Three Reasons Why The Stick of Truth Succeeds

GameInformer has produced a small editorial that attempts to give three bullet-point-style reasons South Park: The Stick of Truth suceeds. At least one of the reasons listed has been actually the subject of much criticism immediately before and after the release of the game:

An RPG that doesn’t overstay its welcome
One of the challenging parts of the RPG genre is the length of most entries. When sitting down for most roleplaying titles, you can expect to spend 40 hours or more (sometimes hundreds) before reaching the end.

South Park: The Stick of Truth took me 12 hours on the game clock (probably a little longer thanks to multiple attempts at the Al Gore boss fight). By the time it was over, I had just reached the point of being ready to put it down.

I imagine that with more time, additional material could have been coaxed out of Trey Parker and Matt Stone (and there were certainly some references that didn’t make the cut), but at a dozen hours, it’s a game I can come back to for a weekend some time in the future. I’ve watched most South Park episodes multiple times, and I’ll definitely want to replay The Stick of Truth.