Stickoftruthstickoftruth

I must start out this article with a stick of my own truth: I haven’t gotten to actually PLAY South Park: Stick of Truth yet. However, we are so excited about the game’s release that we wanted to round up all the important information from the interwebs and put it in one convenient place for you. So here we go: an expose on what I found out about Stick of Truth via the internet.  

Important Facts

Storyline: You’re a new kid in South Park, after your family moves there for mysterious reasons. You have to make friends with kids your own age and, in the process, you wind up involved in a totally serious battle for the stick of truth. Cartman is leading his friends in a city-wide LARP battle, where his faction represents humans. They are up against elves, Goth kids, and a whole barrage of other undesirables. You get to fight them. There’s an alien invasion and also you go to Canada.

Release date: In the US, March 4th, 2014–after delays out the ass. In the Australia, where both the PC and console versions are censored, March 6th. In the EU, where only console versions are censored, March 7th, 2014. Which means that today is the first day that the game is available in all it’s launch formats! Yay!

Sorry, what? Censored?? Yeah, I mean, it’s a South Park game. People took offense to things like anal probing, abortion, and swastikas and removed it. According to the review guide from Ubisoft, only about 20 seconds of the game has actually been removed, and it was replaced with text explaining what would be happening in the uncensored version. This text was chosen and approved by Matt Stone and Trey Parker.  Some people are upset, but there are ways to get the uncensored version if you’re creative enough.

Gameplay time: Between ten and twenty hours, based on how you play. According to Remain_Quiet, who is apparently a developer at Ubisoft:

“The game is roughly 20 hours if you think of all the secret achievements and possibly 2 play-throughs (for those who have not tested the game that is) because of not knowing about them and I have to stress there are some hard ones >_<. We were able to do the golden path (no achievements/side quest/buddy quest) in roughly a [days work] but you have to understand that we had been testing the game since January [of last year].” Via Kotaku

Gameplay style: Stick of Truth is an RPG, with a turn-based battle system that is widely compared to Paper Mario, and a weapons upgrade system similar to Final Fantasy VII. When creating your character under the gentle guidance of Cartman, you get to choose from four classes: Fighter, Mage, Thief, and Jew (similar to a traditional paladin or monk class). All quests are created to fit within the canon of the tv show, and to be “realistic” within the South Park universe while still moving the story of Stick of Truth forward.

Stick of Truth is buggy, but it’s getting better. Some reviewers had lag problems, some did not. There was in fact a launch-day bug patch released; a log for which can be found in this review guide:

Clicky for a big pic-ey

Obviously since I haven’t played it myself yet, I can’t comment on how bothersome the bugs actually are, and whether they effect gameplay. If you’ve had a go, please let us know your findings and what platform you used.

How much does it cost?

As with other new launch titles, Stick of Truth will set you back $60 if you buy a console version, and $40 for the PC. However, from now until March 23rd, Gamestop will up the trade-in value of all games and devices by 30%, if you put the credit towards purchasing Stick of Truth.  So…take advantage of that if you can.

Other Interesting Information You Should Know

As you will have seen if you watched the trailer at the top of this article, Trey and Matt were very involved with the creation of Stick of Truth. First of all, they wouldn’t even create the game if the aesthetic didn’t match the cutout animation style of the show. In fact, this time around, they approached the game developers rather than the other way around, and had much more creative control as a result. Some of the final elements that made it into the game:

• Weapons and armor all look like they were either found or made by the kids in South Park.
• The composer for the show’s music worked on the game’s soundtrack, so authentic South Park sounds and songs are used.
• Designers had access to actual animation sequences from South Park in order to authentically recreate the unique movement in the show.

The result of all this hype and hard work is a brand new role playing game that parodies its form while still functioning within classic RPG conventions. It aims to be the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy of the video game world, and so far, the verdict is that is succeeds.

Pick up your copy today at your local retailer or on Amazon.
For more on South Park: The Stick of Truth, check their official page at ubisoft.com, or their thread on Neogaf.

Image sources: Cartman: South Park Wikia; Patch Notes: Neogaf; Game Screencap: Ubisoft

Jen “Jenisaur” Schiller
Jen@sub-cultured.com
twitter.com/Jenisaur