Game Review: South Park (N64)

One of the earliest attempts at a South Park game saw the much loved series enter the world of the FPS.

The story is simple enough…a comet is hurtling towards earth passing the town of South Park causing all kinds of weird & wacky events to take place. It’s up to Stan, Kyle, Kenny & Cartman to save the town.

The game is split up into 5 themed missions with several levels in each. Each mission will have an enemy type that constantly re-occurs throughout until the boss of that mission is defeated. For example the first mission set, ‘Operation Turkey Butt’, sees the player pretty much facing off against mutant turkeys throughout several levels while ‘Some Disassembly Required’ sees you facing off against toys.

It is incredibly repetitive & almost no fun at all.

The level design is a bit of a tricky one, on the one hand it could be criticised for being incredibly basic but on the other hand the town of South Park is basic looking & in that respect the game mirrors it perfectly. However this becomes in-excusable once the game moves you off to the mountains & every area is the same as the last.

Not enough levels are set in the actual town & the ones that are really highlight just how empty it is. Houses look like they are cardboard cut-outs, impossible to get into & there is a real lack of interact-able NPC’s around except in cut-scenes.

Naturally the voice-acting is top-notch stuff but it quickly becomes repetitive as there isn’t much variation in what lines are repeated by the kids as you make your way through the levels. The same can be said about the music; it fits the game & is pretty quirky but has such little variation that by the end you won’t care.

Most of what you would expect to see in an FPS game exist here…health pick-ups (cheesy poofs/snacky cakes), armour (football pads), Invincibility drops (beef cakes) & plenty of weapons.

There are a total of 8 weapons ranging from the basic snowball to the cow-launcher. Most of the weapons have a secondary fire function which takes longer to do but is more powerful. For example the secondary fire for the snowball sees the character turn the snowball yellow (with sound effects as well) for additional damage. Frustratingly the game makes it far too easy to get through most of the game just using the basic snowball variations.

To prolong the life of the game there is split-screen multi-player that pits players in a variety of FPS modes amongst a number of stages. Weapons are the same although several story-related weapons are actually designed for multi-player use. Additional characters are unlocked by completing the story mode but you won’t really be able to tell any difference to who you are controlling.

There is a lot wrong with this game & unsurprisingly the South Park creators were unhappy with the final result. It’s boring & extremely repetitive with not enough South Park references to really appeal to a fan.