You'd have been forgiven for expecting the new South Park game to follow a similar structure to that of 2014s The Stick of Truth and 2017's The Fractured But Whole, but South Park: Snow Day! is a very different beast to those 2D adventures, transforming the series into 3D and offering up a very different gameplay experience.
That said, Snow Day does essentially act as a successor to the previous two titles. This time around, a devastating blizzard has engulfed South Park much to the kids' delight, and once again you step into the role of the "New Kid" as you attempt to battle your way to victory against the likes of Kyle, Stan and Kenny.
At its core, the gameplay is very simple - you charge at enemies and use the X button to hack-and-slash them with your sword, for example, or you can fire ranged attacks at them instead. The added depth comes from various cards that provide you with special powers, such as the ability to gross enemies out with your immense farting ability, or maybe shield yourself with a protective bubble. Along the way, Jimmy offers you upgrades for your abilities, and there are also special "bulls**t" powers that provide you (and the AI) with a temporary major advantage.
All of this is purely single-player or co-op based, with no PvP involved whatsoever. Each of the roughly 30-45 minute chapters are broken down into "runs", and you can embark on these with up to three other friends - or simply enjoy them in single-player and receive assistance from three AI bots. The former is definitely preferable, but playing alone can still be good fun, albeit not quite to the same degree because of the game's repetitive nature.
The best thing we can probably say about the gameplay is that it's more enjoyable than it looks. We don't know about you, but we didn't have high hopes for South Park: Snow Day! based on the initial trailers, but we've been low-key impressed with it so far. The combat is very simplistic by design but still has enough depth to keep things interesting throughout each run, especially when boss fights come into play. The controls feel good for the most part (although ranged attacks feel a bit imprecise at times for our liking), and the way the card system works is actually really well implemented.
It helps that everything blends into the world of South Park so well, too. Some of the enemies you fight are little kids dressed up as elves, Mr. Hankey shows up to offer you "dark" abilities, and even the adults of South Park are often making humourous appearances as they try and deal with the blizzard that's engulfed the town. In fact, the humour of Snow Day is once again the biggest highlight in our opinion, with the game featuring hilarious cutscenes and a genuinely TV-quality storyline that makes the campaign well worth playing through.
With all that said, there are definitely some question marks that hang over this game at launch. The big one is how much post-launch content it's going to get, because as things stand right now, it's limited to just a very short campaign. Yes, the gameplay is fun and we could envisage ourselves replaying these chapters a couple of times with friends, but after that it's hard to see where the replayability lies. There's a reason this game is launching for just $29.99, and the reality is that you'll have seen everything the story has to offer within just a handful of hours.
And so, while we're more impressed than we expected to be with South Park: Snow Day! so far, we're really keen to see what the roadmap of content is for the weeks, months and (maybe?) years ahead. It's a game that feels like it's had a lot of love poured into it by little-known developer "Question", but it remains to be seen whether this is just the beginning for Xbox's latest South Park adventure, or whether it's a pretty abrupt end.