Howdy No?
An all-new South Park game is coming… in 3D. Join Cartman, Stan, Kyle and Kenny, in three-dimensional glory, to celebrate the most magical day in any young child’s life – a snow day! Grab up to three friends and battle your way through the snow-piled streets of South Park on a quest to save the world and enjoy a day without school.
Having played and reviewed both the previous South Park games “The Stick of Truth” and “The Fractured But Whole”, I imagined that if there were to be a third game where you play as the “New Kid” that it would follow a similar format, so I was surprised to see that they went down the path that is Snow Day…
Gone are the turn-based fights and the 2D visuals, which have now been switched to open 3D roguelike combat that you can play co-op with 3 other friends or solo with 3 AI bots. Each level has you beat wave after wave of enemies like kids dressed up as elves or vampires and so on, with a boss at the end of it, the first being the Druid Kyle. You can see where Cartman was going to go with that one…
The switch from 2D to 3D is strange at first, but you get used to it quickly. The controls are simple to get used to, though whoever decided that holding down the left trigger would draw the bow and release it to fire it needs shooting. Before a level begins, you’ll be given a choice of cards which give you perks and abilities to use in the battlefield. Your enemy will also get these and at any point with pull out the perks known as “Bullshit!” which can make enemies bigger or reduce your damage for a limited time, for example.
You can collect other cards during a level by finding Jimmy and trading toilet paper (TP) for them and you can also use TP to upgrade them, while the goth kid Henrietta will let you sacrifice cards for powerups to whatever abilities she offers. You can also find foil cards hidden around the levels that reduce the rareness of cards. These abilities can vary from being able to use a fart to propel yourself into the air and damaging your enemies to increasing damage from your arrows and everything in between.
The classic South Park humour is here as you would expect, though there isn’t as much of it as in the past two games of the New Kid saga. But that’s really down to the level of content at the time of writing, which is pretty small at this point. A season pass has been launched that will drop cosmetics up till September, with a new game mode coming out in October but details are sketchy on what that will be. The good news is that Snow Day is a lot cheaper than the past two entries at just under £25.
The visuals are impressive, even if the 3D versions of South Park characters look a bit odd in comparison to their natural 2D counterparts. They still look a LOT better than the N64/PS1 3D models though, so be grateful for that. The framerate is solid, the soundtrack is decent and the voice-acting is still as great as you would hope with great performances from Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
The Verdict
Snow Day won’t be for everyone and it will definitely be seen as the weakest of the later games overall, but I do like that they took a risk and while it didn’t hit the mark, it can still be fun in small doses. Let’s hope the new game mode in October pumps in some much needed content.