Junkman
Dec 13 2004, 01:54 PM
Game: South Park Gold
Creator: Mark Hadley
Genre: Compilation
Description: Try to beat your way through 4 different games. Shoot the South Park kids as Damien, fight off swarms of turkeys, brave the barrels of the dreaded Scuzzle Kong and blast away to pieces alien vessels.

Rating: 57%

Review: After releasing South Park Extreme, Mark Hadley followed up his act with yet another series of compiled games. 4 more games lie ahead within the depths of South Park Gold, but how does this compilation fare this time? Is it any better than the South Park Extreme package? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Although there's some improvements there and there (especially in the stylistic department), most of the games just don't stand well on their own and simply fail to deliver an entertaining game experience.

South Park Gold's first offering comes in the form of Damien's Wrath. It's actually pretty similar to the South Park Shoot'Em Up game which was found on South Park Extreme, although the formula is slightly altered here. You play the part of Damien and your aim is to stop Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny from stopping your wrath. In order to do so, you must shoot fireballs at them from your standing point before they reach you (oddly enough, they need to go through the entire screen before they make the smart decision of attacking you). You also have a special move which takes some time to setup, allowing you to fire a frenzy array of fireballs all around the place, resulting into a fiery carnage. It gets rather repetitive after a while since the gameplay pace don't change that much through the whole game, thus getting a bit boring. Sadly enough, this is South Park Gold's best moment and the only worthwhile game on the compilation.

The other games try taking on a new approach, but the results aren't terribly engaging or well implemented for the most part. Turkey Terror features some gameplay that recalls Just Visitors from the South Park Extreme compilation, although it's not as dull. Turkeys swarm through all sides of the screen and you must guide Stan through the playfield, shooting them off using your mouse whilst collecting the Cheesy Poofs that appear. It's a bit amusing at first, but it loses it's flavour rather quickly. Space Visitors is of course took straight from the Space Invaders book and although it is well implemented, it just simply isn't long enough nor challenging. The few levels it tosses at you don't require that much skill to beat and are rather boring. It's still well coded, though.

Scuzzle-Kong is, as you've guessed, a take on the arcade game Donkey Kong, only though Scuzzlebutt take the duties as being the horrible supervillain that kidnap the damsel in distress that will need to be rescued. He has kindapped Wendy and Ike, but that's not all. He even is evil enough to kidnap a Cheesy Poofs box and a Crackwhore magazine! What have the world come to? We must saveguard the lives of our magazines and Cheesy Poofs! What will happen without porno or fast-eating food? It will be the end of the world!! AHHHH! Uhh oops, I'm getting off-topic now, back to the game I am... In the game's 4 levels, you must guide the four kids through Scuzzle Kong's thrown barrels in order to save whoever/whatever needs to be saved. The problem with the game comes down to the erratic nature of the barrels. They bounce around in a rather ugly and unrealistic fashion and unless you're quick enough, you'll have your path cut off with tons of weirdly bouncing barrels that are often close to impossible to avoid. It doesn't serve an interesting play nor a rather lengthy one, neither.

However, South Park Gold isn't a complete failure. The presentation of the game is better presented this time around as it features an actually good looking menu screen. Instead of using your keyboard to choose the game you wish to play, you can now use your mouse and there are icons that represent all of the games featured in South Park Gold. Most of the games also have title screens now and even though they're nothing spectacular, they do present the game you'll play well. Nothing much to report graphical-wise or sound-wise, like in South Park Extreme, it features a mish-mash of borrowed graphics, sparse sound effects and some rare tunes there and there.

However, South Park Gold ultimately falls flat. Compared to all of the South Park games compilations Mark Hadley released, this one easily classifies as the weakest one in the bunch. There's no really strong game involved in the package and most of the games here either are mediocre or poorly constructed. Apart from Damien's Wrath, which isn't that great to begin with, there's nothing much to see here.