Time for another lazy South Park cash in…right? Don’t bet on it.
Demo/Buy: Xbox Live Marketplace
Developer: DoubleSix
South Park is known for many things. Cutting social commentary, brutal gross-outs, politically incorrect gaffs and balls-out hilarity are all hallmarks of Parker and Stone’s 12 year masterpiece. Unfortunately, so are godawful video game cash-ins.
The formula is simple: take a genre that has absolutely nothing to do with the series, hand it to an incompetent dev team, add a couple of lines of original dialog and release in time for Christmas. South Park has spawned Kart games, shooters, and hateful little minigame collections…and now it’s time for DoubleSix studios to have a crack at a licensed tower defense title. They’re a fairly inexperienced new company- but that means they’ve got everything to prove. So, has the impossible finally happened? Has South Park finally received a decent game worthy of its dozen year legacy?
Well, yeah. Pretty much.
Die Hippie, Die!
Tower defense, in my opinion, is one of the laziest game genres out there. Developers can get away with creating poor AI, basic backgrounds and let the players actually do most of the level design for them. SP Tower Defense Play upholds the basic laws of the genre, instructing you to build a standard selection of towers (which either deal direct damage or slow the enemies down) as well as impenetrable walls to create mazes and funnel enemies into choke points… but breaks with tradition by allowing you to directly control four familiar South Park characters. Each character can throw damaging snowballs (as well as being able to place towers and walls)- and the addition of simple shmup mechanics into the tired tower defense formula makes for a much more intimate and frantic experience. Unique special abilities and stats make choosing the right characters an absolute must, though its a shame that free character selection isn’t available until completing the campaign. Having said that, constantly switching between characters in singleplayer soon becomes confusing and somewhat annoying in the later levels- trust me, you’re better off hitting up a mate or two to fill out the roster.
You'll meet most of South Park's enormous list of villains during the campaign. Remember, Ginger Kids have no soul... even in the game!
The gameplay is simple but very solid, with a perfect difficulty curve that gently introduces the intricacies of maze building and snowball throwing before swamping the player with enemies. However, its position in the middle ground between action and strategy is a double-edged sword: there’s no real depth to either mechanic. Casual gamers will lap it up, but hardcore tower defense or shoot-em-up veterans will quickly find themselves being patronised by the lack of options. On the flipside, this may well be a pivotal gateway game that convinces first-time tower defense players to get into the genre.
In terms of presentation, Tower Defense Play is perfectly functional. The sprites are fairly detailed and hold up under scrutiny, but enemy animations are very jerky and consist of only a few frames. Luckily this mirrors the trademark look of the show itself, so it’s not a dealbreaker by any means. Sound design is also fairly good; featuring original voice acting by Parker and Stone as well as an enjoyable musical score. The South Park license is used to great effect with genuinely hilarious animated level introductions and in-game voice acting, as well as a number of well-loved locations and unlockable video clips from the series. Fans will be delighted by the huge number of references to classic episodes!
Tower Defense Play has one major flaw: its length. The campaign only consists of ten levels, and a meagre five challenge maps only provide a few minutes of bonus value. The unlockable videos, medals and trivia give fans a good reason to put in some extra time, but most players will be done and dusted in a handful of hours. A few randomly generated skirmish or endurance levels would have been easy to design and made all the difference.
It’s not big and it’s certainly not clever, but Tower Defense Play is a fun, accessible and frequently hilarious little game that’s well worth checking out. Doublesix have succeeded in creating a genuinely competent licensed South Park title that will appeal to casual gamers as well as hardcore South Park fans. Sure, it’s short; but you could do a lot worse for 800 points.
CGI Rating:
It defo needs to be played multiplayer styley. Organising four characters all at once gets very confusing indeed.
Checked it out at a mate’s….dunno if it’s worth the price though tbh. I reckon there are better things to spend 800 MP on……Commander’s Challenge for one.