Game Details

Title: South Park: Lets Go Tower Defense Play
Cost: 800 MS Points
Developer: Doublesix
Publisher: XBLA
Website: Xbox.com Page
Game Type: Tower Defense
Multi-player: Local and Online 4 player Co-op
Length: Short – 5 hours campaign

My Impressions

I have to confess to rather liking the South Park TV series, despite it often being offensive, blasphemous and crude and there are a few episodes that I just cant watch all the way through because of these aspects. There are times however when the show is hilarious and after a few minutes of playing the game, its clear that the creators of the TV series have had a big hand in the game, when the first group of enemies are revealed to be the Ginger Kids, and as watchers of South Park know, according to Cartman Ginger Kids have no souls!

This game actually needs to be looked at in two ways, firstly how does it stack up as a game based on South Park, and secondly how does it rank as a Tower Defense Game. Taking the South Park aspect first, I found the game to be virtually flawless with Cartman in the role of the chief protagonist and all the comments from the characters in the game and cutscenes were consistent with the TV show. As you progress through the game you get to unlock additional characters and video clips from the show and if you are a fan of South Park there is a lot to keep you keep coming back.

Unfortunately in terms of being a Tower Defense Game, the experience is merely average. If we ignore the quality of the graphics which are relatively primitive as they are done in the South Park style, there is a slight issue in that in some levels you have to build white walls on white snow and depending on the contrast on your TV/Monitor this can cause it to be difficult to see, this is made worse by their being no in game brightness/contrast controls.

A second flaw with the gameplay is that as a person who has not played that many Tower Defense Games, that I could have done with better guidance on how to play the game on early levels and that it was sometimes confusing where the enemies were going to come from or go to. I also wished that their had been some proper AI on your companion characters since they just act as movable towers and stay where you leave them when you are not controlling them. While this is in someways desirable, it would also be nice if they had limited autonomy so they would move out the way if in the path of enemies or go to areas of greatest need.

In terms of the difficulty of South Park, you are initially limited to 3 difficulty levels which should let everyone find a level which suits them. Once the game is complete Insanity difficulty is unlocked, which should prove a challenge to all but the most experienced Tower Defense Players. This is where the Online/Local Co-op comes into play as Insanity seems aimed at co-operative play.

A slight issue I have with the online co- op is that the host determines the party composition in terms of South Park characters used in a level, when I would have preferred to be able to choose for myself. I was also disappointed at the lack of co-op specific levels as the levels are shared between single player and co-op play.

Overall it is vertually faultless in its depiction of South Park and an enjoyable but flawed Tower Defense game and if you like either of these then it is worth buying. If not try the trial version first.

My Recommendation

Buy

While only an average Tower Defense Game, it makes up for this through the superb way it brings South Park to the Xbox 360.

Screenshots

Note: Clicking on Image Takes You To Picassa

South Park