Ah, South Park. When it’s got a good head of steam going, it’s marvelously spot-on, but when it steps over the line, it ends up miles off the mark.
Naturally, I’m approaching South Park: The Stick of Truth with some trepidation, because it looks exactly like an episode of the show. Granted, with Obsidian at the wheel and years’ worth of development time to make sure every joke lands just so, this one certainly has a far better chance of being consistently strong than an average drop in the series’ ridiculously large bucket. But yes, new footage! There’s cursing and Kenny jokes and Cartman being Cartman and all that good stuff. Go watch.

So yep, Stick of Truth pretty much ticks all the boxes: unabashedly offensive, fairly clever, and – of course – up to its scandalously exposed hindquarters in gross-out humor. I still don’t really have a good sense for how it’ll play, though. Obsidian’s combat/skill work on Alpha Protocol was marked by a mix of admirable ambition and sobering flaws, but – given something a bit simpler in Dungeon Siege III – the result was far more consistently functional. So that’s something, at least. But with so little to go on, it’s pretty much all speculation at this point.

There are definitely poop jokes, though. Thank god for that.