Farting is used to glitch time and alter the flow of combat. In true South Park fashion, butt stuff is a staple of The Fractured but Whole. These are little subversions that act as welcome detours from just fighting until everyone’s dead. Others emphasize moving as quickly through a room as possible, with little focus on actually engaging anyone. One major fight requires funneling all the enemies to one side of the battlefield. In its most memorable moments, The Fractured but Whole‘s combat forces an awareness of positioning. They mostly fall into RPG archetypes (the Human Kite is a healer, Coon is a melee fighter, and so on), but they’re different enough to warrant consideration as to what’s the ideal makeup for any particular fight. There are a dozen-or-so potential partners, and each of them has a unique set of moves that isn’t too similar to anyone else. There’s also a lot more going on with the superhero teammates. Spatial considerations do wonders to vary a fighting system that did the bare minimum in its predecessor. This is more of a strategy turn-based RPG, where characters move across a grid to take new positions. While walking around, talking to everyone, taking selfies, and completing fetch quests feels adequate most of the time, it’s The Fractured but Whole‘s attention to combat that really elevates it over The Stick of Truth. Even when The Fractured but Whole isn’t actively riffing on something, it’s taking a page from the Member Berries and saying “Hey, remember this?” It works brilliantly. There are more than 20 seasons’ worth of material to pull from, and nearly 300 episodes of gags to reintroduce. Everything is bursting with little nods to the show, and that’s precisely what makes South Park such a fantastic candidate for a game. New locations include SoDoSoPa, Shi Tpa Town, and an ominous under-construction mall in the background.Īlthough a lot of it is the same, it’s no less of a pleasure to re-explore these areas. However, as the show has changed, so has The Fractured but Whole‘s take on the town. All the same landmarks are there - Stark’s Pond is still on the far west, Kenny’s house is still on the other side of the train tracks, and the rest of the boys’ homes are aligned in a tidy row along one street. South Park is mostly unchanged in the three years since The Stick of Truth. That’s the crucial jumping off point for this entire franchise-to-be. From there, at Cartman’s behest, he sets off to find a missing cat so that Coon and Friends can secure the $100 reward. He’s immediately given a tragic backstory where he saw his dad fuck his mom. It’s civil war.Ĭaught in the middle is The New Kid, the same silent protagonist from The Stick of Truth (although he’s called Butthole this time instead of Douchebag). Half the crew disagrees and splinters off from Coon and Friends to form the Freedom Pals. That plan is divisive though, like nearly everything Cartman does. Their reasoning is that they can probably launch a multimedia superheroes franchise - think Netflix originals, multiple movies, video game tie-ins, etc. Soon after the events of The Stick of Truth, the gang ditches fantasy for superheroes. South Park: The Fractured but Whole (PC, PS4, Xbox One ) People who watch South Park know exactly what they’re getting into. But it’s always attempting to one-up itself. Sometimes it has a point to make, sometimes it’s just pointing without really saying anything. It’s constantly absurd in every single respect. South Park‘s newest video game, The Fractured but Whole, doesn’t take any chances on subtlety or nuance.
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The brash, outrageous, over-the-top, line-toeing comedy gets the attention any quieter social commentary often goes overlooked. You can’t be nuanced and subtle anymore or else critics go ‘Wow, what was the point of that?'” It’s a slice of meta-observation about what South Park has been fighting for 20 years now. In one of this season’s episodes of South Park, Randy Marsh remarks “You have to overdo it in today’s society.