South Park Rally looks and sounds deceptively good. Beware: If you
didn't know any better, you might think the quality of the graphics,
and how well they capture the cardboard-cutout look of the television
show, are suggestive of the overall quality of the game. You'll
instantly recognize all the various characters in South Park Rally if
you've seen them in the show before; their simple forms and clean, flat
colors come across perfect, and their faces animate just as
expressively as they do on TV. Each character drives his own unique
little vehicle, from Chef's wood-paneled station wagon to Officer
Barbrady's cop car, often complete with a personalized license plate.
The tracks in the game also look quite good; they're holiday-themed,
and look just like sets from the show.
Then again, it's not
like South Park is best known for the high quality of its visual style;
as such, the best that can be said for South Park Rally's presentation
is that it looks like the show. By any other standards, the game's
simple 3D shapes and flat lighting effects would be merely average. In
addition, although South Park Rally does feature original dialogue by
the South Park cast, there isn't nearly enough variety to the sound
effects, and they're poorly sampled on top of that. For example, the
game's announcer speaks far too loudly compared with the other
characters, and some of the other speech in South Park Rally is
incomprehensibly muffled. The game's twangy and dissonant soundtrack is
reminiscent of the show's signature title track, and it'll grate on
your nerves as you keep listening to it over and over, unless the other
elements of the game get to you first.
It wouldn't seem as
necessary to point out the relatively minor problems with South Park
Rally's graphics and sound if the game actually played well. However,
it plays so terribly that its other problems end up standing out even
more. South Park Rally is supposed to be a fun and simple racing game
just like so many other go-kart-racing games out there. Just like so
many other kart-racing games, South Park Rally lets you drive around or
across a circuit while picking up power-ups that are designed to sway
the race in your favor. The power-ups include rats, Cheesy Poofs, and
more. However, most of the power-ups are utterly worthless aside from
their comic value; some work like landmines, which you must drop
blindly, as you have no rearview mirror, let alone any onscreen
indication that a rival car is coming up from behind. Some of the other
power-ups are much too inaccurate to be of any real use.
But
the real problem lies with your computer opponents, who recover from
your attacks easily and carry on around the track with unstoppable
resolve; yet if you're on the receiving end of one of their weapons,
you may as well start over because you're never going to catch up. In
addition, the game's open-ended track design means that you can easily
get stuck or lost, and if you lose so much as a second of time, you've
lost the race. South Park Rally is entirely unforgiving - you need
perfect driving skills and a lot of luck to finish first, and unless
you finish first you can't advance to the next stage. The game's
driving mechanics are grossly simplistic - all you do is press a button
to powerslide around corners - and the game's sprawling track design,
which features hidden shortcuts and items that you don't actually have
any time to find, is completely irritating.
Maybe all the
glaring problems and misguided design decisions in South Park Rally are
deliberate; it's difficult to explain or justify its lack of a
difficulty setting and a save-game feature otherwise. South Park Rally
isn't necessarily impossible to win, but it seems intentionally
designed to be impossible to tolerate for very long. There's no point
playing it against the computer since you'll keep losing, yet you have
no option to save and a limited option to continue. And there's no
point playing it against your friends, thanks to the bad track design
and ill-conceived power-ups; there's not even a draw in trying all the
different characters, since all of them control exactly the same. Maybe
South Park Rally is a self-conscious work of comedic genius that we'll
praise one day for its blatant defiance of every convention, much like
the irreverent show that inspired it. Or maybe not; it's more likely
that South Park Rally is actually nothing more than a blatant attempt
to quickly and greedily cash in on a still-successful but waning
franchise. It's an utterly terrible game and Acclaim's third strike
with the South Park license.
