South Park has been part of my life for many years & I still enjoy watching it now. I first read about the show just before it was due to air and I remember thinking it sounded very different to anything else I had seen before. It was a Friday when the first episode aired on Channel 4 & I couldn't wait to watch it. I sat on my bed waiting for it to start and then proceed to spend the next twenty minutes laughing hysterically, I loved it, the next Friday could not come soon enough. Over the years many games have been released using the South Park name but until now only two had the creators Matt Stone & Trey Parker's approval. In 2014 The Stick of Truth was released & I really enjoyed it, I even played it again just after I finished it. Naturally enough, I was excited when I heard about The Fractured But Whole and couldn't wait to play it.
In case you didn't know I have a sweet tooth, one sweet I really enjoyed growing up were called Frosties. They used to cost 10p for a roll, they are cola flavoured hard candy, great for rotting your teeth so of course I liked them. A couple of years back I tried them again, they looked similar and the pricing had increased but not by a lot. They were okay but not what I remember, they were not as cola tasting and even though I ate them all during the same day they got really sticky and hard to take out the wrapper. It's lucky I don't have fillings as I ended up eating quite a few bits of tin foil. Playing The Fractured But Whole I found myself asking, was this something that was better left in the past and remembered fondly or could it be just as good as I remembered?
Story
Once again you play as the New Kid and are thrust into a group of vigilante heroes called Coon and Friends. They are trying to create a franchise including movies and Netflix series, quickly arguments breakout regarding who should get what and when. Friends become divided and Civil War erupts, two sides are created but who will win in the battle of Coon and Friends versus Freedom Pals?
The main story seemed longer than Stick of Truth but I did not feel it was as entertaining and certain parts of the plot became perhaps a little convoluted especially closer to the end. There were fewer side quests which was disappointing, I think as normal Ubisoft wanted to hold back some content for the DLC to squeeze a little more out of it's customers. Sometimes more is less but other times less is less, in all honesty for me there were only a few standout quests. While there were definitely plenty of gags I just felt the story content was no where near as good as Stick of Truth.
Visuals
If you have ever watched South Park you will be familiar with the animation style, while it may not be cutting edge visually speaking I feel it works perfectly. It helped seamlessly blend the series with game and makes it feel like you are part of one of the episodes which I really liked. That were however some standout sections including:
Professor Chaos's base, tons of tin foil, big screen TV's, Halloween decorations and hamsters
Path to Heaven, a pretty rainbow farting flying unicorn and a gay fish with a gold chain
Tool-shed's entrance, he slides down using a measuring tape which looks really badass
Plantmancer Ultimate move, hmmm, watch it on YouTube I don't want spoil it for you
Music
The musical score has a distinctly epic sound and reminded me of the music from many comic book movies. There are times when the score diverges most notably in the Peppermint Hippo strip club which goes for a more urban rap sound. The composer for the score is Jamie Dunlop who has done a lot of the music for the South Park TV Series. Outside of this he has contributed to many TV series, movies & games, some of his work includes; Stick Of Truth, Cabin in the Woods, Sixth Sense, Supernatural, Law and Order, Breaking Bad, How I Met Your Mother, Lost, The Wire, Friends, ER and Person of Interest.
While it is not a bad soundtrack it is far from being outstanding and I just felt it was too similar to others I had heard. It runs at just under three hours, I felt there was a lot of filler and some pieces were very repetitive. There were some pieces I quite enjoyed including; 'Main Menu', 'Morgan Freeman Boss Battle', 'V.I.P. Brawl', 'The Broflovskis (Kyle's Mom Fight)', 'Character Sheet', 'Drug Dealer Kingpin' and 'Mecha Minion Chaos Battle'.
Gameplay
On my journey I fought many different enemies including; many assed cats, city ninjas, raisin girls and rednecks. While they only appeared once my favorite enemies were the molesting priests, not only because they were both creepy and funny but also because one of the special moves was one of them pulling anal beads from their ass & running at you with them. Things like this reminded me of why the show is so funny and why I enjoy it so much even now. There were some really stand out characters in the game, most notably:
Randy, a man who when he is drunk will fight anyone especially if thinks you have his keys
Captain Diabetes, with the power of diabetes which give him monstrous strength
Tool-shed, I think his outfit looks the best and his sandblasting ability comes in really handy
Professor Chaos, a great villain with funny minions and an impressive ultimate ability
An interesting and very South Parkesque thing is the difficulty level, very easy has you as a white kid and very hard puts you as black one. This is something that can be changed at anytime throughout, I kept it at normal difficulty. There are multiple classes in the game similar to other RPGs; Elementalist, Gadgeteer, Cyborg, Psychic, Assassin, Plantmancer, Blaster, Brutalist and Martial Artist. There is a lot of choice but fear not you can pick more than one class. Similar to the Stick of Truth you have summons that can call on powerful allies to help you during battle, my two favorites were:
Macaroni Picture, that calls Moses to heal up your party
Cheesing Vial, Gerald flies in and drops multiples bombs on the enemies below
The combat itself I felt was not as good as the Stick of Truth, characters can easily get in the way of each other and multiple times I found it hard to see what was going on as objects blocked my field of vision.
When you are not in combat there are plenty of areas to explore and puzzles to solve, some of these will require your buddies to help you. There is no jump button in the game but sometimes you will need to get up higher areas using fartkour like parkour but with farts. Early on red bricks will appear that are lava these can only be cleared by using a sandblaster shoved in your ass and the power of your farts. There are handy apps to track your progress, show character information and of course there is Coonstagram. Basically it's Instagram, as a whole there is no real benefit to getting followers and is just a collectible of sorts. There are mini games, the first one you get to play in the first five minutes. Through a slightly annoying set of button sequences you get to poop, initially it was mildly funny but later it just felt over used. Once of the better mini games was controlling a flying unicorn to help get a frog into Heaven through the power of rainbow farts.
I touched on it earlier in the review but as a whole there were not a lot of really good quests, which is where it falls down by comparison of the Stick Of Truth. There were however a few good ones that stood out:
Medicinal Fried Chicken, this requires you to get weed for Classi to get information from her
Shady Acres, this one has you battling old people which was tough, nasty and funny
Craig and Tweak love story, easily my favorite mission as you need to find a way to get the two back together again
Overall the gameplay wasn't bad but it felt more like things went backwards instead of forwards which was disappointing. I did like the new buddy abilities but the combat did not feel as enjoyable or as good as the Stick of Truth.
Final Thoughts
After almost twenty hours of playing what how did I feel? Honestly underwhelmed, the story and combat was not as good as the Stick of Truth. The visuals stayed the same with a few good exceptions and the music was okay. While I know I will likely play Stick of Truth again I can't imagine saying the same with The Fractured But Whole. I can only give this one I can only give 3 out of 5
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