South Park

Rushed out in six months and just in time for the holidays, South Park makes use of the Turok 2 engine, obviously only to save development time and not for any logical reason. It often feels like a straight reskin of Turok 2, probably because it is, and it inherits the game's horrible framerate and input lag, making it infuriating to play at times.

South Park touts itself as featuring "episodes", yet there's nothing episodic or TV-like about its levels--the story and dialogue is vapid and unimaginative. You play as the kids from a first-person perspective and, using either Turok or GoldenEye-style controls, battle swarms of repetitive enemies as you make your way through huge, barren and depressingly lifeless maps towards a finish line. The entire concept is unbelievably dull.

South Park's greatest asset is that it remains impressively true to its source in terms of visuals and sound. The game does look like the show brought to life in 3D, and there's a huge amount of recorded dialogue. Like in the show, though, the sound effects are annoying, as are the stupid edgy voices. The kids often call enemies nonsensical things, such as referring to a turkey as a tree-hugging hippie, diminishing what little comedic aspect the lines have.

I'd find it difficult to believe that even a fan of the show could derive any enjoyment from South Park. When you're swarmed by enemies in a dark corner for the hundredth time, fighting against a chugging framerate and input lag, you really have to wonder why you're playing such garbage.

South Park was an instant success when it premiered on Comedy Central in 1997, and with this success came the merchandising blitz, and as part of this wave of south park merchandise came South Park games. This is the first South Park game and it is very annoying. It is an FPS where your goal is to get to the end of the level and take out all the "tanks " in the level, tanks being large enemies which spawn your basic enemies. If you don't beat them all you have to play a penalty round where you have to defeat all the tanks you didn't get before they destroy the town. Actually this penalty round is not too hard and in fact it may be easier to let a few tanks escape since when you have to face them in the penalty round they do not spawn the smaller enemies. Combat in this game is not that exciting. What happens is a horde of enemies type will come after you in waves and you pick them off as they come after you. I do like the choice of weapons, which are all appropriate for out kid protagonists. Your basic weapon is a snowball, but you can also get dodge balls, a nerf gun, a chicken which shoots eggs, etc. Several of the levels have you actually going through the town South Park and it looks pretty good although you can't enter any of the buildings. However there is nobody on the city streets so South Park feels lifeless. Add in the omnipresent fog to cover the draw distance and it feels like you're in a cartoon version of Silent Hill, especially in the final chapter where there you are hounded by possessed toys that sound just like the radio in Silent Hill 1. In the town this fog isn't too bad, but several of the levels take place in the snowy hills outside South Park, so you end up with white fog on top of white snow; it is disorienting. The levels themselves are pretty bland, you go from snowy fields, to dark tunnels, to the same city square over and over. There are a few interior levels, like a spaceship and a toy shop, but this isn't enough. On top of that the levels just drag on and on some of them going on for 15 minutes, all without any checkpoints, so if you die you have to start all the way at the beginning.