South Park Chefs Luv Shack

Product Description ------------------- Hello, children! Are you ready to join Chef for some game-show fun, South Park-style? No, don't let the name fool you. This game isn't about, in Chef's words, the "mattress mambo." It's a multiplayer party game for up to four contestants, crammed full of trivia contests and South Park-themed mini-games. Playing as Cartman, Kenny, Kyle, or Stan on Chef's game show, contestants must dig deep into their memory banks to demonstrate their knowledge of worthless information. In addition, players face less mentally demanding mini-games that challenge reflexes and hand-eye coordination. In Rodeo, players try to keep Cartman on a mechanical bull for the duration. Bad Kitty is an unabashed Donkey Kong-style platform game. Players, as Kitty, avoid Cartman's angry barrage of bouncing balls, and jump over obstacles on a quest to consume his pot pies. South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker came up with new tastelessly hilarious sound bites for the game, and Isaac Hayes, the voice of Chef, contributed his smooth voice as the game's star host. No surprise to anyone that this game carries a Mature rating, so it's probably best to leave it in the box during Johnny's 10th birthday party. But South Park fans are sure to fall in swee-e-et luv with this game. --Eric Twelker Review ------ The Luv Shack is a little old place where we can get together. OK, now that the token B-52's reference is out of the way, South Park: Chef's Luv Shack is a loose combination of You Don't Know Jack-style trivia and Mario Party-style minigames. The result is a game that manages to amuse with its questions, but the lame minigames, lack of varied speech, and generally slow pace of the game make it short-lived fun at best. The game is set up like a game show hosted by everyone's favorite chef, Chef. Chef offers the player in control a choice in three trivia categories. The categories manage to be pretty funny, with topics like Sucks or Canadian, Giant Japanese Monster Bad, The 1991 Denver Broncos, and West Siyeeeeede Story. The questions are occasionally funny (for instance: The rock band Loverboy: Sucks, or Canadian? The correct answer is, of course, both), but after two or three days you'll start to see some questions repeated. Speaking of repeating, the game's speech gets old pretty fast. It uses all the real voices, but there isn't enough variation. The game's intro is the same every time, the announcer says the same things, etc. A few different intros and quick jokes would have gone a long way here. The load times are brief, but they really break up what should be a fast-paced trivia game. Having to wait between questions and minigame rounds really has a noticeable effect on the overall flow of the game. The minigames are extremely basic, some taking on elements of classic arcade games like Asteroids, Warlords, Super Sprint, Tapper, and Kickman. Others are oriented toward button mashing. After seeing each of the minigames once, you'll probably wish there were a way to disable them altogether. The trivia and the game's warped sense of humor are the main draws here, and the minigames really take away from the overall presentation. Graphically, the game looks just as you would expect it to. The simple style of the South Park characters is well represented, albeit a little on the pixilated side, and the animation closely mirrors the show, even in the minigame rounds. This is a game that you may want to rent, but the repeating questions, repeating speech, and dull minigames keep it from being a game you'd want to pop in whenever you need a simple party-style game.--Jeff Gerstmann--Copyright © 1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review

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