South Park: The Fractured But Whole
- Developers: Ubisoft, Ubisoft San Francisco, South Park Digital Studios LLC
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Genre: Adventure, RPG
- Players: 1
- Platforms: Xbox One (Reviewed), Playstation 4, Microsoft Windows, Switch
- Release Date: 17th October 2017
- Microtransactions: No
SJW Assemble!!
Are you a South Park fan? Are you victim to feelings of offence? Do you have a penchant for ass jokes? These 3 questions need to be answered before playing South Park: The Fractured But Whole. The correct answers to get the most out of this little game are Yes, No, Yes. Other variations of answers can gleam you some entertainment. No, No, Yes for example will tide you over very well, if a little tiring, which is the same as Yes, No, No…
That’s enough of that, for transparency for this review, I’m in the Yes, No, Yes camp here.
Much has been made about the alleged difficulty select screen. This is where you choose your skin colour. White being easy and black being difficult. When in actual fact this doesn’t effect the games difficulty. It’s a joke about how reactionary people are (Mainly SJW types whom feel they need to scream and shout about everything). If this joke has caused offence, then please understand you are the joke. I did my research… 95% of the articles I found raging on this are written by white folk. Virtue has been signalled.
Holey Rusted Butt hole
On to the game… it certainly looks South Park, animated and voiced exactly as the cartoon series. You play as the new kid in the town, starting off seemingly at the end of stick of truth. Cartman, now bored of playing a fantasy game, has arrived as his superhero alter ego The Coon. Convinces everyone to join in and now we are all super heroes.
The story doesn’t really go anywhere beyond the super hero thing. Which does get stale pretty quickly. Here in lies my problem with South Park The Fractured But Whole, the game is long winded. Extremely funny in parts (again provided this is your sense of humour), but the repetitive nature of the missions and the length of the game does drag the game down to boring.
I’m sure Matt and Trey felt this themselves, as the game references multiple times the time constraints on the production of this game. Even mocks it’s lack of depth over the first game.
Overall this South Park game took me a little over 25 hours to finish. There were periods of 3 or 4 days of not playing it because of game fatigue.
I Fart On Your Face
The combat system feels very similar to Stick Of Truth (from what I’d played of it), turn based battles, sometimes requiring real strategy to compete. I’m not familiar with the differences between South Park The Fractured But Whole and Stick Of Truth, I’ll update this review once I’ve played Stick Of Truth properly.
Combat is amusing, with some very funny super moves. You’ll fight multiple opponents during most battles, occasionally fighting bosses with a slight twist on the mechanic such as try to exit the area, or feed a beasty.
You unlock different allies during the game to allow you a party of up to 4 heroes to kick ass.
Power-ups and trinkets are earned or found which give you and your team buffs. I can’t say I noticed much besides a health boost or drop.
Who Is The Coon?!
There’s not much else that can be said about South Park The Fractured But Whole… It’s a interactive South Park series. Which I found very funny at times, and other times tedious.
As I mentioned earlier, the game states a few times that they never had enough time to properly flesh out the story on with this game, and you feel it.
Overall if you’re a South Park fan, you’ll enjoy it, just play it in hour long stints though otherwise the back and forth nature of the game type becomes pretty monotonous.
PROS
- Funny (obviously objective)
- Looks and feels exactly like South Park
- Combat is solid and surprisingly deep
CONS
- Long… so very long
- Gets stale
- The ending falls really flat
VERDICT
6.5/10
