South Park - The Fractured But Whole is the direct sequel to The Stick of Truth. This game was developed by Ubisoft San Francisco rather than Obsidian Entertainment. As a studio known for the Rocksmith rhythm games, role-playing games were out of their repertoire prior to the release of this game. This, combined with the popularity of Stick of Truth, meant that The Fractured But Whole had a lot riding on it upon its release.
The story once again stars the New Kid, the player's avatar. This game gives not only a lot more customization options than its predecessor, but more customization options than most games available at the time of its release. The Stick of Truth only allowed customization of the look of the character but the story referred to the character as a male. This time, there is an option for gender, but there's a lot more available than merely male and female. There are also multiple options available to choose for your sexual orientation. The characters will then refer to the New Kid in the manner appropriate to gender and sexual orientation. There is also some clever social commentary in the character configuration as well as in the game proper.
In this game, the New Kid gains powers to reverse time. This can be used both in puzzles when traversing the map as well as in the turn-based fights. The battle system has also been changed from the previous game with grid-based movement that adds strategy to brawls. There are many different enemies from South Park's history to battle, including the crab people who were cut from the previous game.
There is a larger variety of South Park kids that can be included as a playable character in your party, including a girl in the form of Call Girl, also known as Wendy Testaburger. The characters go by code names as this time they are playing as superheroes. The first game had up to six characters which could serve as the three characters in your party, this time there are thirteen. The other twelve characters include Stan as Toolshed, Kyle as the Human Kite, Cartman as The Coon, Kenny as Mysterion, Butters as Professor Chaos, Jimmy as Fastpass Clyde as Mosquito, Craig as Super Craig, Tweek as Wonder Tweek, Token as Tupperware, Scott Malkinson as Captain Diabetes, and Timmy as Dr. Timothy.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole improves upon its predecessor with more characters, a more robust battle system, and fun time manipulation puzzles. However, the storyline is divisive this time around, as the whole premise is of the New Kid using flatulence to manipulate time. This, obviously, sets up a lot of toilet humor. The other part that divides fans is that the game contains characters and situation mostly from the newer episodes of South Park, whereas the original had characters and references that spanned the entire show up to that point. If you can look past the childish exterior, the storyline actually is quite fun with conspiracies, time travel, and the expected South Park satire.
Final Verdict:4½ out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment