An Ode to ‘South Park: The Stick of Truth,’ Savior of the Series’ Gaming Reputation (Part One)

As you may know, South Park has had mixed success when it comes to video games. That is to say, its success has ranged from ‘this is, y'know, pretty damn crap right here' to ‘hideous ballache of a farce of an abortion of a game.' On the Scale of Terrible, the latter is only a few stages before ‘Justin Bieber,' which probably brings you up to speed on just how dire the situation was.

Although perhaps we're exaggerating. That Justin Bieber thing may have been overly harsh.

Previous efforts have included South Park Rally and South Park: Chef's Luv Shack, both of which arrived for the console triumvirate of 1999 (PlayStation, N64 and Dreamcast). The former was quite an oddity, a kart racer which pretty well ignored the whole racing thing to focus on holiday-based objective matches. Now, we enjoy rear-ending Mr. Mackey to steal his collected Thanksgiving turkeys and deliver them ourselves ("Ow! Play fair, mmkay?") as much as the next guy, but this is a strange way to go.

On the other hand, one of the weapons was Stan's gay dog, which could be fired at vehicles ahead to briefly disable them while he gives their chassis an enthusiastic humping with his rampant doggy erection. You could also unleash a homing prostitute with syphilis... with results it's probably best not to go into. So there's that.

Meanwhile, Chef's Luv Shack was hardly the sexy raunch-athon the name suggests. It was a half-assed quiz and minigame affair, something akin to Mario Party with dick jokes. Neither of these were truly terrible per se, but were a sad waste of such a great license. As was throwing dodge balls at the wangs of giant mutant turkeys in the South Park FPS.

So where has all that potential for a ball-bustingly good video game gone? Apparently, it has been slowly filtering through the Earth, like a fourth grade diagram of the water cycle. South Park: The Stick of Truth is the quality raincloud full of fart jokes, satire and general brilliant rudeness that has resulted.

What is needed from a licensed South Park game is the spirit of the show. We want that stunted, cutout animation jerky walking. We want the original voice actors. We want Randy Marsh carrying his ballsack around in a wheelbarrow again (that one's damn important). Most of all, we want these things utilized in a game that is quality in its own right.

Will the much-ballyhooed, much-delayed and mocktastic RPG that is The Stick of Truth deliver? Join us next time to find out.