The potty-mouthed boys are back with a new adventure in South Park: Snow Day!, but is this a snow day to remember, or a yellow snow cone you’ll want to forget?
It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything to do with South Park. I missed out on the two previous RPGs, Stick of Truth and Broken But Whole, and I’ve not watched the TV show since I was in secondary school, so going into South Park Snow Day, I didn’t know what to expect. I was happily surprised to find South Park: Snow Day! is a fun game to play, though, for me, the highlight was the game’s comedy rather than its gameplay.
South Park: Snow Day! Video Review
Game Information
Release Date:Â March 26, 2024
Developer:Â Question LLC
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Availability:Â PS5 (PSN, Retail) Xbox Series X|S (Xbox Store, Retail) Nintendo Switch (eShop, Retail)
South Park: Snow Day! is an action-adventure game designed to be played as a group, though you can play solo if you want, and the game spawns in AI players as and when they’re needed. This is how I played South Park: Snow Day! for most of my time with the game, and I can say that if you’re a solo player, it’s perfectly serviceable.
The game’s opening sets the tone with a short intro movie setting up the game’s events. Cartman doesn’t want to go to school, and with an apocalyptical snowstorm hitting the town, the potty-mouthed chubby boy is hoping for a snow day. He gets his wish as the town is covered in a mega dumping of the white stuff and an epic snow day ensues.
Cartman grabs his gear, heads outside, and then the game shifts from the familiar 2D animation into a lovely 3D scene. I know a lot of South Park’s enduring charm comes from its distinctive animation style, but the shift into 3D for this game isn’t a terrible thing and there’s no mistaking it’s still South Park.
One particular line from Cartman, berating me for letting a “Gaylord with metal sticks” beat me up, had me howling
The story goes that you’re the unnamed New Kid, and you’re joining Cartman, Kyle, Stan, Kenny, and other familiar characters in the neighborhood Snow Day war game. It’s the stuff of childhood memory. I remember being a kid and having school canceled due to snow. The adults were all “Stay inside, it’s dangerous out there!” while we kids didn’t see any danger, we saw an opportunity. Snowball fights in the park. High-speed chases down the mountain on improvised sleds. The chance to write our names in the snow with our… well, you know.
South Park: Snow Day! taps into that childhood sense of imagination but on a much grander scale. You’ll tackle the neighbor kids with swords, bows and arrows, magic wands, and so on. Actually, “so on” implies there’s much more, but the reality is that there are only a handful of melee and ranged weapons, which seems rather low for this kind of game. When it comes to special abilities, however, there’s much more to play around with.
The game is broken up into five campaign chapters, each one having five sections. The idea is that before each campaign, you and your foes will come to the stump table and choose your special abilities for the run, which includes picking a Bullshit card. This is your B.S powerup that could either be laser beams from your eyes, hellfire raining down from above, a group of minions joining you in battle for a short time, and so on.
Your enemies also get these B.S cards, and when they’re activated during battle, the game takes a short break to shout Bullshit and then shows you what the enemy buff will be. It got a laugh out of me the first time, and it got a laugh out of me on the 20th time. What can I say, I’m a potty-mouthed child at heart.
Once the cards have been dealt it’s time to start the run and make your way through the sections until you reach the end boss of that campaign. The run of play is, for the most part, straightforward. You move forward, get ambushed by enemies, take them out, gather their dropped loot, maybe have a quick exploration of the area to get some valuable goodies, and then carry on. Some sections mix it up with some very light puzzle gameplay, like lighting fires, hunting down a cannonball to break ice blocking the path, or simply go here, find this item, bring it back, and continuing. And it’s fine, again, for the most part. Being that it’s a multiplayer-centric game, I can see why the focus is on feeding the player with a constant stream of enemies to fight and not slow-paced, cinematic, thought-provoking, intellectual gameplay. That just wouldn’t be the South Park way, after all.
My problem though, is that while the majority of the game is combat-focused, the combat doesn’t feel quite right. It’s lacking the impactful feedback that tells the player they’ve landed a blow. I think this is in part down to the audio. I noticed that with the sword and shield and daggers, I got very little audio feedback from striking little kids with my weapons, and the vibration on the controller was minimal, and you can completely forget about any haptic support for the DualSense. It did get a little better once I got my hands on the two-handed axe, which actually had some clunk and clink when I twatted pre-schoolers around, though this weapon comes more or less towards the end of the game, so too little too late.
Despite my annoyances with the combat – some sections of the game truly dragged with a seemingly endless supply of annoying little kids – I still had a good laugh with South Park: Snow Day! due to its childish humor. The writing is spot-on, as expected as the show’s creators were heavily involved. I can’t remember the last time I laughed out loud so much while playing a game. One particular line from Cartman, berating me for letting a “Gaylord with metal sticks” beat me up had me howling. It’s the exact kind of stuff a foul-mouthed eight-year-old would say, and for me, kids swearing, whether fictional or real life (my kid Charlie has extensive knowledge of the four-letter words… all of them) is one of the funniest things in the world. That and kids fighting, and South Park gives me plenty of both, so consider me satisfied.
And satisfied I was once the end credits rolled around. Satisfied, but not particularly hungry for more. See, South Park: Snow Day! is designed to be replayed over and over. During your first playthrough, you’ll unlock some extra perks, like dealing more damage in combat, starting runs with extra health, etc. But there’s no way you’ll unlock them all on your first go. You’ll need to repeat the campaigns, again and again, to unlock everything, from perks to cosmetics, and obviously, that means going through the same battles again and again, except each time you’ll be a little stronger.
For some, that loop of gaining incremental improvements and doing it again may be enough, but it’s not for me. As I said, while I had fun playing the game, the highlight for me was the excellent writing and the delivery of the game’s strong script. Repeating it would dilute the humor and sour my memory of the game. Imagine watching your favorite stand-up comedian doing the same show three times a week. The first time is a good laugh, the second is still a little fun but you already know the punchlines, and the third time onwards, it’s just not funny.
For myself, South Park: Snow Day! is a one-and-done deal. I had my fun, I got reacquainted with some characters I’d left behind more than a decade ago, and now the reunion is over. Well, unless there’s an after-party in the form of expansive DLC, in which case I’ll get my snow boots on and venture out with the lads for some yellow snow adventures.
All said South Park: Snow Day! is a fun but flawed game. There’s plenty to collect and unlock if that’s what you appreciate, and the run time is fair enough and offers reasons to go through it all again. The writing is excellent and it’s genuinely one of the funniest games you’ll play, providing you’ve got a taste for toilet water comedy. The general look and feel of the game are to be commended, too; on PS5, where I played, the game barely dropped a frame and I can’t remember a single bug or glitch along the way. The problem is in its combat, which is core to the gameplay. It’s functional, but lacking, and with every muted strike, I was distracted from the kids kicking the shit out of each other. That’s the biggest sin in my book.
Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.
Primary version tested: PS5
South Park: Snow Day!
Summary - Very Good
South Park: Snow Day! is a fun romp through a snowy winterland full of childhood imagination, but with more swearing and physical assault. It’s hilariously written and brings what South Park fans expect to the war table, though its combat is a little lackluster, and with a repetitive and short overall campaign, this one may have shorter legs than its vulgar heroes.
