South Park Rally

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South Park Rally
Genre(s): Racing Platform(s): PlayStation, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast Release Date: PlayStation NA: January 5, 2000 EU: February 4, 2000 Windows NA: January 24, 2000 EU: February 4, 2000 Nintendo 64 NA: February 28, 2000 EU: March 3, 2000 Dreamcast NA: July 7, 2000 EU: July 28, 2000 Developer(s): Tantalus Interactive Publisher(s): Acclaim Entertainment Series: South Park

South Park Rally is a racing video game that features many characters from South Park, and locations, such as the city itself, and Big Gay Al's animal sanctuary. The objective of the game can vary from race to race: sometimes a player is required to obtain an item or series of items, while at other times, they are required to beat their opponents. The characters and items are all from seasons 1-2. Scuzzlebutt, Sheila Broflovski, Liane Cartman, and other skins are not available in the Nintendo 64 version.

Plot

The mayor of South Park has decided to stage a rally series that will take place through the heart and outskirts of the town. Favorite characters from the popular television series are included, and are able to make use of destructive automobiles, including police cars, mini porsches, Big Gay Al buggies, wheat bags, jeeps, and dozens of other vehicles.

Why It Should Be Disqualified

1. The PlayStation version has poor graphics, with somewhat ugly designs little worked and polygonal, besides the scenarios are made in a mediocre way and are unattractive with cubic and polygonal shapes, besides that most cars are small and look rare in characters, there are only a few that look normal, the other versions look slightly better.
2. The PlayStation and Nintendo 64 versions have frame rate issues, while the Dreamcast and Windows versions do not, which becomes somewhat problematic in some areas and the vehicles don't really move that fast, which makes the races last longer.
3. The camera is locked behind you at all times, even if you're moving backwards, so you can't move it at any time. This makes it difficult to see where the opponents and the objects are, especially ones that you have already passed, which also becomes a problem when you hit a wall or when you back up.
4. Instead of simply running laps around a track, each race instead involves passing through checkpoints (1-2-3-4 to complete a lap), grabbing a specific item, and so on. This can be very frustrating at times, since the stages themselves are not well designed, and have a confusing design. If you miss a checkpoint, you will have to do backtracking, which makes you waste a lot of time, due to poor controls that make difficult drift, which will make you lose in a pretty ridiculous way.
   • The game does try to be a bit innovative by straying away from the standard, "race around the track in circles", formula by making each area open and fully explorable, but while the idea that you can go anywhere to get ahead in the race is a good one, and the bonus, "missions", you have to complete, instead of basic lap completion are intriguing, it fails. The non-linear course structure creates an air of pure chaos, with each car going every which way, but loose in a jumbled mess of confusion, due to the labyrinth design of the tracks.
   • The races themselves get repetitive real quickly.
   • The arrow system that tells you where is a checkpoint sometimes doesn't work very well, and to others, it's very vague.
5. The game starts out with a limited number of characters to choose from, and only one track to race on. Although with every race that you complete, more and more characters and tracks open up for selection in the multiplayer mode. You can save these unlocked tracks to a memory pack, though, unfortunately, you can't save your progress. Instead, every time you start the game, you have to go through all of the levels you've already played.
6. If your character gets knocked into the air, there is a possibility of them landing on their heads, and getting stuck there, until they are warped back to normal. Getting back to normal is very slow, and can cause you to lose the first place if you get knocked normally.
7. The controls are stiff which makes the driving hard to control, even when you use the hand brake to try to make a tighter turn, the results are often unpredictable, this has a lot to do with the floaty physics of the game, which let the cars flip over way more than they should, running at maximum speed is extremely sensitive, due to the physics of the tracks, braking is akin to pot-luck with any thoughts of drifting gone You’ll find yourself slamming into walls more often, than other racing games, because of the controls.
8. Some are mission-based events that call for you to pick up a specific item, such as a trophy, and take it to different locations on the track. For instance, on Valentine's Day, everyone assembles at Big Gay Al's place for a Valentine's Day shoot-out. The objective in this mission is to find Cupid's bow and arrow, and then shoot all of the other racers with it. The catch is that all your opponents have to do to take it from you is to ram your vehicle. Many of the events are set up like this, where you're either being chased by a mob of racers, or you're one of the members of the mob chasing down someone else. In any event, the game's poor control, sloppy physics, and poor track design keep it from ever being truly fun, not to mention, hard to play.
9. The computer opponents recover from your attacks easily, and carry on around the track with unstoppable resolve. Most of the time, the CPU can easily dodge your attacks, and therefore, they don't take any damage, besides they're slightly more agile and faster than you, and sometimes they take a lot of advantage of you, and they can drive more easily.
10. Most of the power-ups are utterly worthless and bad, 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, which is useless if you need an object to attack an opponent.
11. Most phrases are repeated a lot during the game, at first it can be hilarious for the characters to say things, but after a short time, it becomes annoying and repetitive, plus these phrases are only like comedy, but in case they are almost not hilarious compared to the show, Also, even though the voice acting is done by the actors on the show, it's pretty poor and, as stated above, the characters repeat the same phrases quite a lot, which can be annoying, after a short time.
12. False advertising: On the cover, Kyle's car is blue and the license plate reads, "SWEET", but in the actual game, it is red and the license plate reads, "SUCC ASS". Also, cop Cartman is featured prominently as if he were a default character, but he is an unlockable character in-game. Lastly, Kenny's front bumper is purple on the cover, but blue in-game.
13. While the music and sound effects are decent or regular, most songs and sound effects are generic, and some are really very easy to forget, plus most songs are very repetitive.
14. You are forced to get first place in every race. If you get second place or lower, you have to try again, which is severely difficult, due to rigid controls and labyrinth designs of tracks. Even worse, you have to pay using credits to retry the race and you're screwed if you run out of credits.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Good one-liners, although repetitive.
2. The Dreamcast version has an exclusive carnival level.
3. With the exception of the PlayStation version, the other versions look a little better and the character graphics closely resemble the program.
4. The large selection of characters from the show, lots of them come as unlockables.
5. The music and sound effects are mostly quite decent or regular, although some are generic and easy to forget or with annoying tones.
6. The game's frame rate stays fairly consistent in the Dreamcast and Windows versions, even when you're playing with four friends in the split-screen multiplayer mode.
7. The PC version has mod support, some examples are Butters, City Night and Lisa (Tweek) Simpson.

Reception

South Park Rally received negative reviews from critics. On aggregating review website GameRankings, the PC version received 47.38%, the PlayStation version 44.68%, the Dreamcast version 44.54%, and the Nintendo 64 version 43.21%. Over time, the South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have publicly criticized Acclaim, and the quality of the games, as well. After the release of this game, they had mentioned how they didn't like the extremely friendly direction Acclaim Entertainment had placed, when creating and publishing all the previous South Park video games. Parker and Stone went on to explain how they wanted to make an R-rated game in the first place, as it fit with the original show, and would proceed to do so, once they gave the South Park license to another video game publisher, Ubisoft. When asked about the game's strengths, and what he's most proud of, producer Doug Yellin said, "producing a title that does something new with the genre has been the most taxing part of the development process. Rather than simply reproducing Mario Kart in a South Park environment, we've tried to make the humour integral to the game's design, so you find yourself completing tasks as part of the race, rather than simply racing around the same tracks again, and again."

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