South Park: Snow Day review—short, sweet, but ultimately unsatisfying

What is it? A wave-based co-op action game where the South Park kids savage each other.
Expect to pay $30/£25
Developer Question
Publisher THQ Nordic
Reviewed on GeForce GTX 1070, 16GB RAM, i7-7700HQ
Multiplayer? 4 player online co-op
Link Official website

South Park: Snow Day is a curious game, one that in light of the series' more ambitious RPG offerings comes off like a side entry. The town of South Park is struck by a serious snow day, communicated brilliantly with a cartoon opening in which you see residents frozen to death and tankers crashing into the ice while Cartman prays school is cancelled. When school is indeed closed you, as the new kid (the same canonical new kid from Stick of Truth and Fractured But Whole) are roped into Cartman and Kyle's ongoing fantasy war between loosely-themed wizards and elves.

There's a lot to enjoy in how Snow Day sets the scene, with one especially good early clip seeing Cartman berate players who discovered overpowered tricks in previous South Park games, liberally dispensing blame while vowing this time it will be different. Snow Day then slowly introduces its core elements: this is a wave-based, co-op third-person action game. Interestingly, Snow Day is equal parts melee and ranged, a flexible setup that sees you relentlessly shank, burn, and crush cute little elves (to begin with) while fulfilling objectives in various South Park-y environments.

Snow Day's combat basics are rudimentary: a melee combo and charge attack, alongside one of four ranged weapons (one tosses fireballs in lazy arcs, another burns enemies with a direct beam, and so on). It's satisfying enough barreling through groups of enemies with a giant axe spin attack, and Snow Day mixes things up with two abilities you set at the start of a match (I've been using a healing totem and a charge attack). But what really elevates the combat is a deck of genuinely imaginative power-up cards. 

Card power-ups take various forms, with each faction for a particular level