South Park: The Stick of Truth is a game launched in 2014 by Ubisoft and developed by Obsidian Entertainment, directly inspired by the animated sitcom, especially in the part where the boys play an RPG involving all of Colorado city.

The game perspective is of an imperfection 2.5D, identical to the animation, cutscenes moments could easily be scenes of the series because they keep several characteristics, for example, the heavy humor impropriates scenes, and some standard rivalry, like the one of Cartman vs Kyle.

Besides that, the game has low pre-requirements and it’s possible to play on almost every machine, you can think that the graphics are bad and have bad animation, but no, they follow a good parameter of quality. So, emerge yourself in this war between elves and humans as the new town boy.


 

Introducing our character

Here we are going to be the new boy in town, and our first mission is to make friends, being obligate by our parents to go out on the street and search for new friends, and for this, we can variate the level of difficulty between easy, medium and hard (with a heavy application of strong criticism and black humor, because this variation of the game mode is represented by the color of the character’s skin). Leaving the house, we can see a standard neighborhood of the animated series, the houses are similar and the characters are well-known, when we talk to them, we already add them on the Facebook, a place where is possible to see how many friends we have and share messages.

As soon as possible we are going to get to know our first companion, this friend is going to be one of your favorites during the battle, o “Paladin” Butters, a blonde boy, really sweet and receptive in the first moment. With this, he is going to take us to the human leader, that is no one else than Eric Carman, maybe the most polemic character of all the franchise, that is going to invite us to enter the game and ask for our name. Independently of what are you going to write here, you’ll be called off “douchebag”, but relax, as we advance completing missions we are going to develop of “patent”, as a commander or captain douchebag.

Properly introduced as one of the leaders, we have a series of challenges ahead to get the “stick of truth” (a stick that allows the carrier to govern the rules of the universe), we are going to learn to domain the art of fart (yes, that is, fart, gases, call whatever you like), with the main story and side quests you’ll be entertained with this creation of Obsidian. Besides that, it’s important to highlight that will have a moment when we meet Kyle, the leader of elves, and we are going to have the power to decide which side we want to fight with.


 

A rather bizarre story

Don’t wait for a simple conflict between elves and humans, South Park in this part searches to englobe all famous characters and new ones, Al Gore (the “man-bear-pig”), Mr. Slave, Jesus, and several others are going to make accompany us on side quests. Of course, it’s optional if the player wants to do this part or not, but I hardly recommend doing it, especially because of the rewards, we can call for their help during combat in dangerous moments, with a unique and extremely powerful hit, so, it’s recommended to save them for the end since we can only use it one time during the game.

But yet, at the end of the day naturally, we are going to sleep at home, but this action doesn’t end there, we are going to deal with some bizarre night things, the first one is the ETs, we are going to be abducted and jailed in a spaceship. Lost, we find ourselves in a room together with Randy Marsh, where the aliens are inserted, in their asses we see a kind of radar possibility us to use an object that looks like a webcam to teleport us (this mechanism is going to help us to explore the map and in the game progress). After that, to be able to escape the spaceship it will have huge confusion, we are going to fight against everything and everyone trying to release Randy, and all of this is going to happen while we are dressed only in our pajamas.



On another night, the weirdness is still present, we wake up in the middle of the night while goblins are trying to steal our underwear, but, as we find out their secret, they are going to try to kill us anyway, without success because of their height, we are at least 10 times bigger. However, we need to chase them to recover an item that was stolen, with this, we unlock a new mechanism, which is going to help us a lot in the progression and exploration of collectible resources.

Leaving the night adventures, we are going to deal with the American government and army, this is because when we defeat ETs the spaceship falls right on the top of a mall and ends up destroying it, and intended to uncover the facts, the government is going to argue that the place is going to be a new Taco Bell, the biggest of the world. However, together with Randy, we’ll investigate the fact and discover that had happened an extraterrestrial liquid leakage in that place transforms every human being into a Nazi Zumbi, yes, it’s what you read, we’ll start to face several crazy things, including inside an abortion clinic, where the story takes place for an instant, we’ll fight against Nazi Zumbi fetus.

It's worth highlighting a big plot twist for the end of the story, without extending various tales of this huge war, the final has a plot twist when we think that everything is safe with the stick of truth ending, thus, the conflict, it is stolen again by humans. This robbery is made by a character banned from the game by Eric, at the beginning of the story, but the thief doesn’t accept the banishment and decided to create his base, calling everyone that was rejected and wasn’t invited to play with the other kids. Here everything is going to mix, the extraterrestrial liquid, the American government, and other bizarre things (prepare yourself).


 

A system of mixed combat

As with all controls of South Park, the combat is easy to learn and comes with an easy and fast tutorial, here we are going to use items to recover our lives, gain velocity, take out the negative status, and several others, but we are also going to use abilities, really interesting skills, beneficial in different moments and varied as the class that we choose (you can be a warrior, wizard, thief or Jewish), and we are not counting that other adversaries are going to vary, things as the position of defense and armor, that depends on your choice, maybe it’s more interesting to use a long technic or one of short distance.

In this part, we can choose one of our friends to help us in the fight, Butters, Cartman, Kyle, Jimmy, Kenny, and Stan, each one is the carrier of specific power and they are going to be necessary in a certain moment on the gameplay. Particularly my favorite one is the paladin Butters because he has the power of healing besides the power of powerful hits. It’s important to emphasize that during the attack round, each character can use a utilitarian or a passive power and hit once, be careful with the order because once you use it the hit will end.

And that’s not all, I mentioned before about the huge power of farts, this will be one of the most important mechanisms of the game, in several moments we are going to use it to be able to progress, and they are also passive of use in combats. That being said, the variety is huge, as we advance several characters are going to teach us new technics, such as a silent fart or one that can take down fragile walls, to learn this, we’ll travel to Canada in a part of the game and Terrance and Phillip are going to be our teachers.

Record this phrase “never fart in on a man’s balls”, you are going to listen to this every time you learn a new move, and apparently, this is an almost sacred motto for the lovers of gas art. The final reserves good things for this phrase.


 

Audio doesn’t spare details

As I mentioned before about imperfect graphics in 2.5D, identical to the animated sitcom, now I come to talk about another equally important technical detail. The characters’ lines aren’t afraid to hurt some co-habitation rules, you can imagine that the language is heavy and not suitable for a certain limited age. Sometimes, you’ll be wondering if it’s really a child play thatwe are living.


 

Final addendum

Since it’s a game about South Park, an animated sitcom inspired by acid humor and that has several polemics subjects without fearing the criticism, I honestly didn’t expect something that catches my attention that much and that I’d had a really good time playing it, but it was exactly what happened, I played everything in a normal run of around 10 hours in only two days.

Therefore, it’s surprising on several factors, a pleasure progression together with the development of our character and a mix of several parts of the animation. It’s worth highlighting a characteristic a little bit negative, the combats in certain points become repetitive and can get you tired, besides that, I’m certain that you’re going to enjoy the animation style and the game will likely please you.
 
South Park: The Stick of Truth is available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows.