South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play was developed by Double Six and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released on October 7th, 2009 for 800MS points.

South Park LGTDP is a tower defense game with twist. The twist is that you can control one of fifteen available characters from the South Park world as you build your defenses. This adds a very welcomed action element to the game making it much more than a strategic experience. South Park fans have waited a long time for a quality console game based off the show; there was quite a large amount of expectations with this title. Thankfully, South Park LGTDP delivers a great amount of fun, content, innuendos and laughs for a minimal fee.

So here’s what we liked:

Great level design – A common issue with average tower defense games is restricted level designs. South Park LGTDP allows users to essentially make their own levels with most levels acting as a blank canvas. The snow walls are cheap and easy to build allowing users to redirect waves of enemies into personalized gauntlets. A properly placed Plasma Ball inside a 180-degree turn can act as a great clean up area for any lucky enemies that may have survived your main attack areas.

Content galore – South Park LGTDP packs an insane amount of content for enthusiastic South Park fans. Along the way through the game players can unlock 15 playable characters all with unique abilities, 11 levels, 5 challenges, 8 towers, 81 videos and 20 enemies. Each of these items can be located inside the Scrapbook feature, which adds a unique bit of information about each unlockable allowing players to learn how to properly strategize their attacks.

Replay value – With the addition of 4 difficulty levels, local and online co-op and the content listed above, South Park LGTDP provides countless hours of replay value. Better scores can be obtained by playing on higher difficulty levels, building less towers and collecting more money. For the more intense tower defense players, a real challenge can be found in earning platinum medals in every level. For an extra bonus, try playing with the sound up and listen to the various amounts of sound clips each unique character possesses. The desire to hear which group of people Cartman will offend next is reason enough to keep playing.

And here’s what we didn’t like:

DLC done wrong – Most gamers probably don’t even know that DLC was available for this game. The reason this is unknown would be because it was only available through redeemable codes given out to fans that were paying very close attention. If you bought the game within the first month of release, you probably received an email with a redeemable code for a 16th character, Professor Chaos. It was in the fine print of promotional poster found on SouthParkStudios.com and the code likely filtered into  junk mail folders in most cases. Considering how powerful Professor Chaos can be, this is quite a missed opportunity.

A second DLC code was also awarded via SouthParkStudios.com for answering incredibly hard trivia questions. There were 10 codes given away every day for a span of 1-2 weeks that included an additional 2 challenge levels. As a fan of the show that has seen each episode multiple times, even I had a tough time snagging these codes as you had to answer 10 questions correctly each day and the first 10 people with ALL the correct answers were rewarded the redeemable codes. This was not an easy contest to win.

With that said, you can’t help but notice the obvious misstep here. South Park is such a great franchise with an unlimited amount of possibilities. Instead of contests, these DLC packs should have been available for purchase. And on that note, many DLC packs should have been available for purchase. More characters, enemies, towers and levels could have kept this game in constant rotation for most gamers. Think of the incredible run of 15 seasons South Park has created. There was a real opportunity to cash in with constant updates and instead South Park LGTDP stands as one of the most wasted opportunities the XBLA platform has ever witnessed.

South Park LGTDP is a great experience from start to finish. The laughable moments are non-stop and the gameplay never gets stale. Any fan of the show will likely be pleased with this game as it does justice for the South Park brand. Hours of fun can be had while trying to unlock all the bonus content making this one of the better “bang for your buck” downloads on the marketplace.

Score: Buy it!