My first real experience with the South Park series was in 1998 when South Park released for the Nintendo 64 and let’s be honest, it didn’t look anything like the show. Fast forward to 2014 when the creators of the show teamed up with Ubisoft to release South Park: The Stick of Truth and it was literally the show controllable by the player. Now the third game in the ‘New Kid’ saga is here and the series skews its familiar 2D look and goes back to 3D, gaining a new action system in the process. Is this an evolution for the series, or is this a game snowed under by its ambitions?

The story of Snow Day is simple at first, but does get more complex as you proceed through, but I will only explain the setup, just to avoid spoilers. A blizzard has rolled into town and with how bad it has become; a Snow Day has been established. For those who are Australian like myself, a snow day in America is where the schools get closed down as it is too hazardous to make kids attend school, though post-covid that is not really a thing anymore. However, back in the game, with the Snow Day confirmed the kids rush outside to keep playing their game, with you the New Kid taking the lead again and the regular South Park kids picking sides in their war. The story is not a long one, there are only 5 chapters to play through, however the missions themselves can take a bit to get through, so there is still a lot to enjoy.

As far as gameplay goes, the series has dropped the turn based RPG and gone for an action gameplay system, with cards. Now normally I refuse to play anything that requires cards to provide abilities, as they can be super unbalanced, however I wanted to give this a go and I was glad I did. Before each mission you and your side, host a meeting with the opposing team, where you get to pick the cards you can use and they pick there cards. This is a chance for you to see what cards you have to deal with and what cards you can take advantage of. However, before you can begin any mission, you will need weapons and spells to help you out. There are two weapon groups and you get one from each, a melee option and a ranged option. The starting melee is a pair of daggers and the ranged is a bow and arrow, but as you progress through the game you will unlock others, like a sword and shield or a magic staff. Spells are going to give you extra skills, you can take two of them into battle with you, I always took the healing buff with me and usually the fart escape.

Where things change up is the cards you choose during the meeting moment, and sometimes during a mission if you are lucky. The cards can do things like add extra explosive damage to your arrows or even let you backstab someone with your daggers. There are also bullshit cards, that is their name, which when played can make you extra-large, call down meteors or even give you laser beam eyes. While the standard cards are always on buffs, the bullshit cards only last for a limited amount of time and you can only play them a few times in each mission. At the end of each location, Timmy is there to give you a new card, you can pick, which can give you more support for the battles that lie ahead. There is also occasionally some goth girl, whose name I can’t remember, there in his place offering her dark magic powered cards. These can level up all your cards, reset your bullshit cards and even grant you bonus TP, that is toilet paper, for use when you see Timmy next.

The games problem, apart from its length, is that almost every aspect feels the same. You enter a space, get ambushed by the opposing team and then have to either mash your melee attack or ranged attack, until you take down all the enemies. There are a few times where you need to pick up something and carry it back to a set location, but those times are few and far between. What is worse is that in only one mission did the game prompt other to ‘Protect Player X’, because yes the game is for four players. I tried playing in matchmaking ahead of its release, but sadly the sessions they were hosting were not at times that worked for me. If you do play solo the game throws in random bots when combat begins, which does mix it up, but there is no control over any of them, so you just have to hope for the best.

Something I wish the game had of included was a class system, brawler, mage and so on. It does have one as there are characters that are classed as them, or assassins, but you are just normal. It doesn’t break the experience not having it, but it could have offered up a more richer experience if it did. There is a level up system, which does provide some level of customisation and while it isn’t something you can take full advantage of in your first run through, however as the levels to change each time you head back in, they are clearly banking on people replaying them and with friends I can see it being fun.

Something that isn’t fun is the visuals, so being honest everything I think of 3D South Park my mind goes to the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation One era, because post those games they never did it again. When you are not seeing familiar characters, so just the world and your own back, the game looks fine, even when you do see Cartman, Kyle or Stan and they are facing camera it looks good. The issue with them is when they don’t, they stand either side on or the camera moves in an unnatural way, it feels wrong. The faces on the characters look good, as they appear to be 2d assets on 3d models, but the rest is not quite right. Perhaps what makes this more noticeable is that the opening and closing cutscenes are played out like the traditional show. The world are also built in weird ways, I didn’t have any texture issues or such, but rather background elements grow into place, which usually happens in games where the world is more cylindrical than flat. It isn’t something you will notice when in the town itself, but any of the more natural locations, you will spot it almost all the time.

The games audio is great, the music feels appropriate, even when you visit Timmy and it goes to a shop style presentation. Of course, the characters sound exactly like you would want them to, but there is an issue. The characters that you have known for years sound like they are meant to, but when you are playing with the other kids, ie the enemies, they sound like actual kids. This isn’t a knock on either side, but when you have adults pretending to be kids and then actual kids all speaking, one stands out as wrong. The other issue with the kids voices is that there isn’t enough lines, I can’t begin to count the number of times I heard the bruiser character exclaim ‘You hit me?”, it happened so often, I found myself mouthing along the moment it occurred.

South Park: Snow Day is an odd game, there are times when its just pure mayhem, kind of like the times when you are playing when you were a kid, but then the games difficulty spike hits and just brutalises you. Its length is also a concern, there are only 5 missions and while you can replay them, nothing changes to drastically within them if you do. Visually the game looks fine, but after having two games that replicate the South Park look perfectly, to have a look that is more South Park 64, feels like a massive step backwards. If you have a group of friends who you want to play this with, then its going to be a sweet little game to jump in and out of, however if you are hoping for a grand story like the past games, or gameplay that feels worth investing in, then you are best to drive on past and not stop at South Park this time.