South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge (Xbox 360)

In one of South Park’s most memorable episodes, the grade schooler Eric Cartman ends up shifting from an irritating and selfish child into one with a clear capacity for evil, and it all ties to a character named Scott Tenorman. Originally Scott Tenorman scams Eric, but when Cartman tries to trick Tenorman into giving him the money back, he only ends up losing more cash and in his efforts to embarrass Scott, he only has things turned back on him more as Cartman ends up humiliated in front of all his friends. In a rather extreme escalation, Cartman finally gets his revenge by arranging for Scott’s parents to get killed and baked into some chili that Scott eats, Cartman even adding the extra cruel cherry on top of having Tenorman’s favorite band Radiohead watch him weep at the realization and chide him for being a baby. So, when a fan of the show learns that the platform game South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge sees Scott Tenorman traveling through time with an army of ginger-haired robots in his efforts to get revenge on Cartman, it doesn’t actually seem like too much of a jump in scale for this bitter feud.

Surprisingly though, the story of South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge is told by a hyper-intelligent otter from the future. Reading a book to a group of young children about the events of the game, it’s immediately clear Cartman has somehow spun this narrative into one favorable towards him, the narrator’s unusual reverence for Eric an amusing touch that contrasts rather well with the more mundane behavior of the four playable characters. Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny are all playable in this adventure, and the way that Scott Tenorman’s revenge manages to rope all four of them in rather than just Cartman is through stealing the hard drive to their shared Xbox 360, the boys more concerned for losing their save files than their own health and safety. All four of them seem to have little interest in the adventure they’re on and remain consistently irritated throughout as they keep griping about the latest unusual location their time-hopping journey lands them in.

Compared to South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play!, South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge does a much better job embodying the cartoon’s sense of humor and includes a great deal more references of substance to it as well. Not only are there cutscenes introducing most areas, but you’ll find yourself in areas like the rather unsanitary PiPi’s Splashtown where its tainted water and water park rides can make for more involved platforming layouts while being a more direct reference than something simple like the South Park sewers or junkyard. A trip to Peru feels more like an excuse to make use of the jungle and temple settings rather than linking closely to the episodes it technically references, but you also have some areas like Hell that feels like a solid fit for a show that so often focuses on Satan himself as a character. With references that work as a good setup for actual gameplay, South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge does feel like a faithful adaptation of the show, but unfortunately the way it was designed does lets this faithfulness down.

South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge can be played as a cooperative platformer with up to four players, one playing as each of the boys, but if your group comes up short, you can swap between the boys as needed with a button press. Each of the boys has a unique ability, although it is heavily skewed in terms of who is actually useful. Kenny definitely gets the most valuable ability, his high jump consistently valuable and even able to get around some obstacles that weren’t necessarily meant for him. Kyle perhaps has the next most useful skill, the fact he is a ginger himself allowing him to reveal his hair to get past barriers that the ginger robots use to lock off areas or protect themselves in battle. Cartman and Stan get the short end of the stick though, Stan’s football throw only used for incredibly rare switches and Cartman’s belly bump is used to break down the similarly rare cracked walls, and neither does actual damage in combat. However, each of the boys also has a super hero alter ego they can assume for a bit if they find a power-up, Kyle able to glide as the Human Kite, Cartman able to climb up walls as The Coon, Stan able to drill through cracked floors as Toolshed, and Kenny can die and become invincible as Mysterion to explore hazardous areas. The super powers are at least usually paired with an area designed purely around their use so they’re not as badly balanced as the normal skills, but it can still feel like a player stuck with Stan is going to get less from the game if you go for the full co-op team.

Unfortunately, level design in South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge is often visually interesting but not that great to traverse. The game’s main idea for making an area dangerous is to have ginger robots patrolling platforms but it’s all to easy to jump onto their heads and defeat them, and even if you are in front of the weapon wielding ones, they need a moment to wind up their attacks so you are easily able to hop out of their reach. Throughout the entire game the levels lean on the most simple enemy type to little effect, and while you do get some more active enemies like a few of the mutated animals from Dr. Mephisto’s lab from time to time, they’re more mobile but not really more dangerous. When they’re just hazards in the way of platforming it’s a bit easier to overlook them, but there are many times the game locks you into a battle and you’re easily going to clear your way through it, especially if you’re given weapon pick-ups like a baseball bat or black hole gun to further trivialize it.

Even looking past the enemies, the level designs in South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge are very large and offer multiple paths while also not challenging you much along the way. This is in part due to the game’s main collectibles. Time Cores are key to unlocking new stages, a total of 69 required to finish the game in total, but levels can often contain 10 or more save for the rare and unfortunately rather basic boss battles.  South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge was originally designed with no way to swap which character you play as and as such finding Time Cores was initially much tougher before an update, but now, it is almost too easy, meaning you can get well above the required amount before the game’s end and the motivation to look for them thins as you realize how empty a lot of the game’s activities end up being. Exploring areas for hidden collectibles is a fine idea but the task here often doesn’t involve much work or cleverness, it often a matter of identifying the split path and following it to do whatever basic battle or platforming gets you to the Time Core. Sometimes your reward instead will be an extra life, but these are littered throughout levels because of an effort to accommodate co-op and the fact you can attack other players, so they fell too abundant if you and your group are competent.

Levels are filled with another type of collectible though, Time Particles floating about in the air and often a reward for beating enemies or breaking objects. Interestingly, the game doesn’t care how many Time Particles you grab so much as how they impact the level’s timer. Medals will be rewarded if you can clear the stage in a certain amount of time, but by collecting Time Particles you can remove seconds from the clock, it not too uncommon for the player to find the timer saying they’re in negative time. Perhaps tellingly, many boss levels have very low medal times but few chances to reduce it with Time Particles, all of them a bit too easy and relying on basic patterns, but within a level you are motivated to both speed through and grab a lot of particles, meaning if you don’t need more Time Cores there’s no reason really to engage with the plentiful alternate paths. The main path is rarely the most interesting one too, meaning South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge unfortunately buries some of its better ideas in optional side areas that will likely not be seen as you grow tired of how many are unexciting, straightforward, or unrewarding.

THE VERDICT: Occasional injections of South Park’s trademark humor and some crowd-pleasing references isn’t enough to get the taste of blandness out of the platforming experience in South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge. While it can get creative in the appearance of an area, most often it musters up surprisingly straightforward challenges against weak enemies. Even though the levels are intricate and packed with plenty to collect, the motivation to do so dries up as there’s far more to find than needed and the act of searching for extras rarely taps into an idea that can invigorate the action. It’s easy enough to walk through this time-hopping adventure, but there’s far less humor and excitement than you’d hope for on the way to getting the boys’ Xbox hard drive back.

And so, I give South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge for Xbox 360…

A BAD rating. The expansive levels of South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge do mean there is plenty to do during the period of the game where you’re still on the hunt for Time Cores and notably you’re not going to be impeded much from trekking forward should you not want to get wrapped up in unimaginative side content. As a result, South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge doesn’t bog you down despite its packed stages and everything controls just fine, almost too fine at times since you can easily overcome most danger in your path and even when it does put up a bit of a fight, you’ll likely have no issue finding extra lives and generous checkpoints to keep things moving along quickly. The super power segments are some of the game’s highlight sections since it seems to add some much needed focus to the affair, although they’re not exactly testing the limits of the powers either and perhaps stand out more just because they break away from the usual monotony of bouncing on robot heads. Most of the levels in South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge aren’t really heinous in their design, on their own they’d be forgettable or serviceable platforming stages and it’s easy to accept them in the early game when you don’t realize the game will struggle to innovate going forward. Pushing through the whole set of stages becomes a drag and the references are sometimes only skin deep like in Peru, meaning it’s nice to see something familiar and funny but it’s mostly coasting on looking the part rather than working it into the action well. Sometimes South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge musters up something unique like a train level, but otherwise it can feel like a lot of wide open spaces littered with platforms that almost seem to exist more for Time Particle collection rather than providing an interesting area to traverse.

While it looks the part of a South Park game a lot more than some of the other games based on the series, South Park: Tenorman’s Revenge doesn’t translate its elements well into an entertaining experience. Perhaps that’s Scott Tenorman’s strongest bit of revenge against Cartman, the South Park game adaptations dragged down by a poorly planned out platform game that mars the reputation of the series a little bit more. Luckily, South Park: The Stick of Truth would be the next game adaptation of the series following this fumble, meaning fans of the series at least had something funny, creative, and enjoyable to play to wash away the bad taste of this aimless and bloated Xbox Arcade title.