South Park: Snow Day Review

South Park Snow Day follows the exploits of the New Kid during a mysterious snowstorm. The New Kid is the same character from The Stick Of Truth and The Fractured But Whole. Since you got so overpowered in the last two games, the gang decides to start a new game with everyone at zero. This time, it is a fight between the various factions that inhabit South Park. You team up with Cartman to fight against the elves and Kyle. From there, you take on the rest of the kids until you collect the whole crew.

The story isn’t very deep, but you get some good South Park humor, and Cartman always takes a chance to poke fun at your mistakes. That is really how you get most of the story, anyway. While you are on your missions, they will contact you on the radio and tell you what is happening—more than once, I had to stop and chuckle at what they said.

For a game called Snow Day, you might expect it to be a snowball fighting game; it is not. It’s more of a brawler since you mostly use melee weapons and wands. The combos are simple but effective; just don’t expect a ton of depth. When you start a level, you and three other players(or bots) take on a series of stages to try and make it to a boss. To win a stage, you typically need to kill all enemy units. If you do win, you get an upgrade at the end of the stage, making the next one easier.

Outside of your basic attacks, you can also bring a couple of skills into a match. I liked to bring the fart escape, which leaves a fart cloud as you jet into the air. From there, I would upgrade it to linger longer and start it on fire. The bull rush was another fun one. Hitting enemies into the wall did a ton of damage, and it felt great to use. The only one I never turned off was my healing banner. If you get the right skill upgrades, it can have an increased radius and even revive downed allies. I’m sure there are other good combos, but combine the fire, poison gas, and my sword bleed damage, and I didn’t need to try much.

While in the match, you collect a few different things. Sometimes, you get lucky and get a skill card to boost a random skill. There is also toilet paper, which acts as currency due to the blizzard. You use this in between rounds to get stronger upgrades or shuffle which ones you can purchase. The big thing you will want to collect is the Dark Matter. You can find this off certain enemies or even in chests that drop down into the match. You can return to your hub with Dark Matter and get character upgrades. The skill tree is pretty simple, but if you want to fill it, you’ll have to play for quite a bit of time. Platinum coins are another currency, but that’s just for cosmetics.

Outside of the campaign, there is a wave defense mode. This mode allows you to grind more Dark Matter and unlock new cards. You get new cards by making achievements, like using moves several times, defeating certain enemies, and so on. One other thing in play is the BS cards. You can use these to get laser eyes and other superpowers. The enemy also gets them, and it will generally buff the baddies. They can be very annoying in survival mode since they happen nearly every round. Still, they add a bit more of a challenge to the battles.

As far as bugs are concerned, I ran into a blank card bug. So when I was going to pick an upgrade, nothing showed up, but I could still click to get an upgrade. It’s only a minor annoyance but a noticeable one. I didn’t have any crashes or notice any frame drops, but I was on my PC. Not sure how the consoles fare.

South Park Snow Day is a fun game that is a perfect fit for Game Pass or PlayStation Plus. I’d wait until it hits one of those services before checking it out.

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Detention Review

Detention is a game set in the political upheaval of the 1960s, a time when the west was feeling the repercussions of social unrest. In America, the unrest involved civil rights and anti-war protests. Surprisingly enough, the east, or at least Taiwan, was undergoing similar events. This is where the game takes place. Detention is about a high school girl named Ray and her companion Wei who they’re trapped one evening at their school as a typhoon passes through their town.

This is as simple of a summary that I can provide for a unique experience like this one. I don’t want to spoil too much, but I will say that Detention is more of a dramatic venture than a horrific one. Many times while I played it I held my breath in anticipation of a screamer, or a “gotcha-moment” involving deafening noises and bleeding faces, but fortunately they didn’t happen. That’s not to say that Detention has none of these, which it does. However, Red Candle Games has made sure to use them to maximum effect and only when it’s absolutely necessary.

Detention accomplishes this by making excellent use of its side-scrolling, point-and-click gameplay mechanics: the player commands Ray to pick up whatever items might seem useful in order to advance the plot. Several items included in this game are worthy of notice. For instance, Ray might find a crumpled paper ball on the ground or the wall that might look strangely out of place. After she picks it up, the player will notice it might have some worthy clue or cultural note that will help shed light on some of the events transpiring in the game. These hints are then added to Ray’s notebook. Some of the notes have clues on how to deal with certain enemies: “you right-click to hold your breath as [insert enemy name here] approaches,” and so on. I was so interested in reading every bit of information available in Detention, that I actually went ahead and filled out the notebook. Some of the interesting things to look out for include the “lingered,” which are humanoid, spectral beings that the player leaves “offerings” to in order to distract them as Ray makes her escape.

If that didn’t seem relevant enough, Detention’s other half involves its socio-political spectrum. Red Candle Games did plenty of research to portray a realistic vision of what the socio-political climate was like in 1960s Taiwan. Anti-communist messages are hinted at throughout the narrative, as well as censorship of freedom of speech. The truly surprising aspect about it is precisely how relevant it is in today’s increasingly globalized society. Moreover, Detention doesn’t use these themes in a heavy handed manner and they don’t come off as preachy; much less shoehorned. This is something most videogames that decide to implement them fail spectacularly at doing. Additionally, these aren’t the meat and bones of Detention’s narrative, but tasty appetizers that complement the coming-of-age story with meaningful themes of depression and redemption that lie at the core of Ray’s adventure.

While this adventure is grander-than-life and even epic in scope, it is extremely short lived. Detention clocks out at around two and a half to three hours, which isn’t saying much for such a meaningful game. I actually saw some people on YouTube played through Detention in less than two hours. This is essentially a game like Journey: the first time the player experiences Detention, he’ll definitely be impressed. Will he want to come back and play it again, though? That’s the clincher here. Journey was a game that kept players coming back to do the collectibles. Detention, on the other hand, is a game whose appeal is seldom limited to curious risk-takers, arthouse gamers, and horror fans. Most people will not find mass appeal in a videogame like this: some will say it’s too gloomy; others will say it’s too short; but those who truly seek out a different niche will find a short adrenaline rush like no other.

Detention left me wondering about one thing: when will the industry see another burst of creativity that causes shockwaves like Super Mario Bros did in 1985? The gaming industry needs a major rehaul and pronto. Games like Detention and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are not released on a weekly basis. There is usually a large gap in-between games like this. Journey was the last unforgettable indie game I played, and that was back in 2012. I played Playdead’s Limbo back in 2010, but I skipped Inside last year (in spite of the positive coverage the game received). My point is, games like Detention don’t come every day, and they are most certainly welcome by my standards. Hopefully Red Candle Games announces their next project soon enough. With the creative potential they’ve showcased here, they could go pretty much anywhere next.

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