Platforms: PC (Steam, UPlay store, Retail), Playstation 3, Xbox 360

Genre: RPG

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment and South Park Digital Studios

Publisher: Ubisoft

Release Date: March 4th, 2014

ESRB: M (17+)

Price: $59.99

Final Score: 5/5

Humans! Drow Elves! Aliens! Taco-Bell…? These are just a few of the very very (very) many ordeals you must face in “South Park: The Stick of Truth.”

Having been in development for over three years, facing the infamous bankruptcy of THQ (their original publisher) and layoffs by Obsidian Entertainment, “South Park: The Stick of Truth” is nothing short of perfection to any fan of the TV series.

Beginning around 2005, “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker felt that the console generation, including the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, finally had the ability to make one of their many dreams come true: to create a video game that looked exactly like an episode of their Emmy award-winning TV series. They were able to flawlessly make this dream a reality with the help of Obsidian Entertainment, a studio who has in the past brought a variety of well-received games such as “Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic II,” the “Neverwinter II” saga, “Fallout: New Vegas,” and “Alpha Protocol.”

To play the game you don’t need to have seen the show before, but it really does make it more enjoyable with all the references in the game, from 30 collectable Chinpokomon (careful not to miss them in the main story) to hilarious Facebook posts by the characters of South Park constantly update.

The game chronologically takes place after season 17, the most recent one as it was led up to by the epic Black Friday trilogy episodes. It begins with you, the new kid, A.K.A Douchebag, moving into the town. A brief one-sided conversation with your parents, since your character does not talk, reveals the move to South Park is due to a dark secret of your past.

From there you can then either go straight outside to continue your adventure or you can explore your house for a bit in hopes of finding some cash or a variety of available loot, like in many other RPG games.

After exiting your house, a friendly, familiar face to any fan of the series appears: an already costumed Butters the Merciful, a human paladin who conveniently lives right next door to you. After a brief meeting, he prompts you to become friends with him which opens your start menu which is your Facebook profile page.

There are many available options on this page which will be of use to you later in the game, such as your available companion, which is eventually composed of well-known faces of the series, your net worth (amount of money you have), collectibles, etc. Stone and Parker, for the first time, detailed and mapped out the town. This map becomes available to you all game, which will assist in many sidequests as well as the main story.

From there, you follow your new paladin companion to the cleverly acronymed Kingdom of Kupa Keep, where you meet the grand wizard and king of the humans, Cartman, as well as the ever lovely Princess Kenny. After an introduction to the wizard and princess, you are given a choice of any four classes to play as: Warrior, Mage, Thief, or Jew; but choose wisely, as you can only play one per save file. Don’t worry too much though, the story is not affected by your decision.

After choosing your profession, you are brought to your first battle, a tutorial fight with another familiar face, Clyde.

The battle system is set to be turn-based, as in most classic RPGs. You can choose from many actions later in the game, but to begin you have a few basic ones: attack, use an ability which consumes power point or PP, (and, yes, they did not fail to make a joke about that), or use an item. The silent but deadly magic comes into play later, but I’ll not ruin what that magic is as it is well worth witnessing yourself.

The gameplay system would seem to be very enjoyable to both viewers of the show and fans of the “Paper Mario” series as the system is very similar. It is a side-scrolling, collision-to-combat system where you are also able to converse with the various townsfolk as well.

This game has many amazing qualities to it: flawless story, hilarious jokes, a seamless transition between gameplay and story, and much more. The only thing I could find negative about it was a bit of frame rate drop every once in a while whilst playing it on the platform I chose, the PS3 version. Now this isn’t to say that it occurs on the XBOX 360 version, or on the PC version, it may have just been a problem I alone faced as my PS3 is one of the older models. There is currently no news on whether “The Stick of Truth” will be ported onto PS4 or Xbox One, though fans are vigilantly awaiting any news available on the matter.

Aside from that minor inconvenience, which not everyone may be bothered by depending on your platform of choice, this game is a model of perfection for what any comedic game or show-turned-game should be. Though it faced delay after delay, and issue after issue, the end product was well worth the wait, not like some other games recently released that came to bomb in eyes of the fans (I’m looking at you “DNF” and “Aliens: Colonial Marines”).

Be warned though, this game has absolutely NO filter, so much so that Obsidian was worried some employees may not want to work on the project, though they did anyway. Anything vulgar that you can think of as a joke is most likely in this game–some scenes are actually censored with a filler scene in the European game. It also contains copious amounts of offensive jokes, but then it wouldn’t be a “South Park” game if it didn’t.

At the end of the day, I believe without a doubt, as both a gamer and a fan of the TV series, “South Park: The Stick of Truth” is worth every last penny. This game has certainly delivered to the fans what they wanted and more.

Who it is for: Fans of the show and its style of comedy, and those who like the “Paper Mario” layout

Who it is not for: Those easily offended by vulgar jokes and scenes, anyone under 17, and those who are not fans of the show