Ubisoft has added their own weight to the recent bombardment of Nintendo Switch offerings, by announcing that as early as late this month (September), the acclaimed South Park: The Stick of Truth would be coming to Nintendo's hybrid console.

We reviewed the game back in 2014 when we caught horses to work, and not these newfangled hoverboards everyone is currently gliding along to school and places of work on. Back then we wrote:

To this end, there needs to be a heavy reliance on the game’s combat and exploration, which is actually very tight. Turn-based RPG rules made popular by the Paper Mario series are in check, and as fun and engaging as ever, but if you’re not a fan of South Park it’ll be hard for me to tell you the value of “Cup a Fart”.

The more recent South Park: The Fractured But Whole is already available on Nintendo Switch, but is actually a sequel to The Stick of Truth, so if you're new to the South Park games at all, you can now start at the proper beginning and follow it up with the brilliant sequel.

Here's Ubi's official line on the new release, coming September 25:

For a thousand years, the battle has been waged. The sole reason humans and elves are locked in a never-ending war: The Stick of Truth. But the tides of war are soon to change as word of a new kid spreads throughout the land, his coming foretold by the stars. As the moving vans of prophecy drive away, your adventure begins.

Arm yourself with weapons of legend to defeat underpants gnomes, hippies, and other forces of evil. Discover the lost Stick of Truth and succeed in earning your place alongside Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny as their new friend. Fail, and you will forever be known...as a loser.

South Park: The Stick of Truth will be available in digital form only for an RRP of USD$29.99.

Even with a crying koala censoring out content not deemed appropriate for Australian audiences, despite an R18+ classification, South Park: The Stick of Truth is worth an investment. In fact, it's partly because of that koala the game should not be overlooked.

The koala was Matt and Trey's idea, and they deliver explanations whenever the upset critter is needed in the game. It speaks volumes of their involvement in the product, even down to the Aussie rating of it. This is best experienced while playing though, because you get the sense you're just playing a very long and fun episode of the show, written by its creators. The only real downside to any of this is if you're not a fan of South Park, and if you're not, it's you're loss really.

Click here for our South Park: The Stick of Truth review.

With only two weeks to go until Obsidian's upcoming South Park: The Stick of Truth RPG, some may still be wondering just what exactly this newest RPG has to offer to the mass. At first glance it looks like any normal episode from the TV show, but diving in deeper we can see that Obsidian's RPG background has helped flesh out a unique look into the world of South Park, complete with its dark humour and hilarious jokes.

To give us his thoughts on just what South Park: The Stick of Truth has to offer is our own Stephen Farrelly, who happened to get a chance to try out their take on the cult classic cartoon.

It’s difficult for me to sit on the fence though, because I’m a massive fan of the series and especially of the quality of writing and the presentation over the past 10 seasons, but as a huge fan I can tell you they’ve hit every beat. The game reeks of Matt and Trey’s heavy involvement and that it’s interactive in RPG form the way that it is, just makes that much more appealing.

Find out his full thoughts in our South Park: The Stick of Truth preview.

It is hard to believe that Matt Stone and Trey Parker's South Park: The Stick of Truth is actually just around the corner, after numerous delays hitting the title in its development cycle. For those who may still be worried, Obsidian has today revealed the first 13 minutes of gameplay to help ease your nerves and prepare for the fart jokes.

South Park: The Game is an epic role-playing adventure that will allow the user to befriend Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny and explore the quiet little mountain town like never before.

Check it out in its full glory below alongside a handful of new screenshots showing off the valiants efforts of Princess Kenny and crew.

If you're the type of videogame enthusiast that wants all of their games on Steam and feels pestered by a secondary login of publisher's own services like Ubisoft's Uplay, then Obsidian Entertainment has good news for you regarding the upcoming launch of South Park: The Stick of Truth.

Addressing fan Q&A via its official Twitter account an Obsidian rep has confirmed that South Park: The Stick of Truth will be a Steam game with Steam achievements, and will not require or feature any implementation of the Uplay platform.

@Obsidian: .@TheYachmenev No, Uplay will not be featured in SP:SOT

-2:06 PM - 4 Feb 2014

While a complete explanation wasn't offered, it seems likely that the omission is due to the game having started its life under now defunct publisher THQ before it was acquired by Ubisoft during THQ's bankruptcy proceedings. In a subsequent Twitter reply Obsidian posits that "Uplay was not integrated at all into SP:SOT", indicating that there's no option to use Uplay for the game, even if a player wanted to.

South Park: The Stick of Truth is due on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on March 6th 2014.

After a turbulent development process Obsidian Entertainment's South Park: The Stick of Truth looks to be on the home stretch toward a March 6 2014 release date. Building up launch momentum, publisher Ubisoft has released two new videos offering short clips of in-game scenes from arbitrary points in the game.

The first features a South Park staple adversary of Eric Cartman, one of South Park Elementary's red haired children, affectionately referred to as Ginger Kids. If Gingivitis wasn't infliction enough, this poor fellow looks to have contracted another disorder.

The other clip teases the reappearance of a classic South Park character, Mr Hankey the Christmas poo, reminding us that The Stick of Truth game will be reaching into all the dark crevices of 17 years of the popular television series.

Comedy duo Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the always-hilarious TV show South Park, have revealed a new behind the scenes video showing just what kind of antics the team at Obsidian get up to while working on South Park: The Stick of Truth.

You begin as the new kid in town facing a harrowing challenge: making friends. As you start your quest the children of South Park are embroiled in a city-wide, live-action-role-playing game, casting imaginary spells and swinging fake swords. Over time the simple children’s game escalates into a battle of good and evil that threatens to consume the world.

Arm yourself with weapons of legend to defeat crabpeople, underpants gnomes, hippies and other forces of evil. Discover the lost Stick of Truth and earn your place at the side of Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny as their new friend. Succeed, and you shall be South Park’s savior, cementing your social status in South Park Elementary. Fail, and you will forever be known… as a loser.

With a look at just how Stone and Parker hope to bring their TV show to video game life and some of the key elements being brought into the video game, the new behind the scenes video also gives some brief glimpses at new gameplay that you can very soon expect to be playing. Check it out below.

South Park: The Stick of Truth will be available March 7th in Australia on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Our friends over at Player Attack have dug further into the recent revelation that the upcoming South Park: The Stick of Truth has been censored in order to meet Australian Classification guidelines, discovering that the game actually underwent two previous submissions to the Australian Classification Board before achieving an R18+ rating.

Descriptions of the scenes in question suggest that the game's conflict with local guidelines was predominantly due to scenes of sexual violence, and although the board noted that they were clearly satirical in nature, the content was still deemed to 'exceed what could be accomodated under the R18+ classification'.

According to the Classification Boards official report, the scenes in question are an Alien Anal probe, and a DIY abortion:

An "interactive animated sequence" featured in the game is simply titled "Alien Probing", and includes just about everything you'd expect. Male characters are captured by aliens and stripped buttock-nude before "repeatedly having an oversized, phallic probe thrust into their buttocks", mimicking sexual movements and accompanied by "squelching" sound effects.

The adult characters' voices and comments suggest that they are sedated or deeply asleep and, while one character, Mr Slave, seems to find the probing pleasurable and says "can we try the big silver one again," no indication of explicit or implicit consent is viewed in the sequence.

...

There is also another scene which a minority of the Board found both thematically offensive, and very high in impact, particularly due to its interactivity. Set inside an abortion clinic, male characters are dressed as females.

The player controls the doctor's hands and repeatedly thrusts a length of wire between the patient's splayed legs (implicitly to bring about an abortion) before applying a vacuum device to the patient's genital region (below screen).

As no strangers to censorship struggles, South Parks creators appear to have made the best of the situation, taking advantage of the fact that using text to describe scenes of a graphic nature rather than showing it is deemed acceptable by Australia's classification guidelines, so the dialogue of the relevant parts of the game will remain, with the visuals obscured by the image of a crying koala.

South Park: The Stick of Truth is due on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on March 4th 2013.

While we thought that the war had been won when it came to R18+ ratings for video games in Australia, with many believing that our games in Down Under wouldn't suffer being censored unless it was something truly controversial, it seems that is sadly not the case.

The latest victim to fall under the content cutting knife is Ubisoft's South Park: The Stick of Truth, with Player Attack reporting that Australian gamers will be receiving an R18+ rated game, albeit censored, come March next year. Ubisoft hasn't confirmed what exactly it cut, though it has been revealed that the game went through two successful ratings, both R18+.

According to the Australian Classification Board, the game had been rated three weeks earlier under the name "Codename", complete with the same "High impact crude humour, sex scenes and references to sexual violence" description given to the official South Park rating review. Interestingly, Player Attack reports that both versions of the game refer to "modified" content, though Ubisoft has again not said anything on the matter.

According to the ESRB, the North American version of our Classification Board, US gamers will be receiving the "uncut" version, complete with what they describe as "several instances of mature humor and sexual material: one extended sequence depicts characters getting anally probed by alien creatures." You can check out the full colourful reading of their description here.

South Park: The Stick of Truth will be available come March 6th for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Ubisoft, Obsidian Entertainment and South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have officially confirmed that the long-awaited RPG based on the popular animated series, South Park: The Stick of Truth has been delayed yet again, with a new release date set for March 4th 2014.

A blog post by Ubisoft explains the decision, which is actually the game's second delay after the new publisher acquired the rights from THQ's bankruptcy auction.

Why the new delay? Well, when Ubisoft picked up the game, we thought: Easy. We’ll put some marketing muscle behind Stick of Truth, toss some additional development resources at it, then take it to the finish line with Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The game’s almost done, anyways – so what more could we do?

Apparently, quite a bit more. “Within three weeks after acquiring the game, we sadly realized we had to turn this thing upside down if we hoped to deliver the experience everybody wanted,” says Ubisoft North America’s president Laurent Detoc. “It’s been such a major overhaul to get to the point where we are that we couldn’t let it go, even if that meant missing December.”

South Park’s creators wholeheartedly agree. “We always wanted the game to feel like you’re actually in an episode of South Park,” say Matt Stone and Trey Parker. “Getting the game up to the crappy standards of the show has been a real challenge and we’re excited to say it’s taken way longer than we thought it would.”

As a consolation, Ubi has released a new trailer, featuring the longest look at actual gameplay that it has offered publicly yet.

Watch South Park: The Stick of Truth new gameplay trailer. Follow the boys on their quest and discover the Inn of the Giggling Donkey, an infamous tavern that harbors the scum of all the realm.

Join Butters and his legendary hammer of justice and play through the most outrageous role playing adventure ever made. This is South Park: The Stick of Truth, from the creators of South Park.

Check it out below.

Ubisoft has announced that the much anticipated animated RPG South Park: The Stick of Truth will indeed be arriving before the end of year, confirming a December 10th 2013 US release date, followed by December 13th in Europe. As is Ubisoft's way, these release dates are only for the console versions of the game on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and although the game is still coming to Windows PC, that date "will be shared at a later time".

A collector's edition of the game titled "Grand Wizard Edition" was also revealed, which in addition to the console game, will include the following bonuses:

• Grand Wizard Kidrobot® Cartman Figure
  Own the Grand Wizard Cartman and his stick of authority with this six-inch replica figure from Kidrobot®. The Grand Wizard Cartman figure is not available in stores and can only be found in the Grand Wizard Edition.
  
• Kingdom of South Park Map
  The entire town of South Park has been mapped for the first time in South Park history.
  
• The Stick of Truth Ultimate Fellowship Pack
  Unlock the ultimate fellowship with the one pack to rule them all! Choose your class and pick your perk with four exclusive Stick of Truth costumes that come equipped with special abilities. Suit up as the Necromancer Sorcerer to increase your fire damage, earn extra gold by equipping the Rogue Assassin outfit, deal extra weapon damage with the Ranger Elf costume, or raise your defence with the Holy Defender outfit. The choice is yours, New Kid.

A new trailer and five new screenshots accompanied the announcement, and as before, are indistinguishable from the long-running television show. Check them out below.

Update: We've now received local Australian launch details, which will see the game touch down on our shores on December 12th for PS3 and X360, and the Grand Wizard Edition will be exclusive to EB Games and Ubisoft's own Uplay shop.

With THQ's bankruptcy asset sale now set to proceed with a piecemeal auction of the publisher's various studios, franchises and publishing contracts, third party companies invested in games that are currently in development under THQ are understandably nervous.

In the case of South Park Digital Studios, the rights holders of South Park, they've filed a legal challenge asserting that the terms of their deal with THQ prevents such a sale, claiming that they should instead be able to purchase the work done so far on the RPG South Park: The Stick of Truth, presumably to ensure that it is transferred to the right hands for its most prosperous chance at completion (via Polygon):

South Park Digital Studios objects to the proposed sale, stating in the document that "applicable law excuses Licensor from accepting performance from or rendering performance to a party other than THQ." Furthermore, even if the acquisition were possible, THQ has "not provided adequate assurance of future performance of the Deal Memo in the hands of a prospective purchaser." The sale would require South Park Digital Studios' consent because the elements being sold are owned and licensed by the studio.

According to the objection, the Deal Memo affords South Park Digital Studios "the option to acquire from THQ all elements of the South Park game and related products in the event of THQ's breach, provided that Licensor pays to THQ the actual costs incurred and paid by THQ."

In development at Obsidian Entertainment, South Park: The Stick of Truth was slated for release on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in THQ's 2014 fiscal year, which commences in April.

The latest trailer for Obsidian Entertainment's upcoming South Park: The Stick of Truth debut during the weekend's Spike VGAs, offering us yet more evidence of just how faithfully this game is recreating the aesthetic of the long-running television series.

The two minute clip could be straight from an episode of the show, but it's not just a cinematic trailer, there's more than a few shots of actual combat gameplay scattered throughout, and we presume the rest is at least rendered in the game's engine. Check it out below.

South Park: The Stick of Truth is due on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2013 (currently slated for early in THQ's next fiscal year, which commences in April).

THQ's second quarter earnings report has brought the news that three of their much anticipated upcoming titles have been delayed.

Obsidian's South Park: The Stick of Truth has been pushed back from its previous March 5th 2012 target to THQ's fiscal year 2014 (which commences April 2013), and Relic's Company of Heroes 2, and 4A Games' Metro: Last Light will now be arriving in March 2013 (via Games Industry International):

“When I joined THQ the company made a public commitment to quality titles. We always expected that in some cases this would mean that more time would be needed to make sure that every title is of the highest possible quality,” said Jason Rubin, THQ's President. “Our fourth quarter releases are the first titles that I have had the ability to materially impact, and experience told me that the games needed additional development time to be market-ready."

“I believe South Park's market opportunity is significant," Rubin continued. "It is shaping up to be one of the most anticipated titles of calendar 2013. It is also an expansive title, encompassing multiple television seasons' worth of content. We have been working closely with the co-creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, to make sure all of the game's content performs to the high standards of the TV show, and this takes time. THQ is committed to giving gamers no less than the rich South Park game they have been waiting for and deserve."

“We are also inspired by the potential for Metro: Last Light and Company of Heroes 2. I believe Metro: Last Light is a title that should set standards for visuals with its stunning atmosphere, unique location and cutting-edge style. Company of Heroes was one of the highest rated RTS titles in history, and Relic insists that the sequel live up to its pedigree. Giving both of these titles time to reach their full potential is the right thing to do for the products."

The earnings call also made mention of the Saints Row sequel, Homefront 2, and the "as-yet-unannounced game from Turtle Rock Studios" as among a total of ten titles due in THQ's fiscal 2014, and promised more details about their "future slate in the coming months".

A handful of new screenshots from Obsidian Entertainment's South Park: The Stick of Truth, offer another quick look at just how much the upcoming 2D-styled RPG is being crafted to look like the long running animated TV series.

You begin as the new kid in town facing a harrowing challenge: making friends. As you start your quest the children of South Park are embroiled in a city-wide, live-action-role-playing game, casting imaginary spells and swinging fake swords. Over time the simple children’s game escalates into a battle of good and evil that threatens to consume the world.

Arm yourself with weapons of legend to defeat crabpeople, underpants gnomes, hippies and other forces of evil. Discover the lost Stick of Truth and earn your place at the side of Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny as their new friend. Succeed, and you shall be South Park’s savior, cementing your social status in South Park Elementary. Fail, and you will forever be known… as a loser.

Hit the thumbs below for a closer look.

South Park: The Stick of Truth is due on march 5th 2013 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with the later expected to get exclusivity windows on DLC releases.

Originally announced with a 2012 release date, THQ's latest fiscal report has revealed that the Obsidian-developed RPG has now been scheduled for a Q4 FY13 for the company, which equates to the time period between January 1st 2013 and March 31st 2013.

Referred to as South Park: The Game, the actual title is rumoured to be South park: The Stick of Truth and like most of THQ's remaining lineup is in the works for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.