South Park: The Stick of Truth - Xbox One

Unlikely as it may sound, South Park: The Stick of Truth is effectively an RPG using turn-based combat, party quests, main quest and side quests, bad language, scenes of a racy nature and, most of all, the benefit of the South Park graphic style and humour.

The graphics, the scripting, the characters (and there are many), the humour; it s as if a set of executives from Ubisoft and developer Obsidian had got together and then Matt Stone and Trey Parker had told them: Stay true to South Park! and for once, everybody did what they were told.

The game is just so incredibly South Park that all else evaporates. Like the TV series itself, the bones and the plot of South Park: The Stick of Truth build from the imagination of small kids.

You play the new Kid, and I won t spoil the naming ceremony gag. In order to quest and side-quest, you make friends (using Facebook-like requests) and you build questing parties of other familiar and not so familiar (to me) characters from the series.

And yes, at heart SPSoT is a questing game with turn-based combat. While the combat in SPSoT is quite straightforward (Block or Spell or Fight or Special Ability or Heal or Die) there s a comfort in learning how best to partake of its simple pleasures.

South Park: The Stick of Truth serves its source material well. In so doing, it also serves up a highly playable game to the fans of the show. more