Genre: Role-playing (RPG)
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment, South Park Digital Studios
Publisher: Ubisoft
Year: 2014
Platform: PlayStation 3
South Park: The Stick of Truth places players in the role of the “New Kid,” recently arrived in the town of South Park, Colorado. Early on, he is drawn into a fantasy-themed conflict between elves and humans, which quickly escalates to involve wizards, aliens, Nazi zombies, and other surreal threats. The game is designed to emulate the visual style and humor of the television series, capturing characters, voice acting, and narrative tone to immerse the player in a living South Park episode.
Gameplay is driven by turn-based combat using a health/PP (power points) system, where each ability costs PP and restoring health/PP occurs after battles. Players choose one of four character classes—Fighter, Mage, Thief, or Jew—with each offering distinct abilities. Equipment can be upgraded through “strap-ons” (novelty items that confer bonus effects), and players gain experience, level up, and unlock new skills. Exploration is non-linear, with quests, side missions, collectible items, and character interactions forming the bulk of progression.
On the PlayStation 3 version, the game maintains the full content and narrative fidelity of its PC and Xbox 360 counterparts. Some content was censored in certain regions for the PS3 console version (notably Europe and Australia), where explicit scenes involving anal probing and abortion were replaced with static placeholder images and explanatory text. The core gameplay, characters, and humor remain intact, adapted to the hardware’s performance constraints.
The reception of the PS3 version was very positive: critics and players praised its faithful recreation of the show’s visuals, irreverent writing, and ambitious adaptation of the franchise’s tone into an RPG. While some technical hiccups and limitations in combat variety were noted, the game was largely hailed as one of the best licensed adaptations in recent memory. The PS3 version holds a Metacritic score of 85/100 in critic reviews.
