XBOX REVIEW | South Park: Snow Day!

South Park hasn’t had a 3D game since the 2000 release of South Park Rally.

It seems like yesterday that South Park graced our television sets with the first episode. I remember sneaking out of my bed and creeping downstairs just to watch it. It’s been 25 years, and as I write this I feel old. However, this hasn’t stopped my love for South Park. I have played all of the games to date, and still actively play Phone Destroyer. That being said, I couldn’t contain my excitement for Snow Day! Snow Day, despite being a lot different from the previous games is connected, albeit loosely. Someone has cast a spell on the unsuspecting town of South Park causing the school to close, and the kids of South Park have to figure out who is behind it while blaming each other. The rules have changed as they allude to in the story, but does it work for the better?

Gather your troops at Cartman’s round table

Things I liked!

• New Graphical Style | South Park hasn’t had a 3D game since the 2000 release of South Park Rally. Since then, we have had a ton of South Park Games, including Phone Destroyer which all use the same style from the show. Honestly, I thought I would dislike the 3D graphical style of Snow Day, but they have done a great job at capturing the expressions of the cast and made it work. The overall setting for South Park: Snow Day is set within the quiet mountain town that has been synonymous with the episodes from the beginning. However, the town is covered in snow and the detail is good. Snow deforms as you run through it creating trails, allowing you to uncover items as you go.

• Co-op | South Park: Snow Day even has co-op. You can play online or split-screen which has been a welcome addition. My son and I got to team up for one of the levels and it works well. Each player has their character with their own design, weapons, and skill set. This makes playing through some of the tougher levels a lot easier, and it is much more fun with a friend. Finding an online match was also quite easy and I had no difficulties finding a match.
  
  
• The Audio | The audio in South Park: Snow Day is fantastic. All of the cast reprise their roles, including supporting characters. All of the usual details are included as well such as the banjo for cutaways and the heavy use of drum and orchestral music. However they do add some music that isn’t typical of the show, and that makes sense since this is a hybrid of Dungeon Crawler and RPG. So more action-orientated battle music is also included. The voices of downed enemies are great. The subtle comments about needing to go home, and letting you know they don’t want to play anymore remind you that you are just a kid beating on other kids in a make-believe setting.

The Boss fights are not spared from repetition

Neither good nor bad

• Reusing Old Jokes | Dissapointly most of the jokes used in South Park: Snow Day seem to get reused from the show directly, or previous games. It’s a shame since most South Park fans will pick up on this. Those expecting new material might be disappointed. Despite being written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it feels more like an afterthought rather than something that they were dedicated to at the time, almost secondary to the show. Some fans will still appreciate the gags, but if you are after a completely new set of gags and current world issues, you will most likely be disappointed.

• Lack of New Ideas | Despite most iterations of the South Park games implementing some form of a mechanic, sadly this one does not. You will find most of the ideas used in Snow Day have already been done before in past games. The card system is reused, the combat mechanic is lackluster and doesn’t offer anything past button mashing X. It’s a shame since this could have been a really deep and engaging RPG system. Even the low price point of £24.99 can’t save it. The only new idea implemented which does add some variety to the gameplay is the new “Bullshit” system. At the start of each level, you are given 3 cards to choose from which grant you a timed superpower. This can range from being invisible with healing, being an unstoppable giant, summoning additional minions, laser eyes, and more. The enemy side also gets to choose a bullshit card which can sometimes leave you “shitting explosives”.
  
  
• Mediocre RPG Elements | As mentioned above the RPG elements could have been deep and engaging. However, Snow Day essentially strips it back and makes it quite barebones. The card system that manages your passive abilities such as attack damage, ranged damage, health, stamina, and healing can all be buffed with the use of one card from the start. They are random and you have a choice of three. Throughout each level, once you clear an area, Jimmy will appear and offer you another one of three cards each again offering to boost your passive abilities. These can be upgraded by using toilet paper currency, or you can reshuffle if you think they are poor cards. However, this is all there is to it. You can find the goths scattered throughout each level as well which offer you dark magic cards but these aren’t worth seeking out and feel more like a tacky add-on since they only replenish your bullshit cards or make you sacrifice your passive abilities in exchange for dark matter.
  Dark matter is used to permanently upgrade your overall skills like damage, health, stamina, ranged attacks, and cooldowns. Throughout my playthrough I didn’t focus too much on it since it wasn’t affecting my gameplay in any way, again this could just be me, however. I’m sure some players will find it worthwhile especially if they want to fully upgrade your character.

Some of the other kids don’t want to play nice!

Things I disliked!

• Extremely Repetitive | As mentioned above, the RPG elements from South Park: Snow Day have been cut back dramatically. As a result, a lot of your time will be spent mashing the same button over and over again without having any real input, or feeling like you are learning some cool new moves. Hacking and slashing at your enemies will always be the go-to move since you are extremely limited by what you can do in this game.

• Fails to Capture the Charm of the Show | Unlike the previous two mainline games, South Park: Snow Day doesn’t do itself much justice by limiting the number of cutscenes and mid-game jokes. The previous titles do a great job of breaking up the gameplay to let themselves be exactly what people want. South Park. Unfortunately, it is just level after level of rinse and repeats with almost all of the humor gone. What little jokes there are, is usually overshadowed by the fact that they never go back to the classic style of the show for these parts, which would have been a great addition to the game.
  
  
• Not Enough Screen Time | One of my biggest pet peeves with South Park: Snow Day has been the lack of screen time that the main cast gets. The game starts with an opening cutscene done in the traditional South Park episode style, but apart from these small occurrences, they merely take a back seat while you run around the world fighting generic background characters before ultimately getting to the stage boss. The main character used in South Park: Snow Day is “new kid” which is played by you. You are voiceless as per usual so you have no real meaningful interactions with the main cast.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 8 hours
How long to beat the story? 6 hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 16
How long to achieve 1000G | 16 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | South Park: Phone Destroyer, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Stick of Truth