The town of South Park is once again plunged into chaos in Snow Day, the latest video game adaptation of the animated series developed by Question Games. Snow Day is a roguelike fighting game that can be played with up to four players and moves away from the more traditional RPG roots of its predecessors The Stick of Truth and The Dangerous Rear. It’s also notable for being the first 3D South Park game in two decades.
Snow Day takes place directly after the previous two South Park RPGs. To mark the occasion, a massive snowstorm broke out in the city, causing classes to be canceled and residents to go crazy to buy toilet paper. With school closed, the kids go on another Dungeon and Dragons-style adventure, but are forced to play another fantasy game after the new kid (the player) ends up being incredibly good once again. The story takes an approach that focuses on children’s adventures rather than political satire.
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Although I liked the way the developers combined the series’ visual elements with Snow Day’s 3D presentation, I found the story rather shallow and unoriginal. There are very few cutscenes in the story chapters and in the second half things take an extremely predictable turn that I found neither clever nor entertaining. In fact, the game makes fun of this by unlocking a trophy/achievement called “Inevitable Betrayal.”
Although the story is quite weak, there were moments that made me smile as a huge fan of the series that I am. For example, I thought it was hilarious when Stan’s dad Randy helped him fight the boss to defend his toilet paper, or when the kids spontaneously reinvented the rules of the game, but overall there were very few moments like this, very few from time to time.
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As mentioned above, Snow Day is a cooperative fighting game that allows up to four players to participate. Luckily for those playing alone, the AI is pretty good at fighting alongside you and helping you recover if you fall in battle. You also have the option to join random players in online co-op mode, but strangely the local option isn’t available, which seems like a missed opportunity to me given that group play is essential.
For combat, you have a melee weapon, a ranged weapon and two special powers at your disposal, which you can use as soon as your rage meter is full. These powers contain many fun references to the series and give players both defensive and offensive advantages. For example, Cheesing Power causes enemies to temporarily turn on each other, and Fart Run can be used to provide a fun way to get to safety when things get too ugly.
Snow Day differs from typical fighting games with a card-based system that provides variety. As you play, you will be offered cards that allow you to increase the power of your attacks and special abilities. These can be improved by using toilet paper rolls. There are also special cards called “Bullshit Cards” that give you and your opponent limited special powers, but can only be used a few times. My favorites were one that allowed me to shoot lasers through my eyes and another that turned me into a giant.
There are some interesting things about the mechanics of the cards, but overall I found the battles boring. You spend most of your time hacking your way through the same group of elementary school kids by clicking on the square over and over again. Defeating waves of enemies doesn’t give you experience, and they don’t drop new weapons or upgrades, so the arduous task of beating them over the head never feels worthwhile.
The game also doesn’t do anything to make the action part more interesting during its unfortunately short five-chapter story. You’ll spend most of your time running from one area to another, killing enemies that keep reappearing until you can finally move on. Sometimes Snow Day tries to liven things up by having you defend a certain area during an ambush or collect a series of items, but unfortunately these are isolated cases.
When creators Matt and Trey took over the helm of projects like The Stick of Truth and Dangerous Rear, it seemed like the dark era of the South Park games was behind us, but unfortunately Snow Day marks a major step backwards for the company. Series. The five-chapter story seems much longer than it should be due to the unoriginal script and tedious, repetitive gameplay. Taking this into account, it becomes difficult to recommend the game to even the most die-hard fans.
