South Park: Snow Day Reviews
Abandoning all charm and fun that the franchise is known for, South Park: Snow Day! manages to deliver one of the most disappointing games I’ve played in a long time. If you’re a South Park fan, this will just make you yearn for the already existing better games. And if you’re not? All you have to look forward to is mediocre gameplay and unattractive graphics. Your time and money are better spent literally anywhere else.
South Park: Snow Day! brings the cartoon’s up-and-down foray into gaming full circle. The co-op adventure underwhelms with sloppy action, repetitive combat, and a poorly implemented roguelite structure. Fans of the show’s first few seasons may get some laughs from its throwback humor, but the fun setup gets flushed down the drain like Mr. Hankey.
South Park: Snow Day! is a roguelike shooter experience that is short and extremely mediocre to the point of being bad. While it isn't incredibly broken, it still fails to provide a meaningful experience, especially compared to the games that came before it. The shift from 2D to 3D isn't important at all. Rather, it's the incredibly repetitive and boring approach it takes alongside its formulaic plotline that makes it feel like one of the worst episodes in the series.
Aggravating hack-and-slash combat and surprisingly sparse jokes make South Park: Snow Day! dull, toothless, and a big step in the wrong direction for South Park games.
Put simply, I am hesitant to suggest South Park: Snow Day! to anyone who isn't a fan of South Park. In my opinion, the gameplay isn't solid enough for anyone to have fun with this. This game becomes tedious in a very short span of time. The jokes in the previous two games were a major selling point since they made the otherwise dull gameplay more interesting. Alternatively, the game's humor is nonexistent, and the gameplay becomes exceedingly dull.
If this shows up on Game Pass or PS Plus Extra, dive in with some friends. Get as much enjoyment as you can out of it; otherwise, it’s hard to recommend to anyone other than the die-hard who MUST play every South Park game.
But as it stands we have a rather generic and repetitive short lived battle game that’s lacking any real gameplay innovation. The story is dull and there are not enough laughs.
It is hard to discern just who South Park: Snow Day! is for. Diehard South Park fans will not get much out of its lackluster references and lack of new ideas for the franchise. Meanwhile, those who care more about playing a fun game won’t find the mechanical complexity that can be found in previous franchise RPGs.
It's hard to determine exactly who Snow Day is meant to be for. The ideal player of South Park: Snow Day has three other friends who are extremely into South Park, to the point of enjoying anything with the character's faces painted on it, and those three friends also enjoy battling waves upon waves of unintelligent NPC fodder with single button mashes while occasionally pressing one of two other buttons to execute an ability. These four friends should also laugh hilariously at the idea of a Taylor Swift album fetching "nearly half a roll" on the toilet paper black market - honestly, if that one joke doesn't snag you, it's all downhill from there.
What’s unforgivable is that, at its core, South Park: Snow Day! isn’t remotely fun to play. Its combat and progression systems aren’t engaging, and only the most hardcore of South Park fans will find a glimmer of hope in the bulletproof humour that’s borrowed from the cartoon.
Boring, repetitive and unfunny. We'd rather see no new South Park games than failures like this one.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Combat within the game feels unsatisfying with a limit to the abilities. The jokes within are dated and feels like an AI wrote them after being fed information about South Park. Arguably, the only fight we enjoyed with the game was the final fight and that was because it broke the mold the game had established in the prior chapters.
South Park: Snow Day is a step backwards for the show’s library of games. It could be worth a good laugh or two, especially with friends, but you’ll get a lot more of them from the show itself. There must not have been a lot of faith in this one considering its very small price tag of $30 compared to the new standard of $70. But honestly, you’re better off taking that $30 and putting it towards Ubisoft’s older South Park games, The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole. Those will offer more enjoyment than Snow Day ever could.
Despite being occasionally funny, the game is never fun.
South Park: Snow Day! has a lot of potential with some of its roguelike-inspired mechanics but ultimately fails to deliver an engaging experience whether you're playing it solo or in co-op. Combat feels unresponsive, the technical issues are numerous (on Switch at least), and the writing is some of the weakest in the series.
South Park: Snow Days! may sound like the comedy fans love and offer a solid story but finds itself lacking nearly everywhere else as this roguelike struggles to impress beyond its first run.
I wanted to love this game, especially when I heard that Matt and Trey wanted this as an avenue to have a sort of metaverse with the show. So, events can happen in the show on one night and the next it picking up in the game. The premise is very cool, but sadly this game ain’t it. Its going to take a lot of patches and things to get this up to snuff, which is sad because it does some neat things. The different cards in game that work as powers for one, players can choose one ‘bullshit’ card to use which is some uber power like making someone vampires, or giving super strength. All of it with the vibe that these are still kids playing outside. Sadly, it’s all just wasted in its current state, I really hope the developers can turn this around because I want to go on down to South Park and meet some friends of mine.
I tried not to compare South Park: Snow Day to The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole, but considering it is still a sequel of sorts, it’s hard not to feel massively disappointed with this game. We went from gorgeous and hilarious RPGs to a bland, boring, uneventful action roguelike with baffling graphical design choices, underwhelming controls, and an overall gameplay loop you have experienced dozens of times before. The sense of humor alone is not worth the admission ticket.
If you enjoy fighting endless waves of enemies in simple combat, then there might be something here to enjoy. But for most, South Park: Snow Day! is a decidedly skippable spin-off game, even if you’re the most diehard of South Park fans.
Is it fun in multiplayer? Not very much. It's also not fun for fans of the series. This game uses the form of a popular world, but does not give satisfaction.
Review in Slovak | Read full review