14 DAY TRIAL // The development of South Park: The Stick of Truth has been a troubled one as, after many attempts of getting it off the ground, developer Obsidian Entertainment saw its publishing partner, THQ, go bankrupt.
The project was eventually purchased by Ubisoft, and the French company kept it quiet for quite some time.
Now it's finally begun to show it to the world once more and has organized a special demonstration for the media at Gamescom 2013.
The very short demo recapped the basic story premise, as the whole of South Park is engaged in a giant live action role-playing game (LARP), in which the elves, led by Stan and Kyle, want to prevent the humans, led by Cartman, from getting their hands on the Stick of Truth.
The player controls the New Kid, who can be customized in many different ways and with lots of varied gear.
Exploration is fairly simple, done in the classic South Park way, and battles are turn-based, with different characters attacking one after the other.
In battle, you can use your main weapon, which can be as outlandish as possible, but also your special skills, your different items, and even magic attacks, many with nods to the South Park show.
What's more, before you actually trigger battles, there are different items in the environment that, when used carefully, can render one of your upcoming adversaries unconscious, thereby removing him from the future battle and giving you a big advantage.
As you can imagine, there is a lot of outlandish dialog and plenty of risky humor that earned South Park a lot of fans over the years. All the voice actors have reprised their roles, including show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
The only relatively annoying aspect was that the radial interface used to select attacks and actions looks a bit cluttered and it seems that PC owners won't be able to modify it into different layouts.
South Park: The Stick of Truth is out later this year for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.