South Park Snow Day stays true to its irreverent source material while paving the way for more 3D instalments despite its outdated form; read more in our South Park Snow Day review.
A catastrophic snowstorm sets the stage for one of the sickest South Park snow days ever.
South Park Snow Day is a game where you play as the (new) New Kid on the block. A mysterious snowstorm of destructive proportions has trapped South Park in unending winter, and it’s up to you to save it. And you do this in the best way possible: through live-action roleplay (or LARP) with the other South Park kids.
Snow Day’s 10-hour gag reel pokes fun at the most memorable lockdown quarantine memes of 2021. In true South Park fashion, the creators focus their satirical energy at how we all collectively lost our minds during the worst of the Covid pandemic – a relatively outdated topic in 2024, but one that still hits close to home.
South Park Snow Day is a fun-loving action roguelike that ticks all of the boxes of a typical South Park episode. But the game barely takes any meaningful risks to make it stand out, and instead relies on its (literal) toilet humor to carry the narrative of a repetitive fighting game. Here’s what the latest South Park title has in store.
Clean Roguelike Fun
If you boil it down, South Park Snow Day is clear and pure roguelike action. Everything from the charmingly slapdash platforms to environmental hazards; from varied powers and random events are all proof of acceptable gameplay design. And it does a fairly good job at making players lock in and focus on the combat.
South Park Snow Day lets you choose from a dozen powerful tools to beat up your foes across town. Six of these include your typical melee weapons and powerful ranged weapons like bows and magic wands. On top of that, there are your Powers which add some useful variety to the combat system. But despite the limited selection, you can get very ridiculously overpowered when you find the right upgrades outside Kupa Keep.
Ultimately, Snow Day sticks to the basics and gets the job done. Its inspirations are seen all throughout the game, but all of the tried and tested mechanics we’ve seen a thousand times before barely serve its replayability.
A Cold Day in Hell
South Park Snow Day feels uninspired and repetitive at times. More specifically, it can be very easy to get tired in the middle of a quest when you start noticing the patterns. And the story’s measly 6-hour runtime is nothing to boast about.
Unoptimized weapon mechanics and buggy environments also made me feel like this could have spent more time in the oven. Slow projectile arcs from the staff made it hard to enjoy, but the good news was that it led me to the Wand, which is absolutely overpowered when combined with the bubble shield and the proper upgrades! Besides that, repetitive sequences, annoying voice lines and unnoticeable hazards on the map were among my main grievances.
South Park generally doesn’t go for any deep messages in its slapstick series, but I am 80% certain that Snow Day’s material was written around 2020 because of the outdated references. A few puns were chuckle-worthy (especially one about the final boss), but all in all, Snow Day didn’t engage me beyond the cool power builds that motivated my review test.
7/10 School’s Out!
Extremely safe and familiar mechanics, along with overdone fetchquests, makes the game feel like a product test for more South Park 3D titles.
Be that as it may, South Park Snow Day’s delinquencies never took anything away from Snow Day’s fun co-op combat, powerful upgrades and chuckle-worthy bits. And because the game was built in Unreal Engine, it is by far the best way to visit the fictional town of South Park to date.
Game reviewed on PS5 with a copy provided by the publisher
For more reviews and the latest in games and esports, follow ESTNN.