South Park, the outrageous cartoon from Comedy Central is now a videogame. The translation from cartoon to videogame proves to be a smooth one, retaining much of the source's unique humor. Filled to the limit with tons of expletives and wacky humor, Acclaim has captured the essence of the show perfectly.

The game is basically a Turok-style shooter with a simple premise. A deadly comet is passing by the Earth, spewing weird green gas around South Park and creating all sorts of strange occurrences. Incorporating plot elements from some of the most popular episodes, the game features levels involving mad turkeys, giant clones, and anal probing aliens. It's up to the four kids of South Park -- Kyle, Cartman, Stan and Kenny -- to stop the menace from destroying human civilization.

The graphics feature a first person perspective with environments ranging from towns to snowfields and caves. Cut scenes feature polygon South Park characters that will be familiar to fans of the show. Chef acts as advisor to the kids, explaining the objectives of each mission. Throughout the game, bits of humor are thrown in to make the game one running joke. Sound acts to support the ambience of the environment, such as the squishing of snow to the mad gobbles of the charging turkeys.

The player can choose to play as any of the four main kids of South Park. My favorite is Cartman because he gets pissed off the most. Kenny is the strangest character, mainly because you can't understand a word he says.Player characters cuss in proportion how much they're being attacked. These episodes are complete with bleeps which cover words that can't get past the censors. Each character has his own sayings and reactions, which are in accordance to their own personalities. The background music, on the other hand, is nothing remarkable, being a rather repetitive beat whose monotony is luckily interrupted by more cussing.

In the story mode, every player starts out with snowballs for weapons and must find the other characters while shooting down charging enemies. Each kid has 100 hit points which can be recovered by finding Cheesy Poof items. The controls are "Turok" controls, with the yellow C buttons used for movement and the Z trigger for attack. The whole game is from first person perspective which has its disadvantages since this makes it harder to see behind you. Fortunately, a radar screen is included which indicates approaching enemies. Weapons range from the unlimited snowballs to dodge balls, toilet plungers, dart guns, and the ultimate: a cow launcher bazooka. As if these weapons weren't weird enough, you can also get a warp-ray with varying effects, such as shooting fish or shrinking enemies. There's even an item which makes enemies sing and dance to annoying music. Each weapon also has primary and secondary attack power. Finally, each kid is adept at using one weapon and not so good with the other weapons.

Once all the kids are collected, the player is able to change which character they are using depending on which weapons they have available. The story mode progresses through five episodes of attacks by different enemies. The game also features a multi-player mode with up to four players at once. In this mode, the gamer gets to choose which environment to fight in, time limits and number of wins needed before the battle is completed. In this case, the players fight against each other rather than enemies from the episodes. Additionally, most of the weapons are available for use even if they have not yet been found during story mode play. Most of the time these romps turn into one character pounding on the opposite characters until they're dead, while all the while spouting loads of colorful metaphors.

Most TV and movie game translations are shoddy jobs, which don't capture the feel of the original. In the case of South Park, the developers took great pains to retain everything which made the show such a huge hit. As a result, they've produced a fun game which fans of the series cannot afford to miss.