic before sending you on various quests; early missions included raising an army to fight the Elves who have stolen the Stick of Truth, breaking into what appears to be a meth lab, and battling gingers to rescue Craig from detention. Fighting is laid out in the classic turn based format, and to quote Cartman – ‘I know it’s lame but that’s how we’re doing it’. The further you go you’ll find the game littered with nods and winks to past episodes; Al Gore for example sends you off to help him in his quest to find ManBearPig, and I loved that. I loved that a lot.

What works very well is that the game treads a very delicate balance between being immersed in the role-play game the characters are involved in, being immersed in the character development and being immersed in the story of the game. At times the game flicks between role-play missions and ‘real-world’ missions, but it all feels organic and the change between the two is done so smoothly that you barely even notice it.

Now for the elephant in the room – you know what you can expect from any episode of South Park; foul mouthed and inappropriate humour, and plot lines that border on bad taste. That’s why we love it. I’ve said before that South Park is my guilty pleasure; I know I should be above the gutter humour by this stage in my life, but I’m not and it’s funny. As you would quite obviously expect the game is no different, with many jokes treading the line between laughing because it’s funny and thinking to yourself ‘you really shouldn’t laugh at that you know’. Moments like when Token complains that Cartman can’t just change his class to Blacksmith, and when Jimmy the Bard gets stuck on a particular word really should not be funny, and there were times when my wife looked over at me and sighed ‘I can’t believe you found that funny’. But I did.

I did worry however about the fact that they have included the character class Jew. I thought that this might just be a little bit too close to the line, but in fact it’s actually remarkably inoffensive. If I’m completely honest, the worst it actually got was right at the very beginning at the character selection when, as you choose your class, Cartman’s voice over says ‘Jew huh? I guess we can never really be friends’. There’s no outrageous anti-semitism, and to be honest it’s considerably less of a feature than it is in any regular episode of South Park. The Jew class character has a couple of specific powers, but that’s about it; it’s no more offensive than any of the other attacks in the game which involve farting on each other.

This all leads me on to an interesting point – why did Ubisoft choose to censor the game before it was released? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be the one who argues that they should have left the content in, but it really does seem like an odd decision. To give you an example without giving away too much detail, there’s a level where you’ve been abducted by aliens, and if you need me to tell you what happens, then really and truthfully this game isn’t for you. As you free yourself, you see the real star of South Park (Randy Marsh) strapped to a table next to you, who casually looks over and says ‘First time huh?’ You then set off on a bid to find the control panel to free Randy, but if you go to the wrong one, you see the message in the picture below.

Now I’m not being funny, but it’s nothing worse than what regularly occurs in the television series, and not a million miles worse than what they’ve left in (the line ‘I know you want to explore the whole game and all, but our friend’s getting raped up there’ springs to mind). And is spelling it out so clearly really that much better than showing it actually happen? To the overly sensitive parents and talking heads who’ve never seen South Park but have heard that it’s awful and a bad influence on the youth of today, the answer is definitely ‘yes it is’. I think this says much more about society’s opinions relating to computer games compared to a TV show than it does about the actual content and from that aspect, it is actually quite socially responsible of Ubisoft towards the gaming industry as a whole to take it out. As it happens, they have managed to do it in such a way that the cut-screens are very unobtrusive to the gameplay; by the time you’ve read the page it flicks off the screen and you’re back in the game.

The most important thing to note about South Park and The Stick of Truth is that it really sucks you in as a story line. I haven’t felt so invested in my character and a plot line since Bioshock Infinite, just to give you an idea of what we’re talking about. The game’s tag line is ‘an epic quest to become…..cool’, and it really does feel like you’re the new kid in town and trying to win friends and influence people throughout the game. It’s a bit of a break from the norm for me, as I’m not a big RPG player. I’ve dabbled in Skyrim and Final Fantasy, but I’m more of a FPS and racing sim gamer. The fact then that The Stick of Truth manages to grip me so thoroughly where others have failed is testament that this is not just a lazy spin off cashing in on the success of the series, but a deep and immersive game in its own right.

To sum up then, I’m going to leave a clear message so that whoever you are, you can get an understanding of what to expect. Parents – This game is rated 18. It is rated 18 for a reason. If you wouldn’t let your kids watch an 18 rated film, don’t buy it for them as it too contains content not appropriate for little Bobby the teacher’s pet. Those who are easily offended – What you’ve heard is true. It is offensive. Some of the jokes contain the naughty F word. But you know what? I’m a grown up, and I know the difference between right and wrong and can make a decsion on whether I want to see it or not. Stop trying to police my thoughts and leave me alone.

To everyone else – Go buy this game, it’s brilliant.

 

© 2014, zero1gaming.com. All rights reserved. On republishing this article your must provide a link to this original post