I wish I could spend this entire review talking about how South Park: The Stick of Truth is one of the funniest games I've ever played.
But Stick of Truth, out Tuesday for 360, PS3, and PC, is a game marred by bugs and technical issues, and it is impossible to separate the art from the faulty product surrounding it.
During the ten hours I spent playing Stick of Truth, I ran into dozens of glitches ranging from minor to major. Sometimes my main character would pop in and out of cut-scenes. Sometimes the music would randomly stop playing during boss fights. Once I loaded up an old save file and learned that my newer file-saved manually, not via an auto-save that might have been overwritten-had suddenly disappeared.
Worst of all, playing the game on Xbox 360 led to constant stuttering that made the whole game feel one turbulent airplane ride. I wanted to take a Dramamine after playing.
I captured some footage to show you what it's like. Note the major stutters at 0:04, 0:11, etc., and the minor stutters throughout. That's not YouTube. It's the game.
Isolated these stutters aren't so bad, but when they happen every few seconds, they become unbearable. I couldn't walk anywhere in Stick of Truth without feeling like I was sitting through an earthquake. That's on Xbox 360, with my game installed to the hard-drive, and the day-one patch installed. Your experience may vary, and some people might not even run into this stuttering-I asked a few other reviewers, and only one had run into the same problem-but for me this was a critical flaw.
The PC version runs more smoothly, but has its own technical issues. Kotaku's Kirk Hamilton couldn't get through one mid-game cut-scene without his game crashing. He had to skip it. Other PC reviewers have also reported save glitches and other bugs, and one reviewer playing on PS3 told me he couldn't load out of a boss battle. Playing Stick of Truth felt like walking through a china shop; I was constantly worried that something would break.
Maybe in a few weeks, or months, when the patches are out and the bugs are squashed, we can talk about Stick of Truth for what it is: a wonderful, funny RPG that does some really clever, surprising things. For now, I can't recommend it.
It's a real shame, because Obsidian has created something special here. Not only are the writing and voice work are top-notch-as you might expect from anything devised by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone-the game itself is just straight-up satisfying. Everything is very quick-combat, dungeons, cut-scenes-and outside of a few annoying QTEs, nothing ever drags.
In fact, hardcore South Park fans might not enjoy Stick of Truth as much as casual viewers or people who haven't watched it in a while. More than a few of the game's scenes and jokes are taken verbatim from the show, and you'll collect tons and tons of items that all reference episodes from South Park's 17-season reign over foul comedy. I imagine it's not easy to find the perfect balance between innovation and fan-service, but Stick of Truth leans a little too far toward the latter, even if there is something charming about getting to stuff your inventory full of South Park throwbacks like Sea People and Cherokee Hair Tampons. (Also, as you might expect, just about everyone in this town has a copy of Butters' best-seller, The Poop That Took A Pee.)
On the other hand, if you don't like crude humor, or fart jokes, or seeing... uncomfortable things, this isn't the game for you. Stick of Truth pushes the boundaries of taste to do some things that I've never seen in a video game before, all for the sake of comedy. And it works-several scenes left me sitting in front of my television, alone, giggling, wondering just how the hell they got away with some of this stuff. (Although I guess in some countries they didn't.)
The basic concept of Stick of Truth is this: you, the New Kid, have just moved to the quiet little mountain town of South Park. Your parents tell you to go find some kids to play with, and you wind up joining a live-action role-playing game conducted by Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny, and all of the other children. You pick a class-Fighter, Mage, Thief, or Jew-and fight to find and protect the Stick of Truth, which is a stick. Events escalate, and eventually you wind up doing all sorts of ridiculous things, none of which I will mention, because they are best experienced when you don't know what's coming.
You also get to go to Canada, and it is just delightful.
The little jokes all add up, too. Stick of Truth's item descriptions are always good for a laugh, and there's an ongoing Facebook feed filled with comments from the people of South Park, not to mention the random little things they'll all say and spew as you explore the town. One throwaway line that's just too good not to share: "Wow, a sewer level! Now we're really playing in a role-playing game."
In general, wandering through South Park is a ton of fun-which, for me, just made those stuttering issues even more annoying. I wanted to take my time, saunter around the city, and soak in every moment of the game, but it's tough to really get into a game like Stick of Truth when things don't run smoothly.
So if you're thinking about getting this one, especially on consoles, wait it out. Give Obsidian a little while to patch the game, or else you're rolling the dice in hopes that your experience won't be as broken as mine. Stick of Truth is a foul, wonderful, hilarious game, and it's worth your time-just not until it works properly.
Related
Via Reddit, here's what you see when you try to play a certain scene in the European version of South Park: The Stick of Truth on consoles.... Read...
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Amzing Moment: South Park: The Stick of Truth: The Kotaku Review