South Parkalmost feels like a guilty pleasure nowadays. The show is hit or miss, but I still enjoy tuning in every once in a while. Its puerile toilet humour earns a silly grin, their meta-commentary on the world at large often skewers it enough to make me giggle. Hell, I don’t mind saying that at the age of 41, I enjoy a fart joke or a ‘deez nuts’ quip. I can’t help it, they make me feel like an immature schoolboy without a care in the world or the pressures of adult life.
I was hoping thatSouth Park: Snow Daywith its humour would win me over. It does, to a degree. Usually, the first time you hear a certain voice line while in battle it’ll raise a smile, but after the fifth or sixth time it gets old. This is kind of a theme withSouth Park: Snow Day. The jokes come thick and fast and some of them land, most of them feel as recycled as toilet paper, which is the currency used in this game - you get it? Because during the pandemic people were hoarding toilet paper.
The kids swear a lot (swearing is also funny when used correctly) and there are all the expected jokes about testicles and buttholes. The humour is the selling point here because not even a fart joke can save this game; a game that feels, essentially, like an early 2000s brawler with no charm whatsoever.
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Snow day
Anyway, it’s a Snow Day, school has been cancelled and the kids are out on the streets despite the cold weather becoming life-threatening and stacking up a body count. The kids don’t care, they just want to play. Cartman is decked out in his wizard garb and you find yourself on his team, fighting against his friends in a weird deck-based brawler. We’ll come to the cards in a moment, but what you can expect is a game that asks you to wander around the snow-filled town - which is broken down into arenas - bashing other kids, rolling away from dangerous attacks and clearing waves of enemies before moving on to another small arena.
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Without the cards and theSouth Parkfacade, it would be an utterly forgettable action game. There’s a lot of awkward camera movement, the attacking carries no weight and is nothing more than slamming a button repeatedly. There’s little tactical edge you can earn outside of a couple of special attacks. Every once in a while you’ll stumble across an enemy that hits a bit harder or is buffed with a higher health bar, they’re not fun to fight, it’s just a slog.
Snow day
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Snow day
Admittedly, each chapter is bookended with a boss fight that shakes things up a bit, but not always for the good. Battling against anime Kenny was often hilarious as the arena is flooded with rainbows and hearts that confuse you; while fighting Kyle is a chore because of his constant teleportation ability that drags out the fight.
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I want to be able to sit here and tell you that it gets fun. It doesn’t. Even theSouth Park-isms like Mr Hanky, Stan’s dad talking about his balls, and the kindergarten kids swearing like sailors, can’t redeem a tedious game. There are only so many times you can hear the word ‘f**k’ uttered in an innocent childlike voice. There are only so many times you can beat up another kid using tin foil daggers.
Snow day
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Pros: South Park humour, some fun abilities, great cutscenes
Cons: Terrible AI teammates, repetitive and clunky combat, cluttered and messy gameplay
For fans of: South Park, Roguelikes
5/10: Average
Topics:Nintendo Switch,PC,PlayStation,Steam,Xbox
