Andrew managed to get a sneak peek at Ubisoft’s E3 2016 hands-off demo of the upcoming South Park: The Fractured But Whole; check out his impressions below!
It’s immediately noticeable that Ubisoft have retained the paper cut-out visual style of the series that worked so effectively in The Stick of Truth, once again giving fans the impression of playing through an extended episode of their favourite show.
The demo begins with your character from The Stick of Truth, dubbed King Douchebag, at Cartman’s house. Your first quest is to try and gain access to Cartman’s basement to participate in the kids’ latest obsession, playing as the superheroes from the “Coon” episodes of the series. In order to bypass the keypad lock preventing you from entering the basement, the numbers replaced by crude words such as Pee, Poop, F**k and Donkey, you must locate the password, which Cartman’s Mum informs you is probably hidden somewhere within the house.
During the search, you’re treated to one of the game’s new gameplay mechanics, controlling your character’s bowel movements by using the left and right thumbsticks whilst using Cartman’s toilet; whilst a tad puerile, did you honestly expect anything less from the minds of Trey Parker and Matt Stone? With the contents of your colon successfully evacuated, your character then recommences his search throughout Cartman’s house, finding items to add to your inventory for use with the new crafting system, including typical South Park items such as sensual lube and a sex harness from Cartman’s Mum’s room.
You then stumble upon the basement code stashed away in Cartman’s room, aptly just a simple ‘F**k You Mum”, and gain access only to discover that the group has split into two factions after a dispute over how their proposed universe of shared films and television shows should unfold.
After almost destroying the world, you persuade the kids to join and are given access to three out of the total twelve character classes available throughout the game; you’re also able to customise your class by mixing and matching abilities.
You’re then treated to a glimpse of your origin story and take part in the new and improved combat system, with a major change being that battles now take place on a turn-based grid system where your positioning is key to obtaining victory; you can attack two places ahead of you and finish with a move that strikes a single space in front of you, showcasing the importance of positioning and how you can use different attacks to lay strikes on separate enemies.
The combat system appears to rely more upon strategy than in the previous installment where you could feasibly spam your attacks and still come out on top; the demo also showed The Human Kite using a special attack where he launches into the sky and razes his foes with a humongous laser.
The demo ends after showing a bit more of the combat and, overall, first impressions are positive, with South Park: The Fractured But Whole looking to build upon The Stick of Truth’s gameplay mechanics whilst also maintaining the level of quality of the writing, which is surely the most important element for fans of the television series.
