I played an hour of South Park: The Stick of Truth a while before launch, and I wrote about my thoughts here. Now that you guys and girls have had a weekend with the game, I’m keen to hear what you think?
My early opinion? South Park: The Stick of Truth is one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. If it keeps things up it might end up being the funniest game I’ve ever played.
From what I saw, it was also a fairly robust RPG, with some cool systems. I liked the combat, which reminded me heavily of the Mario & Luigi series.
In addition, the art is almost literally perfect. About as good as you could expect from a game like this. It’s almost a little unfortunate that South Park: The Stick of Truth is hitting stores a week before Dark Souls II and Titanfall. It’s going to be fighting for time with two of my most anticipated games of the year.
What are your thoughts on the game so far? Let us know in the comments below.
Comments
47 responses to “Community Review: South Park: The Stick Of Truth”
Played a couple hours on Saturday and it’s freakin amazing.
Usually when two worlds are tied together, the content falls flat in the middle and doesn’t do either side any justice. This nails RPG and southpark right in the middle, can’t wait to keep plowing through.
I’ve played a few hours of it so far, and am really enjoying both the gameplay and all the tie-ins and jokes relating to the show.
The turn-based combat is surprisingly fun (when I first heard about it, I wasn’t too sure, but who can not enjoy taking the time each turn to laugh at the great attacks the characters have) and the number of items which pay homage to the show is just brilliant.
The best part is that it plays out and looks just like an episode of South Park. It’s come a long way since the FPS South Park game on the N64.
Brilliant game. Best use of a tv show or movie license ever. It takes the crown gladly from Goldeneye. The RPG mechanics are gloriously well done. The battles are fun, the summons are hilariously good, especially Mr Slave who, when my son was watching me play, (yeah yeah, inappropriate time and all that, oh well), we were in fits of laughter for five minutes afterwards. The game is genuinely hilarious. Even the censorship has been handled in such a way that itself is entertaining and funny. I personally have not encountered a single bug in the game or any stuttering (playing the PC version) and have to say it’s one of the most stable games I’ve played in quite a while. 10+ hours in so far and having a riot. Can safely say we’ll be replaying this one a couple of times at least! Plus, I’m hoping they DO bring in some sort of expansions for this game for further adventures!
The involvement of Matt & Trey in this game makes it magic. A must play for any fan.
I think that’s one of the best touches. The authenticity to it – you can tell they were doing the voices for the game, knowing it was the game, and not just ripping audio from old Southpark episodes and trying to make it fit. Having Cartman explain gameplay mechanics to you with an interlude for childish giggling just makes the game.
And how they play with your character being a mute.
Only had half an hour with it on the weekend, but now I’m on holidays I’ll be playing as much as I can. Haven’t watched South Park in about 10 years either (I know, I’m slack), so I’ll probably find it even more funny than people that have seen every episode due to seeing/hearing stuff for the first time.
Maybe, maybe not. There are a lot of jokes that aren’t funny without the context of the show. Like for instance you can find a shake-a-weight in Stan’s mum’s draw.
I see your point, that means nothing to me.
I agree with bushrat011899. Some of the stuff is funny regardless of your knowledge of the show (some parts even had my mom laughing, who has never heard of South Park).
However, many of the weapons and consumables are references to the show, which will not really make sense (or be funny) to people who have not seen recent-ish episodes of the show. Even some of the characters will be unrecognisable to you, which means much of their dialog and actions will go right over your head.
The other problem is that 85% of items you pick up fall into the ‘junk’ category, which means they have actual purpose in the game, other than to make you laugh as they are references to episodes of the show, and to sell for in-game money for weapons ect.
Basically, I have no idea what I’d make of the game if I hadn’t watched South Park in 10 years. It is well made and fun to play, but I think 60% of the reason I (and everyone else) enjoys it so much is because of the comedy and episode references, rather than the actual gameplay.
‘The other problem is that 85% of items you pick up fall into the ‘junk’ category, which means they have no actual purpose in the game.’
I was reading the steam community discussion and someone has already figured out a way to un-censor the game, I knew that the creators would leave it ridiculously easy to patch.
I bought my key off of the net and it was the uncut version and i cannot see what the fuss was about, yeah it might be a little offensive to some but it is completely justified within the world of south park.
My only thing that seems broken is the button mashing, one of the QTE’s i could not physically press the S button any faster and one of the mini-games is completely confusing on a keyboard but other than that the game is awesome and well worth the wait.
How?
Can you link to the thread?
Can you provide a link for that?
I would love to un-censor my copy
**SPOILER ALERT**
By any chance would said QTE be the one where you fight Cartman after declaring loyalty to Kyle’s faction and there is the “fart off”? Because if so I had the exaion.ct same situat
Played through it over the weekend finished it in about 10-12 hours.
The story of the game is everything you would expect from a south park game, funny and gross. There were plenty of awesome little Easter Eggs around the world for the south park fans e.g. in Stan’s room if you try to open the closet it wont let you and it will say ‘Im not coming out!’.
The main story progress pretty fluidly, and covers a decent amount of south park’s characters. However it felt quite short to me. If I wasn’t screwing around getting all the equipment and chimpokemon and doing all the side quests I feel that you could progress through the main story in a few hours.
The combat system is fun to start with but after a few hours you will get find it gets very repetitive, towards the end I only every used 1 move on each character (Backstab on my thief and Kyle’s AoE archer attack).
Over all it was a good game and the first game in a while i had actually sat down and finished over a weekend in a long time. (Most games I will play for a few hours get bored and play some Dark Souls).
Most memorable moment (Small Spoiler): Having my character watch his parents having dirty dirty sex then having to dodge the characters dad’s testicles. As i tend to project myself as the characters of game I’m playing this was horribly disturbing and brought up long buried memories.
I completely agree, absolutely amazing game but very short. I also clocked it in around 12 hours over a few days, and that involved a lot of messing around and unnecessary fighting for my own pleasure… I think the actual main story line could be finished within around 2 hours. Obviously the other quests make the game longer but it is still a short game.
I may have already finished it. Absolutely loved it. Although the frame rate was atrocious at times on PS3 with my character sometimes warping a quarter of the way across the screen. Half of Kyle’s lines seem to be broken for me too. No speech while his subtitles popped up.
Besides those few hiccups my GOTY so far. Doubt that will hold past Dark Souls 2 but it will be up there.
I haven’t really bothered too much with the main quest yet. Just crawling the town with Butters or Kenny doing side quests and farting on everyone is so much fun. The combat is tight, and the RPG elements are well designed. Best TV/movie adaptation yet.
Played on the 360.
Finished the game after maybe 13 hours. Had stuttering issues every minute or so during walk cycles and maybe 10 times during combat because my weapons had every buff under the sun and the game had issues having with more than 2 enemies being on fire and grossed out at the same time. The combat was alright if very repetitive mostly because I’d found an op weapon combo halfway through the game and coasted till the final boss fight. The costumes are fun if a bit of a bitch to try and get them all, same as attempting to get all the friend requests.
The comedy and writing are what you’d expect from Trey Parker and Matt Stone so it’s mostly golden but misses the mark in a few places. The forced censorship in the australian version is incredibly jarring but it’s not that much of an impact on the overall story and shows up 6 or so times.
It’s definitely worth playing
Man that sucks to hear about the stuttering issue.
I’m not buying the game until they fix that so it will suck if they don’t.
The 360 is the only console I can access the game on.
Planning on downloading it using a US account to get the uncensored version.
It’s a bummer about the stuttering issues you guys with 360’s are having. I haven’t seen any major issues on the PC yet. That said, I had to turn off 5.1 surround to give the voice audio decent volume. Stereo worked fine though.
The stuttering isn’t exactly game breaking, it’ll just wonk up the walk cycles
I had one issue on PC where my character would disappear and reappear during some scenes, and one of my friends had a glitch on the final boss, but other than that it has been glitch free for everyone I know, and perfect performance (no frame rate issues).
The stuttering issue wasn’t just Jimmy talking was it?! xD
I just beat the main quest yesterday.
I think everyone knew the game would be funny, seeing as Matt and Trey were writing, and it definitely is. However the main worry was whether it’d be a good game, and it totally is, the combat is fairly simple, but it works really well, and thats all i could ask. The art style is amazing how close to the show they got it as well.
i only had some problems in that the Nazi Zombies voices didn’t seem to work for me, other than that the game was perfect, it had me laughing out loud the entire time, a great achievement.
it’s been said so many times before, but it needs to be because it’s true “it’s just like a ten hour episode of south park.”
I had the Nazi Voice issues as well… Thought it might have been censorship, but surely not
Holy shit the nazi zombie voices aren’t working for me right now either??? I thought it was actually part of the game LMAO
The nazi zombies voices have been censored for some reason. If you have the PC/steam version someone has made an unofficial patch to ‘fix’ it.
Though I’m not too fussed as I just youtube’d the main nazi zombie cut scenes.
tl;dr Nazi Zombies voices are censored.
ffs this is stupid, why on earth would they censor their voices!?
And yeah just got the patch 🙂 ta
That would explain it. Was wondering why I couldn’t hear ‘[speaking German]’ 😛
Poweredbyme have you got a link for the fix?
Hey Link, I think it’s this one steamcommunity.com/app/213670/discussions/…/558749824512275726
unsure to verify as steam website is blocked at work – it was on the steam forums.
And yeah the voices for the Nazi babies is uncensored for some reason lol
Weirdly the Nazi Zombie Fetus voices were fine….
Nazi zombie people = No No
Nazi Zombie Fetuses = A-Okay?
It sucks that the Nazi Zombie voices don’t work for you guys, works perfectly on my Xbox 360 version!!
Finished the main campaign this week (hooray for holidays!) and found it to be a very funny and surprisingly solid game. A tad on the short side, but that probably kept the game from getting stale. If you’re an RPG veteran I’d suggest playing the game on its hardest mode as I pretty much breeze through the game on normal.
I didn’t encounter many bugs aside from the music cutting out at one point, but the frame rate was ridiculous on my PS3.
Worth playing, in my opinion.
Finished it yesterday with all the side quests done by the time the credits rolled. My last save was almost exactly 15 hours, which is more than I was expecting. I echo the sentiments above – it was truly one of the most joyous gaming experiences I’ve had for a long time. Had no bugs whatsoever on my play through on the 360.
It really is an interactive South Park episode – so much so that by missing out on the game you may as well be missing out on a season. I was stupidly impressed by the graphics all the way through – they’re gorgeous and so accurate it’s shocking. I was also surprised at the quality of the soundtrack. I was humming along all the way through, and NEED to find a rip of the Princess Kenny\Secret Girls Base track. I adore cheesy stuff like that in a completely non-ironic way. Also, not going to delve into spoilers, but one word. Canada. It brought a tear to my eye at just how amazing that section was. The entire storyline was engaging all the way through, and I was stupidly invested in the characters despite the shit ton of irony and self awareness. Truly a sign of a great game.
I never knew I needed this brand of no-grind, QTE infested RPG, but it works so amazingly well, I’d buy another installment at full RRP in a heartbeat. Definitely my GOTY so far. It’s hard to put into words how much I enjoyed the whole experience.
Worth playing the censored version?
It comes down to personal taste. The fact that the game makes a joke out of the censorship sort of softened the blow a little, and the descriptions of what we would have been seeing were actually pretty funny. However if you’re strongly opposed to censorship and have access to an uncensored version, go for it.
I found that the way they censored was funnier than the content it replaced (I looked up the censored parts )
Definately 100% still worth playing. As other people have said, the censorship itself is amusing!
I really don’t understand the censorship though… I too have seen the censored scenes on YouTube and there are sooo many worse potentially ‘offensive’ aspects to the game! The way I see it, if you are easily offended, you should not buy a South Park game… But no, the censorship does not ruin the game at all!
Great Game, though some issues with the frame rate (in the town with the bishop it was terible, until I killed him, then it was all good again), and has crashed three times… I am close to the end but not finished yet. I am currently disarming a bomb… those who have played it know what I’m talking about…
fucking loving it. I’m so immersed in the game and the lore of south park. A must buy for any die hard South Park fan.
For the censored (PC – via steam) parts I just alt tab and look it up in youtube (no biggie)
in regards to Game performance, it runs perfectly. No issues.
I’m stuck… I think it’s a bug.
At the bit where Randy Marsh is about to teach you a new type of fart in the community centre bathroom. He asks you to fart on him, and you see stick prompts… but no matter what I input; it doesn’t register properly.
I can’t advance.
Other than that… I’m enjoying it. The humour is great, but the combat is getting repetitive.
I thought I had the same problem – it’s all to do with the timing. Find the sweet spot with the left thumbstick right at the start. As the fart settles on the ground (whilst still holding L) you’ll get the prompt to push R up.
Hope that helps!
It’s all about how you flick right stick. Try hold it up instead of down
Press B and skip the section. You’re welcome 🙂
(trying not to spoil, being vague where possible)
Finished the main quest late last night… Took my time and played a few side missions along the way.
Loved the massive number of show references/fan service they had in the game, you know the game is truly tied with the show unlike other games based on tv-shows/movies.
The best part for me was the evening events after day 2 (the gnome level)… Only the with magic of Matt and Trey could they make such a level that was fricken funny but so disturbing…
I picked up the uncensored version (vpn) and for me personally, it’s worth going into the extra effort to acquire the uncensored.
I mainly did it as a screw you to the nanny state censors, but playing through the uncens. scenes is funny as hell (I purposely failed the Randy probe game to see what would happen… so worth it… but poor Randy).
On top of that, i’m not sure if the censored version had it, but later on in the game you had to perform a certain procedure that you played out earlier (that i believe was censored out), does the latter scene still appear in the censored version (trying not to spoil it as best as I can)?
Picked up PC version, no shaking for me, only one slight audio glitch where the voices wouldn’t play but it was only for that scene upon reloading the level… And compared to other games, this is nothing compared to the number of bugs experienced on others (i’m looking at you BF4)…
Loved the game, obviously a lot of references to the show, but the game gives a lot of love back to the fans who do watch.
On a broad basis, i don’t play too many RPG’s but i think having a tv show to back the game as context really works well… and the synergy between the show and the game really made this game stand out (design, voices, writing, references the whole lot).
I’d love to see other tv-show games rise up the meet the SP standard, but as seen in the past, fobbing off voice work, writing, design etc. to non-related third-parties immediately fragments the show from the game… I know it would mean more work and effort involved, but as we see with SP, it sure as hell paid off.
And for 50 something bucks… compared to 100+ AAA games… money well spent IMO.
I got hit by a game breaking bug that has made it impossible for me to progress with the story as I had no idea it was a bug until it was too late (can’t re-load previous saves). I love the game, but I’m not going to go through another 6-7 hours to get back to where I was (skipping scenes is a disservice to this game). I’ve pretty much abandoned the game (deleted it) until it gets a patch that will fix all the known issues it has.
-PS3 version.
So far it is a 10/10 for me. Nearly finished it doing EVERYTHING.
On PC with no tech issues. Mind you the steam version is patched for the save issue already 🙂
It is a great South Park series and a really good game.
*I am playing an uncensored version BTW.
I’ve played through the entire game on PC and it was glorious!
I loved every minute of it and finished every side quest I could come across before finishing the main story. I managed to unlock it a day early via VPN so I got some extra time with it as usually I wouldn’t finish a game this quickly.
In total my Steam time says that I spent 8hrs (offline when I unlocked with VPN) and another 15hrs when I went online (steam time counter reset for some reason). The in game counter got to about 14hrs by the time I finished but I think that thing is screwy because I kept monitoring the times on the save file and sometimes I would save and then play at least another 45mins and then save again and the game timer would only go up a few seconds. In real world time I’m estimating 20hrs.
I got to the end at max level, finished all side quests that I could find (I did a lot of exploring outside the quest) got about 60% of the achievements and 100 friends in game. It’s a much bigger game than most reviews are giving it credit for. Yes, it might be 10hrs if you rush through the main story, but who wants to do that when the game is so brilliant?
I did not come across any bugs at all. Played through the normal censored AU Steam version. The censorship was annoying but you don’t miss much and to be honest, I think there are things that happen throughout the last 1/3 of the game that are much worse than an anal prob mini-game.
The whole game is legitimately funny and there has been a lot of time and work to put countless amounts of references to the seasons of the show. It’s like playing through a whole new season of the show but with constant references to what has preceded it. The combat is a lot of fun too; although probably a bit too easy overall with some random difficulty spikes.
All being said and done, it’s a fantastic game and a true love letter to fans of the show. It will definitely be on my mind when I’m thinking about GOTY at the end of the year.
Sad Koala makes me sad… but giggle too.
German voices were taken out cause we got the same version as the Europeans but they have the Statue of David crying. Germans still rejected the game though, the swatstikers need to be removed for the germans.
The dance QTE use the ARROW keys, not the movement keys.
The point of no return is returning to the Boys Camp after completing the translation. Make sure you get everything (and the Hasslehoff face) if your achievement farming.
Completed it yesterday (the uncensored version). Easily one of the best games I’ve ever played. Funny, offensive, and true to the series. Although kind of short. But I’m hoping for added DLC missions of some sort later on.
Loved the game, the only sad part is that it felt so short. It was like “Oh am I already done?”…. 🙁
Played both the censored and uncensored
The ACB can stick it – the gaming industry in Australia clearly needs to be self regulated when it comes to censorship.
I found the Abortion and Anal Probe mini games nothing more then tongue in cheek and as a consenting adult I felt that it should be my choice to not play them.
The game even gave me an option to skip them.
I’ve finished the uncensored version and it was a solid 16 hours of entertainment.
The cameos and easter eggs for fans of the TV show were great.
I cannot wait for the episodic DLC which is coming for it.
The uncensored version gets a 9/10 for being the funniest game I’ve ever played.
The ACB get the double deuce for being buzz kills.
sign this petition to release south park stick of truth on ps4 and xbox one on this: https://www.change.org/petitions/obsidian-entertainment-and-ubisoft-bring-south-park-the-stick-of-truth-to-ps4-and-xbox-one#share
Spread this message! LIKE it so people can see!
I won’t says it was one of the best games I’ve ever played, but it was easily one of the most enjoyable games I have ever played. The creators got it absolutely spot on! The humour is outragiously raw and hilarious just like the episodes, the graphics couldn’t be more accurate to the show, and the general gameplay is just brilliant!
Every aspect of the game is great, from free-roaming around the town of South Park collecting funny items and fighting enemies via the turn-based ‘Final Fantasy’ style combat, to the main story line, side quests, collectables and everything inbetween.
I actually have nothing bad to say about the game, except that it is short. I clocked the game in around 12 hours over a few days, and I was honestly gutted when I realised there was nothing left to do. I have finished the main story, completed all side quests, collected all the Chinpokomon, received all available friends requests (except one who I missed and can no longer get – tip: be careful who you kill!) and I have gained most of the weapons/armour, therefore there is pretty much nothing left to do.
The European version is censored on consoles, but this does not make the game any worse in my opinion. It is just annoying and confusing more than anything, as there are frankly much worse things that could be considered ‘offensive’ in the game that were not censored, but hey, thats South Park! Don’t like it, don’t buy it, simple. No need to censor it… The censoring itself it amusing also, and the scenes you miss can be easily found on YouTube, so don’t let it put you off buying the game!
All things considered, the game is easily a 9/10 for me. It is everything you would want in a South Park game. I’m not sure how enjoyable the game would be if you were not a big South Park fan however, as 90% of the content and humour is based on episode references. It would be a 10/10 if it was longer or there were more side quests or collectables, as once your finished, your truely finished! Hats off to the creaters though!