South Park (video game)

South Park, originally titled South Park: Deeply Impacted during development, is a First-person shooter video game based on the first few seasons of South Park. The game is powered by the Turok 2 game engine and was released in 1998 by Acclaim for the PC, Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation. A Game Boy Color version was in development, but was canceled soon after.

The Brazilian version of the N64 was published by Gradiente which also translated the game into Portuguese. As of January 13, 1999, Acclaim announced a sequel of South Park for release of 2000 on N64 though no further info was put which shows that the plan was scrapped.

Plot
A malevolent green comet of combined evil blasts across the universe towards Earth and flies through the town of South Park, the comet causes several major occurrences to befall the town and it is up to The Boys to destroy the evil created from it, their first problem is wild rampaging turkeys.

Operation: Turkey Butt
Mutant Turkeys have returned and are now invading South Park, the boys must head through a Renaissance Fair until they reach Chef's Love Shack. Chef then tells them of Tank Turkeys and how they birth more Mutant Turkeys, he then tells them to head through the tunnels and up the mountain until they reach his other love shack where Chef tells them of their sinister nest made throughout the complex tunnels of the Volcano after it exploded. The Boys scale the nest and discover the Mother Turkey, after distressing it to leave the boys follow and destroy the mother turkey before it can reach town, they then return home and eat Thanksgiving dinner outside the school.

A Clone Of Your Own
Chef informs the boys of a mysterious green glow near the Warehouse Docks and asks them to investigate, they then discover that Big-headed mutants have been the source of the glow and that there are several clones of residents from the town, the boys then find Chef outside the small warehouse and discuss the problem, the boys then resolve to destroy the clones in the warehouses, after destroying the clones, they reach the last warehouse and see the clones have been falling down from the second floor of the warehouse, they then discover a strange machine and destroy it. Chef then informs the boys the next day that the true source of the clones has been coming from an art museum in town, the boys then fight their way and discover the grotesque Mother Clone, they then destroy it and rejoice at the dead clone monster.

Close Encounters Of A Bovine Kind
The Aliens have returned to South Park and are now wrecking havoc, the boys travel the open fields and discover that aggressive cows and flying spaceships are all over the mountains, then then destroy them and head back to South Park. The boys talk to Chef and must head out to the distant Craterville, where alien activity is highly prominent, the boys head there and discover the ville is overrun with aliens, they then find the mothership and must take down several aliens until they find the key. They then traverse the inner mothership and defeat several stronger aliens along the way, they then discover the violent electrical core and destroy it.

Something Wicked This Way Clunks
Robotic Televisions have begun appearing in South Park and Chef informs the boys that the Seismic Center have been picking up several disturbing signals, the boys head to the center and discover several telebots destroying it. The boys traverse several rocky grounds to get to Ned & Jimbo's Militia Camp, which has been overrun by the telebots, then then discover Ned & Jimbo have been captured and imprisoned in a cliffside robot factory, they navigate the treacherous halls of the factory and come into a boss battle with the head robot (powered by Mr. Hat) they destroy the robots and rescue Ned & Jimbo, who are thankful for it, the head of a robot falls on Kenny and squishes him.

Some Disassembly Required
The comet's visit to South Park is coming to an end tonight, but Chef tells the boys that there is one last problem, Killer Toys are on the loose and rampaging the streets, the boys then fight their way down to the Toy Store Parking Lot, where more toys are slowly bred by Jack-in-the-boxes, then then destroy the Toy Tanks and enter the Toy Store where several toys are lurking through it's shelves, the boys destroy the Tanks guarding the doors to the next rooms. They then come face to face with the final boss: The Ultra Mega Man, the boys put up a valiant effort and destroy the amazing toy boss.

Epilogue
Cartman is playing with his toys celebrating himself being so heroic and then tells Mr. Kitty to go away fro being a dildo, Chef then congratulates the boys on defeating the evil that plagued the town, a safe then falls out of nowhere and squishes Kenny, Chef then exclaims "Oh my god! They killed Kenny!", Stan and Kyle begin discuss who exactly "They" are...

The Credits then roll, with South Park versions of the Cast & Crew appearing as a backdrop.

Gameplay
South Park is a first person shooter. The games single player mode places the player in control of one of four characters: (Cartman, Kyle, Stan or Kenny). The player must defeat a variety of enemies using the various weapons found throughout each stage. The player has a total of 100 health, whenever they are attacked by an enemy then lose some health, losing all health causes a Game Over and a high score screen to appear if the player has many points, the player can gain health by finding Cheesy Poofs boxes littered around the stages, there are also Snacky Cakes boxes which fully restore health but are rare to find, there are also Beef Cake cans which grant invisibility, finally, there is armor in the form of football pads, which protect the player and instead deduct armor points instead of health points.

Spread around the levels of story mode are innocent creatures, killing an innocent creature costs the player a hefty amount of points, in one instance, Officer Barbrady can be found in the Toy Store parking lot and is killable.

Multiplayer Mode
A Multiplayer mode is made available for the player and other friends to play, access to Multplayer cannot be granted unless there are 2 controllers connected to the console, for the PC version, Multiplayer was changed to be online.

The players have a choice of several characters from South Park, The boys will always be default to the selection, to unlock more characters the player must play through the entire Story Mode to discover codes which unlock the characters. There are several stages to choose from, some basic while others are high priority death traps, there also also choices of Gamestyles to choose.

Additionally, some weapons found in the Story Mode can be successfully used only in Multiplayer whereas it was useless in Story Mode, these include: Cow Launcher (A successful hit K.Os the player with a hilarious shot of the Cow's anus), Warpo Ray's 3rd function (Causes the player to turn into an animal) and the Alien Dancing Gizmo (Causes the player to act out the song Cartman sang in the original episode of the show).

Reception
Upon release, South Park was received poorly by critics. GameRankings has only 41.22% as the average score for the PlayStation version. The PC version was only given the average score 51.72%. GameSpot gave the PlayStation version a 1.4, stating that "South Park is definitely one of those games that is bound to come up when you start thinking about the worst game you've ever played." IGN called the PlayStation version "frustrating" due to poor graphics, repetition of the voice acting, and lack of play value for the head-to-head mode. GameSpot stated in the PC version that "A good license and good graphics aren't enough". The voice acting, done by the original voice actors, was criticized for being repetitive, isolated, and old. The weapons of the game were also criticized for being unprofessional.

Despite the negative reception from both versions, the Nintendo 64 version was praised for its 3D graphics and nice storyline, with IGN calling the game "just as funny as the Comedy Central series". GameSpot stated in the Nintendo 64 version that the level design "it's really not very good on its own, but given the license, it at least makes sense".

On the DVD commentary for the episode "Starvin' Marvin", Trey Parker called it the "crappiest video game", mostly because of the first level where you repetitively shoot hordes of turkeys. Like most of the South Park merchandise released at the time, Parker also mentions that he was "bummed out" about it. Because of this, Trey and Matt haven't agreed to do many videos games since.