South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are no strangers to a bit of controversial content, whether it’s via their movies, games, or TV shows. Most recently, they’re at it again with their upcoming game, South Park: The Fractured But Whole.
I got to play the first 2 hours of the game this week and I gotta tell ya, it’s a bloody laugh riot. My cheeks were sore by the end of the session from constantly laughing.
You assume the role of the new kid in town as he makes friends and fights crime as part of the Coon and Friends superhero group. Before you can start playing, however, you have to create your character.
All of the standard choices are there – hair colour, accessories, clothing, etc. Once created, you then have to choose a difficulty for the game and, uhh, it corresponds with the colour of your skin. The harder the difficulty, the blacker your skin.
Cartman chimes in as you ponder your decision. “Don’t worry, this doesn’t affect combat, just every other aspect of your whole life.” Red hot.
It’s pretty on-brand for the series and let’s be honest, it wouldn’t quite be South Park if they didn’t have a dig at white privilege, would it?
It’s not the first time you’ll wince through the laughter, either. A level I played at E3 back in June involved giving two grown-ass adults a lap dance for information. I gotta say, kudos to Ubisoft for getting this through the Australian Classification Board with no edits.
If what I’ve played so far is anything to go by, this is going to be the funniest game of the year by far. It’s set for release on October 17 for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
Check out some footage of the game in the clip below. You can see the difficulty selection at 5:40.
