I’m old, you guys. I remember sneaking downstairs with a friend each week during South Park‘s first season and trying to remain absolutely quiet for 30 minutes to sneakily watch an episode without my parents finding out and turning it off. It was risqué and introduced us to absurd scenario after scenario. Over time, South Park became tolerated – or I just grew up; hell, things like manbearpig and Mr Hankey, the Christmas Poo, are basically household names now.
The lesson here is that just because it’s funny and great to watch on television doesn’t mean it’ll translate well to a video game. Especially when things like the aforementioned manbearpig and Mr Hankey are just jammed in there for random laughs.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Welcome to our review of South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge.
Tenorman’s Revenge actually starts out great – a brilliant opening cutscene channels the show’s unique flavour and explains just what’s going on in the small town of South Park. Ginger Tenorman – Cartman’s nemesis – has stolen the hard drive from Cartman’s 360, and you and the other boys are going to get it back! Oh, and stop some space-time thing that’s also built into the story too, but it’s absurb and it’s South Park, so it works.
It all goes wrong as soon as you touch the controls. The game’s designed as a platformer, and it’s pretty obvious that it’s meant to be an old-school, heavily challenging one at that. The problem is, your character jumps like someone who’s never jumped before. The jump feels delayed from your button press, and you have this weird hover attached to the process that I couldn’t get the hang of, even after about five hours of gameplay.
By the way, I’m used to hovering whilst jumping. The Princess in Mario Bros 2? Yeah. My favourite character.
Anyways, you’re going to die. A lot. You’re going to mistime many jumps and end up in pee, or lava, or acid. You’re going to fall off platforms and plummet half-way down a level, only to have to climb back up again.
Combat-wise, you fight robot ginger minions, and whilst you can pick up weapons inside the different levels you play in, you’re really supposed to kill them by jumping on their heads. Twice. The problem is, you can’t do this with any skill or finesse; you basically just try to jump at an enemy and pray for the best. When you’ve got multiple enemies clustered in one area? Yeah, have fun with that. You’re probably going to bounce off one wrong, take a hit, and then repeat that twice more and die.
Each level has obstacles that can only be overcome with a particular superpower that belongs to one of the four South Park boys…which mean that if you’re playing alone – or, in anything less than a group of four – you’re going to be replaying levels over and over and over to get all the items you need for level progression and achievements. Heck, there’s an achievement where YOU have to finish the game as each of the boys…so you’re looking at a minimum of four playthroughs if you’re a completionist.
The problem with this game is that you’re going to be hard-pressed to finish just the one. It’s truly awful. The game isn’t challenging, it’s just frustrating. BADLY frustrating. This is a title you should avoid, even if you’re a South Park fan. Just go on YouTube and watch the intro and outro videos if you’re keen at all.
The South Park game from Obsidian sure has a lot to make up for.
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