The New ‘South Park’ Game Is Like Playing Your Way Through An Entire Season

South Park: The Fractured But Whole is finally here, folks, and while it’s fair to assume it’s pretty comparable to its predecessor, The Stick of Truth, this instalment goes far deeper on many levels.

This time around, the kids of South Park are back on the superhero bandwagon with each taking on his or her own special alter ego in The Coon & Friends gang. For example, Cartman is, of course, The Coon, Kyle is The Human Kite, Stan is Toolshed and so on. You assume the role of the new kid and like many RPGs, build your skills and abilities as you progress based on your playstyle.

One of the first things you do is decide the general appearance of your character, including hair, skin colour etc. As we covered previously, the darker you choose to be, the harder the difficulty will be. Without letting you in on too much, everything kicks off with The Coon’s quest to save a lost cat which, as you’d expect, quickly spirals way out of control.

Even with roughly 5 hours invested so far, each session has ended with sore cheeks as a result of constant laughing. Needless to say, the game’s biggest strength is its likeness to the series itself. The writing is incredibly strong and you can tell creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker had a strong hand in the story. Even from a visual standpoint, The Fractured But Whole is pretty much identical to the cartoon.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll get the majority of your enjoyment out of the title because you’re a fan of the series. I don’t feel like I’m necessarily playing a game, but rather interacting with almost an entire series worth of original content, and that’s why I love it. Even little things like the mouth-made music from the episode ‘Cash for Gold‘ appearing in multiple selection menus completely buckled me.

Sure, the combat mechanics are great and are certainly a step up from The Stick of Truth in terms of complexity, but more importantly, everything ends up being hilarious. There are hidden jokes everywhere and every character feels like a true representation of their instance within the series.

Beyond combat, there’s plenty to explore and a ton of side-quests to complete throughout the adventure. They can be difficult at first as clues and interactive materials are quite subtle in appearance, but once you figure out a couple, everything pretty well falls into place from then on.

While the game definitely stands out on its own merits as an RPG, even casual fans of the show will get far more out of its rich content than those who are completely unfamiliar. That being said, there’s never been a greater point of entry into the world than this and surely one that would entice curious players deeper into the long-running series itself.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole is out now for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Do yourself a favour and check out the brand new launch trailer below.


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