I actually grew up with two of these South Park games. Eventually later in life, I got to play the last one at a friend's house years ago. As many of you know Acclaim would have a lot of games on as many platforms as possible. They essentially were like Konami years before how they are now. By the way, they also owned LJN a company The Angry Video Game Nerd loves (Sarcasm).
Acclaim really wanted the money, they made eleven games based on The Simpsons. I been around a handful of those myself. Even the worst among them isn't this bad. We are talking some of the worst license games of it's era. Each South Park is vastly different. All developed by different companies with Acclaim published em.
1998-2000 are the late childhood years for me. At the time, I was heavily into Celebrity Deathmatch. South Park show still going with shorter seasons. Both Matt Stone & Trey Parker, the two guys that created South Park had limited involvement with these games. In fact, due to how bad they are they became more directly involved with South Park games.
I know it seems like I'm stalling. I just gotta to mention before we even start talking about em. South Park is widely playing off people's stupidity as well as overreactions in general. Of course, it should bag the question how do you turn such a show into video games? Obviously not like these three bad South Park games.
South Park
I know that's simple right just call it South Park. South Park took several episodes to make a FPS game out of em. But wait it gets weirder, they had the main Turok team making it. If you played Turok trilogy on Nintendo 64, they made the original N64 version of this. There was a later PS1 port that's notably worst than this.
You can play as Kenny, Kyle, Stan and Cartman. I'll mostly focus on the single player campaign. I do wanna say the multiplayer can be fun at times. You fight a weird variety of enemies mostly pulled from the show. How they attempted to tie in everything doesn't make sense. I would love to see someone try to though.
You know one of those universal events that takes a long time to happen. Yes this game heavily plays off that as an excuse why all of this happening. You get a weird arsenal that almost fits the theme of the show. Not quite an FPS style arsenal though. This is an 3D FPS game sorta takes away from the look of the show to a degree.
South Park does have a password system. The big cheat code is a long one. Personally I prefer saving my process than writing down passwords. They got the cast from the show, I can't argue there. This has more voice acting than their entire Simpsons games lineup completed. N64 isn't known for many games having voice overs either.
The way they designed everything just doesn't quite works. You rather have more of a mix of thing from the show happening at all than one at a time. Eventually this surprisingly became a more RPG based franchise. They had to start somewhere video games wise. FPS were quite popular in the late 90s. The accuracy of some weapons is notably off with parts of the controls.
Considering the Turok team made this. You would've expected both of those to be way better. South Park is somewhat like the show with the censoring. Just imagine if they were an uncensored version. Now people would play that than the official release version. At it's core, this game doesn't quite feel like South Park at all.
It kinda felt more like a poor man's Turok game. Even Turok: Evolution had things over this game. I can't believe a lot of people requesting it to Nightdive Studios to get remastered. Well I guess anything is possible. South Park simply falls as a FPS game. There's plenty better FPS games around this era you rather be playing than this!!!
I had the Nintendo 64 version which might actually be the best version. If this wasn't great on N64, just imagine how much worst the PS1 port is? I felt I kinda gotten lucky not having that version. I felt the most fun is either cheating single player or play some multiplayer matches. You always have the option to go play something else too, the option I recommend most.
South Park: Chef's Luv Shack
I played the N64 version at a friend's house. Just going by presentation, this came the closest to the show. I felt in that regard, the game deserves some respect for that. They went from the popular FPS genre to a more game show style game. Well it's heavily about playing a lot of mini games. I'm not calling it an Mario Party clone.
It's common knowledge there isn't many decent game show video games. This is a rather confusing mess of a game with the questions. Either you get surprisingly easy questions to some expected South Park humor to difficult questions. The difficult questions aren't South Park like either. It isn't even Jeopardy! level difficulty questions.
It's just hard to answer questions you really didn't expect to show up in this. I had more fun with the first two You Don't Know Jack PC games. Which you still can buy through Steam with other related entries. Basically it falls hard for a game show style game. A lot of the mini games are cheap knock off of other video games.
Of course, they were altered to better fit the South Park theme. At the same time, I felt they could've given us fewer mini games with more original designs. You can play as the main four kids from the show. You can play up to four people on the N64 version. Surprisingly you actually can play completely by yourself to inevitably win.
Even if you score negative points max which is mind blowing. Why would they even allow that? We could've been given the option to face bots. Sadly that isn't an option either. Which is in most game show video games. I felt humor wise this came the closest to the show. The difficulty as a whole simply isn't balanced at all.
We could argue this could be more fun than Sonic Shuffle on Sega Dreamcast. Despite a few things that has over this South Park game. We also could argue it's kinda interesting they chosen this genre for an South Park game. Honestly, a newer South Park game could easily do the same concept way better. This was on slightly more platforms than the first South Park game.
I actually don't know which version considered the best. I will say if you love Chef, there's more of him here. This is one of those games doing drugs then playing it more fun than doing it sober. I personally don't drink liquor or similar drinks for many reasons. South Park: Chef's Luv Shack simply at it's core really doesn't work.
South Park Rally
The same company responsible for two Austin Powers games on Game Boy Color made this. They are famous for altering other video games to virtually resell em. Basically let's take KISS Pinball as an example. They with a few companies involved changed it into Austin Powers Pinball. I know some of you are wondering why am I even talking about this right?
It's quite, South Park Rally virtually a Mario Kart clone. Even today more of them are showing up. Majority of them are license racing games, this was among the first of those. I grew up with the PS1 version myself. Imagine everything you loved about Mario Kart. Now how to ruin all of it you got this game in a nut shell.
The awesome, rememberable music replayed with some terrible songs as well as annoying sound effects. The power ups are very on brand with South Park. But man they are all flat out terrible to use. Again I would recommend sticking to the multiplayer if you want any real fun with it. There's a lot of South Park characters to play as.
Including a lot of hidden characters. Let's just be honest, the characters all play similarly. Therefore, do we even need all of these characters if they all play the same? There is a single player campaign that's not fun. It's more repetitive with some questionable stuff thrown in. They tried to be creative with the concept, it wasn't at all.
Like you have to race around the track going through every check point. But how it's set up causes chaos. They are not only placed at particular locations. You have to go through em in numbered order too. This means you can't win the race unless you're in first place while going through the check points. The AI opponents can be rather cruel at times.
There's not many tracks either, I felt Mario Kart 64 as well as Diddy Kong Racing had more tracks. Those were way better than this!!! Even the title isn't what I would used for this game. They should've gotten with Let's Race South Park Style Ya!!! Obviously, Acclaim was rushing out games. This is a confusing mess of a racing game.
South Park Rally might come the closest in the sound effects. Simply having more characters, you kinda expect this be to not as bad as the other South Park games right? To me, it's the worst of the Unholy South Park Trinity. I could argue first South Park's multiplayer way better than this. I also could argue there's slightly more fun in South Park: Chef's Luv Shack too.
Again the difficulty simply isn't balanced at all. Trying to figure how to go about doing some objectives is confusing. More than that, prepare yourself for head aches playing this. Thankfully there are cheat codes for this. Also thank god they aren't done through a password system. You virtually do a handful of the same stuff in the campaign, there isn't much variety.
Let me rephase that, the variety itself rather lacking. It barely an South Park game even with recreating the famous South Park intro with the theme of this game. Then again the first South Park game also done that minus the racing. All of a sudden this South Park game has really nothing worth noting. I felt South Park Rally screams being a cheap Mario Kart clone.
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