South Park: The Game (RPG fra Obsidian)

Bottom Line: South Park: The Stick of Truth could stand alone as an extended episode of the show. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on how funny you think Trey Parker and Matt Stone are. For fans of the show, this is a seriously impressive game.

... much like the fact that Sir Douchebag never speaks. He just stands there looking puzzled at the insanity unfolding all around him.

I wish I could spend this entire review talking about how South Park: The Stick of Truth is one of the funniest games I've ever played.

I wish I could stick to telling you how the story feels like one 10-hour episode of South Park; how the world is a blast to explore; how the combat blends the best parts of Paper Mario with the crude-yet-smart humor that has made South Park so appealing over the years.

But Stick of Truth, out Tuesday for 360, PS3, and PC, is a game marred by bugs and technical issues, and it is impossible to separate the art from the faulty product surrounding it.

During the ten hours I spent playing Stick of Truth, I ran into dozens of glitches ranging from minor to major. Sometimes my main character would pop in and out of cut-scenes. Sometimes the music would randomly stop playing during boss fights. Once I loaded up an old save file and learned that my newer file—saved manually, not via an auto-save that might have been overwritten—had suddenly disappeared.

Worst of all, playing the game on Xbox 360 led to constant stuttering that made the whole game feel one turbulent airplane ride. I wanted to take a Dramamine after playing.

I captured some footage to show you what it's like. Note the major stutters at 0:04, 0:11, etc., and the minor stutters throughout. That's not YouTube. It's the game.

Isolated these stutters aren't so bad, but when they happen every few seconds, they become unbearable. I couldn't walk anywhere in Stick of Truth without feeling like I was sitting through an earthquake. That's on Xbox 360, with my game installed to the hard-drive, and the day-one patch installed. Your experience may vary, and some people might not even run into this stuttering—I asked a few other reviewers, and only one had run into the same problem—but for me this was a critical flaw.

The PC version runs more smoothly, but has its own technical issues. Kotaku's Kirk Hamilton couldn't get through one mid-game cut-scene without his game crashing. He had to skip it. Other PC reviewers have also reported save glitches and other bugs, and one reviewer playing on PS3 told me he couldn't load out of a boss battle. Playing Stick of Truth felt like walking through a china shop; I was constantly worried that something would break.

Maybe in a few weeks, or months, when the patches are out and the bugs are squashed, we can talk about Stick of Truth for what it is: a wonderful, funny RPG that does some really clever, surprising things. For now, I can't recommend it.