I’m gonna spank you like a red-headed stepchild. Review

I’m gonna spank you like a red-headed stepchild.

Picture the peaceful town of South Park, Colorado. Innocent children cussing

at each other on the curbside. Genetic Scientists breaking the laws of nature

with five-assed experiments in the mountains. Anal-probing aliens roam the countryside.

Everything is normal in the town of South Park. That is, until, they needed

to make a video game. So, the designers came up with some evil comet plot that

really doesn’t matter all that much. All you have to know is that you can control

Cartman and kick your enemies “square in the nuts!”

In

what is the most overused license in marketing history, South Park is

everywhere. Aside from the obvious T-shirts, there are South Park dolls, jackets,

Frisbees, balloons, bongs (no kidding), notepads, bumper stickers, shorts, pens,

bottle openers, refrigerator magnets, telephones, and hats. That’s just to name

a few. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are laughing all the way to the bank, while

the poor public is inundated with third-rate products rushed to the market to

capitalize on the craze before it wears out. Acclaim paid big bucks for this

license, and spent a wopping six months designing a game. While South Park

64 maintains the humor of the television show from which it got its name,

the game itself is just plain boring.

In order to speed along the process of making the game, Acclaim simply reused

the Turok engine. Thus, the graphics are decent.

One might imagine that it would be hard to bring two-dimensional characters

into a three-dimensional setting, but the folks at Iguana were obviously fans

of the game. The animation wasn’t hard at all; anyone who watches the show knows

that they could animate South Park in their summer camp crafts class.

For those N64 users with the expansion pack, this game takes full advantage

of the higher resolutions offered by the upgrade. The designers did do a good

job capturing the look and feel of the show.

On top of that, the sound is great! With little quips from all the different characters, fans of South Park will be laughing their five asses off. From Kenny’s muffled obscenities, to the longest string of bleeping in the world, all the characters of South Park are brought to auditory life. Even Issac Hayes, that Shaft-singing, salsbury steak loving voice of Chef, makes cameo appearances throughout the game in order to instruct his little cracker children. I can dig it.

So,

if it has good graphics and good sound, why isn’t this game a winner? One word:

Gameplay. In a nutshell, this game is boring. Wait, maybe that wasn’t

strong enough. This game is so damn BORING you’ll want to kill Kenny

yourself just so something interesting happens. I’ve been more excited by Tom

Snyder than I have by South Park 64.

The level design is just plain awful. I suppose that’s what you get when you

rush a game from license acquisition to the market in just six months. Essentially,

there are three backgrounds: the town, the snow fields, and a vast number of

caverns. Just in case you wanted to spice up the gameplay with a little exploring,

the game designers gave you arrow signs telling you where to go. That’s alright,

there’s nowhere to explore anyway. You can’t even go into houses that have closed

doors! Every level is strictly linear.

The weapons, though creative, aren’t all that fantastic. You have everything

from yellow snowballs to dodge balls, and even that alien dancing gizmo. On

most levels, it doesn’t take much to find the weapons, to hide them better would

have required the level designers to think (it wasn’t in their job description).

“Well,” you ask, “What about the enemies?” Are three types of enemies a level good enough for you? No? Me neither. Every level has three types of enemies: minions (turkeys, cows, etc.), tanks (Celtic turkeys, alien ships, etc.), and the boss. That’s it. Imagine walking though a level and all you fight are two types of enemies, then you fight the boss. Fun? No. Boring? More than you can imagine.

On just the first level, after killing your 500th turkey, you’ll be ready to

shut off the game and watch reruns of the bass fishing network.

The only saving grace of South Park 64 is the multiplayer. Using cheats

provided by Acclaim, you can play as most of the South Park characters,

from Big Gay Al to that aforementioned love machine Chef. There are a good number

of multiplayer levels to run amok in, and fans of the game will love taking

their favorite character and kicking some ass. (Cartman’s ass may take a few

kicks, considering its size.) Unfortunately, the use of the cow-launcher ruins

the multiplayer. Once someone discovers where it is located on a level, they

will win, hands down. If there was some defense against having your head shoved

up a cow’s ass, I’d sure like to know it.

All in all, this is a half-assed attempt at a game. From Iguana, who people

would expect to use all five asses when designing a game, South Park 64

is a disappointment. The humor from the show is there, but this game will find

its way to that dusty shelf before you can say Skuzzlebutt. Though the multiplayer

is fun, that too gets old fairly quickly. Rent this one when you need your South

Park fix, and save your hard-earned cash for a better game.