anonymous
Apr 15 2005, 05:14 PM
Game: Butters Pro Skating
Creator: Beamer
Genre: Sports
Description: A valuable skateboarding game with Butters

Rating: 88%

Review:

This game uses the same engine as Matt Kennedy's "Stan Marsh Skateboarding" but heavily improves on it. I hate when people copy and paste and still manage to make the games worse but this here is the total opposite. It even manages to become one of the most enjoyable South Park games there is.

Menus look decent and have a clean look to them. The main font is well chosen as it suits the (free)style of the game smile.gif. There's not much else to say, it looks very good.
Backgrounds contain much detail most of the time. Butters has animations for almost any action he makes while playing. The blood that appears when Butters can't pull off a trick is a nice touch. Overall it's very pleasant to the eye but I still would've liked to see characters other than Butters (a few pedestrians would have worked already).

Music consists of midis from various rock bands; you can't go wrong with that music selection in this type of game. Most actions have believable sounds to them, cartoon like or whatever you want to call them but they are appropriate.

The gameplay in "Stan Marsh Skateboarding" was somehow glitchy but this is the department where this game improves so much over it. Your actions respond well to the situations you'll have to handle. The controls need some getting used to as you have to concentrate on 16 keys or so but when you've mastered them the game is very much fun. During the game you have to pull off specific exercises in the levels. The tasks don't differ that much through the levels but this game has a good level design which lets you forget it, and in Tony Hawks Pro Skater it wasn't much different either I guess (ok I'll admit it was better but this was mainly due to the 3D environments).

The money that you will earn for accomplishing tasks and the difficulty will increase the further you'll come. The money lets you unlock new areas, and this will take you quite some time. You most likely will spend 1-2 hours completing the whole game which is quite some value for a Click game. There is a 'free skate mode' but I really see no point in it other than fooling around with Butters' skating tricks in the areas which you were able to unlock but that's probably for what it is most likely there for.

I can say that this is surely one of my favorites; almost anything seems good or nearly perfect in this game. The controls will take some time to master, I'd recommend a keyboard emulator for your joypad (what I did) for more fun and easier control and also to download this game now if you haven't! smile.gif