South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! (Xbox 360)
When the South Park cartoon first started airing, it became infamous for its embrace of unapologetic offensive humor and it ended up beloved by many for it. However, the video game tie-ins released around its early days became infamous for being low quality instead, South Park’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone even outspoken in their distaste for them. As the series remained popular though, South Park would eventually find its way back to the world of video games and with more involvement from the show’s creators, but while the cartoon is known for crass humor and social commentary, it seems this foray back into gaming preferred to focus on the gameplay most of all. As it’s name implies, South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! is a tower defense game, the focus far more strategic than comedic because of it.
South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play!’s plot even barely tries to tell a story. In the small Colorado town of South Park, the four familiar grade schoolers Cartman, Kyle, Kenny, and Stan are roped into protecting the town from an attack. How this manifests is usually just the characters hearing that more forces of evil have appeared somewhere in South Park and then they run over there, defeat them, and usually get pointed elsewhere by a familiar character from the show. Some story cutscenes can be a bit funny despite being short and functional in design, one for example has the group encountering a boy they hate named Pip who is willing to tell them who is behind all the attacks early but they keep shouting him down since they don’t want to interact with him. The actual culprit behind the attacks is also an amusing twist, but otherwise a lot of what you’ll face are just out of context references to the show.
The enemies you’re up against will contain some reasonable foes you’d want to stop like Terrorists, some humans who have been depicted as evil in certain episodes like Ginger Kids or Hippies, and then there are some ridiculous and wonderfully weird enemies like Crab People and the strange yellow duck-billed humanoids called Jackovasaurs as well as ones that would seem inexplicable like classic Mongolian horseback riders. You unlock rather short video clips from the cartoon that usually show a bit of their presence in the show but not often too much explanation of who they are, but South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! is definitely meant to be a fan’s game first, especially since most of the enemy types aren’t all that different in terms of their gameplay function. South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! has you building a range of attack towers on patches of snow to help defend the town, each level having a health bar for South Park that will deplete when enemies get past your defenses. However, the enemies don’t really behave in different ways, most of them politely walking along the designated routes for your weapons to wear down. They will have towers they are uniquely weak to and might have more health than others, foes like the Mongolians on horseback will move faster than others, but even boss characters don’t bring much new to the affair save for the final boss that can at least destroy towers.
Level design can make up for enemies who look different but are rather homogeneous. Being able to only build on snow means levels can alter their layout to force you to make different strategic choices. Coins can be collected from fallen enemies and most towers in the game are fairly cheap, but that’s also because after the early levels you’ll soon have to invest in making mazes yourself to delay enemies. Stages will place snowless areas that mean you’ll need to consider where enemies can travel freely and where you can guide them into the dangers you’ve built, and a fair few levels also include level hazards you can use to your advantage like a junkyard crane that can occasionally smash foes or giant snowballs that periodically roll down dedicated lanes. A lot of the difficulty will come from ensuring what you build can handle the specific flow of enemy forces in that level and gradually expanding or upgrading your tools during the level is key to keeping up, although there are a few moments where things can go a bit awry. While building snow walls to guide enemies into danger is key to your success, if you block their path entirely they will break through. However, sometimes the game incorrectly deems the path blocked, leading what should be a successful layout suddenly being torn through. Even when every other enemy is going the right way, one could get confused and start tearing through, this outcome rare but incredibly disruptive should it occur.
The stage variety does keep things interesting as you can’t settle too much into one approach to organizing your kill mazes, but your tower options can feel a bit limited, especially if you don’t jump out of the story and play the challenges you unlock to earn the two extra towers. Lasers will work well on quick little foes that come in groups, but for the more durable ones you’ll likely rely on something like a Cherry Bomb tower that will ignite them so they can gradually take damage even when out of the tower’s range. While the six gradually unlocked default towers do their specific jobs, the more interesting element of your tower defense strategy will be how you position the four boys. South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! can actually be played with up to three other players, each boy able to pelt foes with snowballs or charge throws for heavier damage.
The kids are vital pieces to success, and while you can swap between the one you’re controlling, you can also position them so when they’re not in use, they’ll throw snowballs at any foes in range. Essentially mobile attack towers, this can get a bit hard to manage in single player when you have to keep moving the group up, but each kid also has a special power they can build up energy for that can help turn the tides. For example, if you’re getting overwhelmed, Kenny can activate his power to make coins burst out of all of foes, giving you a huge cash infusion so you can rapidly buy or upgrade towers. For something simpler, Cartman’s special will instead hit every enemy on screen for good damage, and over in the game’s five challenge maps, you can even play as other characters like Wendy and Jimmy who have unique powers as well. Finding the right time to unleash these skills or simply using them if your tactics come up short gives the tower defense play some more active engagement than fussing over tower placement, South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! able to keep you involved rather than passively observing the work of your kill mazes.
THE VERDICT: South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! doesn’t bring too much to the table when it comes to the series’s trademark humor and even the recognizable enemies from the show are all fairly similar when it comes to how they interact with the tower defense mechanics. However, the tower defense play isn’t totally lacking thanks to elements like building your snow mazes in a good variety of levels and having the four characters all be vital and active parts of repelling enemy forces. While more focus on unique towers and greater foe differentiation would make things more engaging, there is still a good focus on strategy since you’ll need the right towers and maze layouts to beat increasingly challenging stages.
And so, I give South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! for Xbox 360…
An OKAY rating. Not exactly a raucous return to the realm of video games for South Park, but not an outright failure either, South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! mostly wears the trappings of the comedy cartoon and at least can whip out a good gag or two along the way in its short and deliberately vague story. More personality would definitely help it stand out more, levels are often differentiated rather well and even include cameos from South Park citizens who help you out, but tower defense is already a genre where a good amount of time can be spent waiting and it feels like some of this time could have been spent with banter or sight gags. The actual strategic side of things is well designed to make the most of its small set of variables, and perhaps because difficulty and level skip options ensure more casual players can push on through regardless, there are some levels that demand you really plan out your snow mazes and place your towers well to clear them. Greater enemy diversity and more tower types to match would really be the next step in drawing more out of this, the game achieving the fundamentals of tower defense rather well and giving room for experimentation, and there is even the more active element of managing the snowball throwing and special powers that helps keeps things lively. At the same time, perhaps it too strongly pushes you towards cooperative play by making all four characters too vital in some situations and hard to manage if you don’t have a full group of players on hand, but a lot of ideas seem to be heading into the right direction and perhaps being an Xbox arcade release over a full-fledged title meant it couldn’t go too much further with its scope.
South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! still has the voice actors from the show, it reproduces the familiar paper cut-out art style flawlessly save for where it avoids it for comedic sake, and it definitely has plenty of recognizable elements from beloved episodes. It is definitely more faithful to the cartoon than the old games for the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation and yet it does feel more like a tower defense game with a South Park coat of paint rather than one that embodies its sense of humor. That’s certainly better than a game that fails on both sides though, so at least South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! feels like the kind of game Trey Parker and Matt Stone can more confidently stand by and say deserves to wear the branding of their crass cartoon hit.