South Park: The Fractured But Whole (PC)

By ARIA DIMEZZO
Master Controller
After decades of terrible licensed video games swindling customers out of money for products that barely worked or simply weren’t fun, including a few South Park games, creators of the television series, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, became directly involved in the development of “The Stick of Truth.” Although simplistic in gameplay, reminiscent of the Paper Mario series, the game was praised for its humor, veracity to the show, and deconstruction of irritating video game tropes. Fast forward a few years, and a sequel has been released, based largely on the show’s superhero arcs that were noticeably missing from the previous game.

One thing is immediately obvious about “The Fractured But Whole” and the long-term prospect of South Park video games: once technology reached a point where they could make the games look identical to the show, the games stopped evolving. The result is that the latest game would fit right in as downloadable content for “Stick of Truth,” because the only real differences between the two games are the mechanics of combat. Whereas “Stick of Truth” opted for a partner-style and timed-attack system, “The Fractured But Whole” utilizes one that more closely resembles the Heroes of Might & Magic series. By taking place on a grid that requires characters to move into position for attacks to hit, battles became much slower this time around, exacerbated by increase to four characters on each side to attack each turn. Battles are less frequent than in its predecessor, but longer and more tedious.

An overarching fantastic element breaks the feel established by “Stick of Truth,” because the first installment made it clear that these were kids who were playing and imagining, but even when there were real enemies, such as Nazi Zombie Cows, there were logical reasons that hitting one with a toilet plunger would cause damage. In this game built around superheroes, however, the silent protagonist surely isn’t conjuring fireballs in the real world, nor is Human Kite flying miles into the air, so how exactly are these attacks affecting those enemies who are not “playing along” with the children? The television show broached this topic itself, in an anime-inspired episode in which Kenny, while pretending to be a ninja, throws a real shuriken that becomes embedded in Butters’s eye. In video game and television, South Park has never lost sight of the fact that these are children pretending to have superhuman abilities, and then “The Fractured But Whole” discards decades of consistency.

Was a crafting system really necessary? The ubiquity of superfluous crafting systems has become a pet peeve of mine, because developers are unable to strike any sort of balance between having the system be useful and not having the system be necessary simply to complete the game. If a game is balanced around players using the system, then it becomes required; if a game is balanced around players not using the system, then players who capitalize on it become too powerful. There is no way to reconcile this conflict, and the results are shoehorned into one game after the next, whether or not it has any logical sense there. Consequently, these are systems that add nothing, do nothing, and have players shouting, “Yeah, I get it!” through excessive tutorials, after which the system will never be touched again. Please, developers, stop adding crafting systems. They’re not good, and they’re not fun.

Of course, the main appeal of the South Park video games, aside from the novelty of feeling like a character inside the show, is the humor. “South Park: The Fractured But Whole” is crass, rude, offensive, disgusting, irreverent, and absolutely hilarious. In keeping with the show’s development in recent years, the dialogue is also surprisingly sensitive on certain topics, showcasing well that the franchise is no longer simply a collection of toilet jokes, although those certainly abound. Trey Parker and Matt Stone continue to demonstrate that they have plenty of ways to make us laugh, dashing our expectations with the incredible and the mundane. “The Fractured But Whole,” relative to “The Stick of Truth,” is indeed bigger, longer, and uncut, but it simply doesn’t feel like a fresh experience. It feels like DLC for the first game, but at the same price as a full game.

Score: 6/10