The accelerated 3D world of South Park itself, although 3D still retains a crude 2D look and the same go for the characters as well. This of course can probably be expected as the actual show itself is 2D and one can say that the game stays true to it's roots. However, this doesn't help the graphics in the game very much. For one, the game is locked into one resolution, 640x480. There are no video options to switch resolutions so you're stuck in 640x480 in this game. The textures in the game are rather plain and as far as detail is concerned, there is virtually none. Other than the main town itself, the rest of the levels in the game are rather bland. There are a few rivers, cliffs and slopes set up as obstacles from time to time, but what good are these obstacles if you can't even drown in the rivers or die from the falls? In comparison, Doom looks better and is has much more sophisticated level design than South Park.

Despite all the negatives, there are a few things going for the game, the gameplay is extremely smooth and the graphics do make use of fog and lighting, however that's about all the 3D accelerated features that can be noticed within this game. Also the sound is done rather well since the speech is voiced by the people who do the television show. The taunting phrases that you hear from the kids can get annoying at times but the humor still makes it worthwhile to listen to the ingame voices. Almost every voice clip in the cartoon can be heard in the game, either through the single player mode or by the 22 characters that can be found in multiplayer mode.

Enough with the graphics and sound, so how is does the game play? Well, as Cartman would say "Kick ass"! However, after the inital 20 minutes of seeing one of my favorite cartoons put into 3D the awe of it all really wore away. It took only a few levels of play until the game became numbingly repetitive to the point where I had to agree with Cartman again and finally said, "Screw you guys, I'm going home..." The game itself is pretty much one big slaughterfest of enemies. There isn't much AI for the enemies, they simply come in massive droves, whether it's turkeys, cows or aliens. Also, each one of the five episodes is extremely repetitive.

In summary, a level pretty much plays as follows: You meet up with Chef in a cool cutscene where he tells you that South Park is in danger, you find the rest of the South Park gang scattered around town, follow the arrows guiding you through the level and killing tons of enemies at each point, kill lots of Tanks (miniboss enemies that spawn smaller enemies), repeat process for next 3 levels, fight the boss for the episode, and finally (yay!) finish an episode only to play the next episode which is very much like the previous episode but with different enemies. After a while, advancing further into the game is painful since it's a rather mindless process of gunning down enemies rapidly approaching in a straight line through every level just to see the next cutscene for the next episode to enjoy a cool 10 seconds of humor before repeating the process again. After a while I found myself simply playing just to see the cutscenes which are well done but not worth the gruelling slaughterfest to see it.

If the level design, enemies and basic gameplay aren't all that great, then what does it game have to offer one might ask? Well, the weapons are rather innovative. They range from a snowball which you have an infinite number of to a cow launcher which operates much like a rocket launcher. The first weapon which is a snowball works like a pistol without infinite ammo. The dodgeball, weapon two is a basic projectile that can bounce to hit multiple enemies. There is a plunger weapon where the plungers can be reused and a spongedart which acts like a machinegun. Terrance & Phillip Dolls work like gas grenades, and there's also a cow launcher which is like a rocket launcher. For the high powered stuff, there's the alien Warpo Ray which has a multitude of firing modes, a Super Sniper Chicken which works effectively like sniper rifle and finally, a Alien Dancing Gizmo which causes the enemy to dance uncontrollably.

With nine different weapons at one's disposal, there's quite a variety of weapons to use, not to mention each weapon has it's own secondary fire mode. For instance, you can throw snowballs at a fast pace, or throw more damaging yellow snowballs at a slower pace (remember kids, don't eat the yellow snow...).

There are also powerups scattered about the level ranging from health, double damage, double firing rate and of course, Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo which flies around you staining any enemies that dare to come by. Armor exists as football pads and there's cola to speed up your rate of movement and of course, there's BEEFCAKE!!! which makes you invulnerable for a pitiful 5 seconds or so. Most of these items aren't that great but inside multiplayer it sure makes the game a lot more fun. The multiplayer mode lets you select from 22 characters (20 from the N64 + Jesus & Santa which didn't make it to the N64). Each character has their own speech and not all are created equal. For instance, playing as Ike makes you incredibly hard to hit but you start with less hitpoints. The levels for multiplayer are much better than the single player ones but are still very small in size although they contain more detail. I played a bit of the multiplayer mode and I have to say it's funner than the single player game but comes nowhere close to the fun that I've had in Quake2 or Doom.

In the end, there is still much to be desired from this game, the graphics appear to have taken a step backwards from where 3D games are headed, the gameplay consists of killing mindless hordes of enemies and the story is at best still very weak. Even if you are a big South Park fan, you might be in for a disappointment. The game follows everything in the cartoons but as a 3D shooter, it doesn't have what it takes to follow the likes of it's 3D competitors. Perhaps South Park's 2D nature should stay where it is liked best, in it's own realm of 2D rather than the 3D.

South Park: Screenshots (32 Total)