CalBear:
Like all first person shooters these days, South Park is fully 3D, and can take advantage of a 3D accelerator. The strange thing is that the graphics are still bad with the 3D acceleration on. It's kinda hard to fault the designers for this though. After all, South Park the TV show is a terrible looking cartoon - characters and backgrounds are done entirely in color blocks, with no evidence of texturing or detail. While this is acceptable for the TV show, the lack of textures and pizazz in the game environment can get quite annoying and ugly. On the other hand, it's likely that the designers wanted the game to mimic the same look as the TV show, and if that was their goal, they hit the nail right on the head. The buildings and environments in this game emulate the South Park aura perfectly, giving the player the impression that they're really in the show.

Since the characters in South Park are drawn in a flat 2D manner, it's a little bit weird to see them rendered in 3D. They look unnatural in the cutscenes, and sway from side to side in a manner that's decidedly not like the television show. After all, you don't see character's heads in the TV show swaying from side to side in a slow, rhythmic fashion, and yet it happens in the game's cut scenes. It's almost as if the 3D artists were looking for some way to show off their talents and forced that in there.

While graphics weren't so hot, sound was another matter. Sound is definitely the highlight of the game, and it's absolutely hilarious to hear all the characters spouting off their foul mouths when they get hit or nailed. Every major and a lot of the minor characters from the show are included from the game, from the Alien, to the kids, to Mr. Garrison, down to Terence and Philip. It's a delight to hear all the genuine voices from the show ported perfectly into the game. As it turns out, the sound is likely to be one of South Park's only redeeming factors.