Matt and Trey on Why ‘South Park’ Games Don’t Suck Any More

  Let’s not go into the whole licensed-games-sucking-ass thing again. I know it’s true, you know it’s true, Grandma Egotastic knows it’s true. They sell on the strength of the name on the box, so any old effortless ballache can be safely pumped out, regardless of terribility (yep, that’s a thing). 

The more dedicated a fan of the character/franchise/movie you are, the bigger a kick in the ass this whole situation is. What the hell did hardened Superman groupies think when they played Superman 64? They thought, this is ass, that’s what they thought. And so did everyone else.

As for me, I waited most of my earlier gaming years for a half-decent title based on my two favorite ‘toons, The Simpsons and South Park. Neither franchise dropped anything particularly notable for some time. Remember that first South Park game, an FPS that saw you throwing pissy yellow snowballs at giant thanksgiving turkeys to kill them? I’ll say no more.

South Park, at least, has got its shit together of late. The Stick of Truth was very faithful to the show, and a great snarky RPG in its own right. The much-anticipated follow up, The Fractured But Whole, is set to be more of the same. So the question is, what went so right?

Trey Parker and Matt Stone had more direct involvement, that’s what. At San Diego Comic Con, the pair took to the stage for a panel celebrating the show’s 20th anniversary. During the talk, they explained why they hadn’t made games themselves prior to 2014’s Stick of Truth:

 ‘We wanted it to look like you were in an episode of South Park, and that technology was not there until the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation. So they would do those cheesy... you know, we have these old South Park games where they would do these cheesy 3D polygon junky games and we just hated that… The old, old Nintendo 64 games? Yeah, those weren't good. We had nothing to do with it. They just weren't good games...  We were told, "Okay, you have a hit show, so now what we do is we take your thing and we give it to a company and they make a game!" We were like "Oh cool!" And so we're like... the game's done and we've played it and we're like, "Well this is dogs---!"’

You said it, guys. Still, all’s well that ends well. Memories of the craptacular South Park Rally don’t haunt me as often as they used to. I’ve started to sleep again. More on this from Matt and Trey back at Game Informer.