South Park: The Stick of Truth

[Snozgobler]

Given that in general one of the biggest issues people in this thread are saying they had with the game was that combat, I guess it's no surprise that Kotaku decided that you're all wrong... (that's a generalisation, but they seem to say that SP:TSoT got more right than wrong in the combat department)

They lavished the game's combat with pretty high praise: "Also, while I'm telling people what to do: hey Obsidian, send copies of this game to every RPG developer in Japan, along with a note saying "LEARN FROM THIS." It'll be worth it."

 

[Infinitron]

Given that in general one of the biggest issues people in this thread are saying they had with the game was that combat, I guess it's no surprise that Kotaku decided that you're all wrong... (that's a generalisation, but they seem to say that SP:TSoT got more right than wrong in the combat department)

They lavished the game's combat with pretty high praise: "Also, while I'm telling people what to do: hey Obsidian, send copies of this game to every RPG developer in Japan, along with a note saying "LEARN FROM THIS." It'll be worth it."

From the comments:

RealmRPGer
CON: You can only use one party member at a time.

Absolutely. I've always felt that one of the major differences that set JRPGs apart from western RPGs was that you controlled an entire party of characters, rather than just one character with AI allies.

 

[Duellist_D]

Game is fun, but not worth 60$.
Not talking about bugs (encountered non), but the combat is obscenely easy and boils down to quick-timing at the right moment.
Items are also partly broken. That SWAT-Helmet which gives you an additional attack after killing someone?
No-brainer.

Also: Fuck anybody who even thinks about buying this horribly censored europoopian Version where they removed the Swastikas and funny Quotes from the Zombies or the abortions.

 

[Commissar Draco]

That's funny little game but worth 20 zionbux not 60, like South Park but not as much to pay so much for New Episode with QTEs.

 

[undecaf]

I find it to be well worth the 40 gold teeth so far. But then I don't buy or play many new games these days anymore (because most of the market is shit) so my perception of bang per buck might be skewed. No jew in me.

 

[uaciaut]

I find it to be well worth the 40 gold teeth so far. But then I don't buy or play many new games these days anymore (because most of the market is shit) so my perception of bang per buck might be skewed. No jew in me.

Neah, i definitely agree that most games (if not all) are not worth their release price. Stick of truth definitely included, but i really can't blame them for asking 60$ for it when it had so much hype going into it.

 

[Broseph]

I finished it last night. I'm glad that it's ~20 hours. I don't think the content got weaker towards the end, but I was started to get tired of it. Overall I enjoyed it, but the Al Gore fight was pretty much the only challenging encounter in the whole game. It hits some of my biggest pet peeves, like being constantly barraged with loot that you don't need, but then the game is funny enough that I don't give a shit. Anyway, , might play through it again sometime. Of the Obsidian games I've played, I'd put it above NWN2 and Alpha Brotocol and below New Vegas.

Also, PC Metacritic score just went up to 85.

 

[Roguey]

Neah, i definitely agree that most games (if not all) are not worth their release price. Stick of truth definitely included, but i really can't blame them for asking 60$ for it when it had so much hype going into it.

Sales-wise I can't say how it's doing other than I and my boss are happy. Kinda pissed at our forecasters because apparently it's sold out/selling out everywhere so that means lost sales, but what're you gonna do?

Looks like all those snide remarks about "Who would buy a South Park RPG?" were way-off-the-mark.

As I predicted of course.

 

[imweasel]

Yeah, the game is selling very well. It has great metacritic scores, so I am not surprised.

It is not a very good RPG (still light years better than anything Bethesda can shit out though), but it is a fun game.

 

[Cazzeris]

I finished it last night. I'm glad that it's ~20 hours. I don't think the content got weaker towards the end, but I was started to get tired of it. Overall I enjoyed it, but the Al Gore fight was pretty much the only challenging encounter in the whole game. It hits some of my biggest pet peeves, like being constantly barraged with loot that you don't need, but then the game is funny enough that I don't give a shit. Anyway, , might play through it again sometime. Of the Obsidian games I've played, I'd put it above NWN2 and Alpha Brotocol and below New Vegas.

Also, PC Metacritic score just went up to 85.

Good to hear that. Metacritic just doesn't make any sense (just look at Fallout 3 and New Vegas score)

 

[Zed]

Yeah, the game is selling very well. It has great metacritic scores, so I am not surprised.

if anything, meta critic follows sales, not the other way around

 

[dukeofwhales]

Completed it last night, enjoyed my time and didn't feel scammed out of my $45. Weird that I don't normally have time for South Park humour when it's on TV but quite enjoyed it in the game.

I switched from hardcore to normal when I was having trouble with the alien pilot fight but I must have just been undergeared or something because everything else thereafter was stupid easy. Should have switched back to hardcore straight after in hindsight.

 

[Rivmusique]

Given that in general one of the biggest issues people in this thread are saying they had with the game was that combat, I guess it's no surprise that Kotaku decided that you're all wrong... (that's a generalisation, but they seem to say that SP:TSoT got more right than wrong in the combat department)

They lavished the game's combat with pretty high praise: "Also, while I'm telling people what to do: hey Obsidian, send copies of this game to every RPG developer in Japan, along with a note saying "LEARN FROM THIS." It'll be worth it."

What a stupid article. That bit about bosses and status effects is actually just not true. A heap of them have an immunity to stuns/sleep/pissed-off, they even make it a joke, calling the buff 'boss' or something, with the reason 'just because...'

 

[Name]

Given that in general one of the biggest issues people in this thread are saying they had with the game was that combat, I guess it's no surprise that Kotaku decided that you're all wrong... (that's a generalisation, but they seem to say that SP:TSoT got more right than wrong in the combat department)

They lavished the game's combat with pretty high praise: "Also, while I'm telling people what to do: hey Obsidian, send copies of this game to every RPG developer in Japan, along with a note saying "LEARN FROM THIS." It'll be worth it."

What a stupid article. That bit about bosses and status effects is actually just not true. A heap of them have an immunity to stuns/sleep/pissed-off, they even make it a joke, calling the buff 'boss' or something, with the reason 'just because...'

Well, poison, ice and fire works on bosses. I think Obsidian makes bosses immune to stuns/sleep/pissed-off so they can still showcase most of their special attacks.

 

[Zombra]

Well, poison, ice and fire works on bosses. I think Obsidian makes bosses immune to stuns/sleep/pissed-off so they can still showcase most of their special attacks.

The point is that the article was dumb because it said they didn't do that at all, and even made a big deal about how they didn't do that at all.

 

[flushfire]

The game plays like an adventure/jrpglite hybrid, reminded me of Cobra Mission and Knights of Xentar. Some moments were IMO pretty amusing like the gnome boss battle, canada and that princess kenny intro. Being able to evade/kill off trash mobs outside of combat is cool too. Difficulty is uneven, hardcore shouldve been normal and some boss fights really could be harder. UI and controls feel tailored to a controller. The mario rpgish combat system is ok, although some animations were too long and controls were sometimes confusing (high level abilities, dance rev-like portions using arrow keys when WASD was default for movement) but they got timing just right. Also thought environment interaction was good although most "secrets" only amounted to costumes or collectibles. I don't really think it's very replayable as choices are few (and from what I've read, hollow) and most of the game is linear but overall it's a fun game that's worth about 25 bucks.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/17/south-park-co-creator-on-stick-of-truth-sequel-potential

South Park Co-Creator on Stick of Truth Sequel Potential
Matt Stone dishes on the challenges of game development, his favorite games, and more.
by Ryan McCaffrey

South Park co-creator Matt Stone is leaving the door open to working on another video game with fellow showrunner Trey Parker. “We’ll see how it’s received,” he told IGN with a laugh as we sat with him shortly before the launch of his well-received RPG The Stick of Truth. “This was a hellacious undertaking – much more than when we signed up for it. Never say never. I would do it again, in some fashion. I think that video games are really interesting.”

Stone discussed how getting a game that he and Parker were integral to the development to was a far cry from the early days of South Park, when they’d simply license the property out and exert no creative control. “I think we got into it casually. [We said], ‘Oh that’d be cool to do a video game.’ Visually, technical stuff...we can figure that out.

“[But] you sit and watch South park [on TV] a certain way…[and] a game is consumed a certain way. It engages different parts of your brain. The natural rhythms of comedy that we know pretty well from the TV comedy universe, they’re different from a game. And they have to be different, and you can’t resist it. You have to go, ‘Yeah, it’s gonna be different’ instead of being a joke. It’s gonna be a tool that you use that’s gonna be funny when you use it. I would start differently now if we started again.”

We brought up the game’s original release date -- March 2013 -- and asked how that extra year of development time was spent. “There was definitely a big learning curve for Trey and I,” Stone said. “We made a lot of mistakes and assumptions.”

He added, “I’ll cop to the fact that we retooled stuff that we didn’t like and we worked on the game longer than other people would’ve liked us to,” he said, laughing.

Was anything cut from the already shocking game to ensure that it received an ‘M’ rating from the ESRB? “We didn’t have to cut anything for the M rating,” Stone explained. “The stuff that was cut was cut for story and cut for production schedule [reasons].”

Both Stone and Parker are self-professed lifelong gamers, so we had to ask Stone: has he purchased a next-gen console yet? “I’m a huge FIFA fan,” he said. “So I had to get [one] to play FIFA.” He also added, “I’ll be playing Titanfall for sure.”

 

[thesoup]

Just finished the game. It was fun. Canada was probably the funniest part.
The game is way too easy most of the time, though. The only time I had to repeat a boss battle a few times was against Al Gore. I played on hardcore.

 

[Chunkyman]

Finished it last night. About the only good RPG to be made since New Vegas, so this year of incline is getting off to a great start. Although it was short and doesn't have a lot of replay value, the quality of a single run definitely makes it worth playing. Also, Butters was such a fun companion that I used him for roughly 90% of the game. Jimmy was good too, though.

Highlights:

• Al Gore spamming your facebook
• Screwing up when disarming the Snook
• The fart beam holding off the leafblower beam
• The Hoff nosejob
• Playing "Simon" to rescue Randy

 

[bertram_tung]

It was fun, played for 23 hours. Died a few times in the beginning but it was too easy over all and I am not even that good at turn based rpgs.

Looking forward to DLC.

 

[Zombra]

Oh good. Another fucking QTE where the directions on screen have nothing to do with how to pass it. That gates the MQ.

Time to not bother trying for a few days and come back to it later. Maybe.

 

[Jvegi]

I'm still playing it. It's not bad, but I find it very hard to play it for longer then an hour. The gameplay is just not that fun, and I don't think humor is strong enough to compensate (it's not as good as watching an episode imho).

Anyway, I'm writing this because I've finally defeated Al Gore and I need to vent. It took me way more attempts then I'm comfortable admitting (definitely over 10). I was only level 7, and even though I understand this game has hp scaling, having better items and abilities would've made it much easier. I would have waited but his facebook spamming made it impossible.

The whole fight was composed of using speed,health, power and revive potions in constant rotation, with support from Jimmy. Failing to block more then 1 attack each round basically meant death, and attacks from all enemies were very unblockable. Lots of oneshotting Jimmy in this one.

It was almost unfair, but the motherfucker finally went down, without me having to lower the difficulty from hardcore. I really didn't expect such a challenge, and I doubt any other fight is going to come close in it's difficulty.

It was cool I guess...

 

[Zombra]

I had to try a couple times on Al Gore, but only because I was screwing around. There's a very simple strategy for beating him:

Spoiler

Jimmy's sleep spell can keep the Secret Service out of the fight for as long as you want. Gore by himself is pretty weak.

 

[pakoito]

If you aren't stacking bleeding with chakram, darts or batarang you're playing the game wrong. Secret service and everyone mook in the game can be one/twoshot with that.

 

[Decado]

Yeah, the game is selling very well. It has great metacritic scores, so I am not surprised.

if anything, meta critic follows sales, not the other way around

I've studied this. There is no good model yet for determining the relationship between game sales and review scores, at least not like we have for films. For example, we know that in film that when it comes to user reviews, actual scores are irrelevant, it is the volume of reviews that correlates with high sales. We are not quite sure how it works in games yet. The confounding factor is how gamers view critics, because the internet has basically created an entirely new reviewing apparatus since regular people (who are not professional critics) can go online and give their opinion of a game.

In my opinion, and knowing what we know about how review scores work for video games, Obsidian or any other company should stay away from tying bonuses to Metacritic scores. They're just not that predictive.