GB Feature: South Park: The Stick of Truth Review
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It might not quite resemble any of the other role-playing titles we've reviewed in the past, but we certainly couldn't overlook the chance to critique Obsidian Entertainment's most recent effort, South Park: The Stick of Truth, could we? Of course not:
With the exception of a number of generally not too entertaining minigames, South Park: The Stick of Truth's gameplay is divided between side-scrolling exploration and Paper Mario-like combat encounters. Exploration takes place in real time, and gives your character the chance to move throughout town, and punch and fart (yes, you knew this was coming) on pretty much everything you encounter. Later in the game you'll also gradually learn more abilities to use while exploring (which are common to all character classes), including ranged attacks, companion-exclusive actions like Butters' ability to heal injured people, and, well, the ability to unleash various types of farts. Some of these abilities can be used to explore locked-off parts of town later in the game, and to solve some generally easy puzzles at pivotal story sections, although for the most part exploration just consists of navigating environments, taking quests and collecting loot. While I can't really praise this mechanical aspects of the game very highly, the environments are so well-rendered and true to the show that moving your character from point A to B feels rewarding in and of itself.
More importantly, all enemies are visible while you're exploring, and they will actively try to attack you while on the map to trigger an encounter and get the first turn. Approaching them from afar with a ranged attack, however, stuns them, and should you manage to punch them first, you will actually be the one to get the first action. In actual combat encounters, the New Kid is usually (but not always) accompanied by one of the game's six buddies (it's the actual game terminology, I'm not trying to sound hip here), and both characters are under the complete control of the player. Each turn, you get the chance to both examine the enemies (which lets you see all of their immunities, inflicted status effects, buffs and eventual charging attacks), take one free action (using an item or a free special ability) and/or attack.
