Hello All!
The long awaited gameplay is here. This game was three years in the making....was it worth the wait...lets find out!
Here is a little review:
By a wide margin, South Park: The Fractured But Whole is the funniest roleplaying game since South Park: The Stick of Truth came out three years ago. This one’s gags are focused more on parodying the superhero movie franchise craze than RPG mechanics, which makes it feel a little less novel, but this time its turn-based tactical combat is also deep enough to stand on its own.
Like The Stick of Truth, The Fractured But Whole looks and sounds so much like the show that at a glance it could easily be mistaken for a 20-hour episode when you’re not in combat. The emulation of the crude animation style is spot-on, the voice acting is all completely authentic, and the writing quality is up to the high expectations. Exploring its expanded map of South Park and its densely-packed references to the show is a treat for fans, even though it’s quite similar to what we saw in The Stick of Truth. And sure, there’s some significant irony in the Memberberries appearing in a game so heavily based on callbacks to South Park’s 20-year history, especially now being a reference to a year-old joke themselves, but I’m going to let that slide.
The story starts somewhat slowly, with your custom-made New Kid and the boys transitioning abruptly from the final moments of The Stick of Truth’s fantasy-themed battles to a superhero-themed quest to find a missing cat for a $100 reward. It’s a cynical take on childhood roleplaying, of course, because Cartman plans to use that cash to jumpstart the equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe based around his Batman-like Coon character and become rich off the movie and merchandising rights. But after a few hours it spirals into signature South Park absurdity, and you’re fighting everything from Professor Chaos’ minions to Crab People. Granted, The Fractured But Whole makes few new jokes of its own, preferring instead to riff off of fan-pleasing material as it’s adapted to game form, but it does it well – it even makes killing Kenny funny again.
Especially in the opening hours, it’s hard to tell what’s supposed to be real and what’s all in the kids’ collective imagination – and The Fractured But Whole delights in blurring that line. With the exception of Professor Chaos’ anime super-move intro, we always see their costumes as makeshift cosplay cobbled together from tinfoil, Tupperware, and cardboard, but their powers are shown with brightly colored energy blasts and feats of superhuman strength and speed. You’ll have kids shooting lasers out of kites and teleporting one moment, then pausing the fight to let a car go by the next. Then adults get involved, and you have to start wondering what’s really happening. This is South Park, so it’s not exactly constrained by realism, so it’s a bemusing question that’s constantly raised.
While it’s mostly absurd, the kids’ superhero fantasy is actually a little touching in places. Jimmy, who walks with crutches, has super-speed powers, and the developmentally disabled Timmy’s Professor X-like mental abilities make him so overpowered you can’t play as him in battle. It’s nice that there’s some positivity there among the obliviously racist (The Coon, The Human Kite) and sexual jokes, and much of it is genuinely hilarious. There were just a handful of times where a throwaway racial stereotype joke didn’t quite feel clever enough to justify the sensitive subject matter.
The Verdict:
South Park: The Fractured But Whole is another epic-length episode of the humor that’s kept fans of the show laughing for 20 years. The Marvel vs DC parody delivers regular laugh-out-loud moments with only a few faltering gags, and the combat soon evolves into something much more complex and interesting than The Stick of Truth’s simple system. Navigation and repetition of some of its simple puzzle mechanics drag a little, but it’s otherwise an excellent South Park game that’s also a strong RPG.
CREDIT: IGN
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