The Japanese are ruthlessly slaughtering whales and dolphins, and only Stan Marsh can stop them, not that his friends give a damn. They're too busy rocking out to Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" in Rock Band to care about what happens to the dolphins. "Poker Face" isn't actually a Rock Band song at the moment, but after watching the clip below I am convinced it needs to be. I mean, I care about dolphins and all, mainly because they add a little extra oomph to my tuna fish sandwiches, but playing Rock Band is much more entertaining.

See more clips from the episode at South Park Studios' website.

The game has players use coins to build a variety of towers that do things like shoot snowballs, cherry balls, ice and pee-snowballs at incoming enemies like old people, Mongolians and terrorists. Killing baddies causes them to exploded into bits and sometimes shoot out coins which can then be used to buy more towers, build walls or upgrade.

So let's go tower defense play or let's not?

Loved
Dude, It's South Park: Before playing Let's Go Tower Defense Play!, I thought this game had two things it needed to do: One is recapture the show. And it does. Let's Go Tower Defense Play! does a solid job of creating the South Park world, characters and art style. There are unlockable clips, which for most players will be stuff they've seen before. Still, it's a nice addition for an XBLA title. What about the second part, you ask? Well, read on below...

Let's Go Tower Defense Play: Sure, it doesn't reinvent the tower defense game, it doesn't have to. Rather the second thing this title needed to do, I thought, was deliver a solid tower defense game experience. It does.

Hated
Shut Up Fat Boy: South Park is a funny show, it makes me laugh. Though, when you're playing through a stage for the umpteenth time and you're hearing the same sound clip for the umpteenth time, the humor, sadly, wears thin.

Save Points: One of the strong points for XBLA games is that they're shorter than package titles. They are pick up and play games — better yet, play and put down games. Let's Go Tower Defense Play! has some challenging stages that gobbled up a fair bit of this reviewer's time. That's fine, it's value for money. However, it would be nice if players could save their gave between areas in the same level, instead of completing one part of the level and having to play through the entire level to get the stage point. It ends up being a time sink. In the game's defense, the developers have made it possible to skip harder challenges.

After seeing what has been done with previous South Park games, my expectations for South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play were low, exceedingly so. The title was a pleasant surprise with a fair amount of unlockable items and characters and just enough replay grist. Developer Doublesix, who recently released zombie shooter Burn Zombie Burn! bring a workman quality to the game, which never ends up feeling like South Park characters have simply been slapped on a tower defense game.

South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play was developed by Doublesix and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox LIVE Arcade. Released on October 7, the game is priced at 800 Microsoft Points for Xbox LIVE in North America. Played through all levels, tested online and challenge mode.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

What Is It?
South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! is an October Xbox Live Arcade game developed by Double Six Games. It plays a lot like familiar tower defense games but with the added element of directly-controlled character-based attacks. Up to four players, linked online or offline, can control their choice of four characters from South Park, using them to build towers or directly throw white (or yellow) snowballs at an attacking horde. That attacking horde, like all tower defense enemies, wants to cross the screen. Other games made that horde a bunch of spiders or aliens. South Park populates that horde with the TV series' staple nemeses: Cows, ginger kids, woodland critters, hippies? I don't watch the show, people, but I believe those are some of the classic bad guys, yes?

What We Saw
I played a board set on a snowy sidewalk on a signature South Park street. I was Kenny for a bit. Then, yes, I let him get killed by mistake. So I took control of Cartman for the rest of the fight. A rep for the game controlled one of the other characters. We built towers, threw snowballs and stopped the pesky cows from reaching the right of the screen.

How Far Along Is It?
The South Park game will be available on October 7 as a download through Xbox Live Arcade, which leads me to think it's just about done.

What Needs Improvement?
Perfect Level Design: There are many recent tower defense games, and several superb ones. The king of them on consoles may be the PlayStation 3's PixelJunk Monsters, a game that sets a standard of specific and delicately balanced level design. Each level feels distinct and artfully structured. South Park does not immediately prove that its levels have the same degree of craft to some of its competitors. I don't mean for this to be an unfair bit of skepticism. I've only played the game for five minutes. But, given the quality of games recently released in this genre, South Park's levels will need to be very good to be satisfying in terms of gameplay.

What Should Stay The Same?
Character Offenses: I think it's a good idea that characters can not just build towers that shoot at hippies, but throw snowballs at them themselves. I think it should stay in there (of course it will — the game's out in October). I'm a little concerned that being able to chuck snowballs could undermine the genre's reliance on strategic deployment of towers. We'll see. In the level of South Park I played, I didn't just have the option to build a variety of cannons. I could run up to a cow and throw a snowball at it. Holding down an action button powered that snowball up so that it became yellow. So imagine a cow gets past all your towers. No problem. Chuck a snowball. Beyond that, each character has special moves. Cartman can execute a super move that makes him deal more damage. Kenny can cause enemies to drop money. Stan can heal the town, which otherwise takes damage if attackers have broken through to that right part of the screen.

More Lore: The game is full of unlockable characters, including Jimmy, Timmy and others a non-South-Park-watcher like me couldn't recognize when I saw them in silhouette in one of the game's menus. It also has more than 80 show clips that are pulled from the hit series. Those include a clip of one of the South Park kids masturbating his dog. A clip called Proper Condom Use. From Episode 307. Hmm...should I watch this show?

Final Thoughts
I had trouble judging how good the gameplay of South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! will be, but it looked like the game will offer a lot of fan service to the series' faithful. It's ribald and comprehensive. The four-player offline and online support is promising, too. Check it out in early October when the demo and full game hit the Xbox 360.

South Park Digital Studios developers offer additional insight into how the game will play in this GameTrailers clip, describing South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! as a combination of traditional tower defense tactics and arcade style shooters—think Desktop Tower Defense meets Geometry Wars with South Park's stable of characters.

Potentially incredibly addictive, should the developers pluck the right parts from each game. After South Park: Chef's Luv Shack and South Park Rally, there's really nowhere to go but up.

South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! HD [GameTrailers]

Microsoft's Comic-Con presence will feature a playable South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play!, described as a "fast-paced action/strategy game that combines these lovable characters with snowball battles and tower defense tactics." The company also dated the game for October 7th, just in time for new episodes of the Comedy Central show.

The game will likely also get some serious panel time at the "Save South Park One Snowball at a Time" session, happening at the San Diego Comic-Con this Saturday at 3:30 PM. Dudes from Microsoft Game Studios and South Park Digital Studios will be on hand to tell us more about the game. Oh, we'll definitely be there, covering all that nonsense. Watch for it!

"South Park actually is coming," John Schappert, Microsoft's corporate vice president of interactive entertainment LIVE, software and services said in an interview with Kotaku yesterday. "I think what you saw in our [Xbox 360 press] briefing is that there was so much rapid-fire information that we just didn't have time to cover everything."

Schappert said the game is still a Live Arcade game, that it's "a lot of fun and looks great." It will be out this year, he added, but declined to provide any gameplay details.

The game has been in development at Doublesix and has been listed on Xbox.com as a strategy game.

Last night's new episode of South Park, "Margaritaville", actually had a rather clever little plot, turning a commentary on the economic recession into a retelling of the story of Jesus. With South Park's economy in a shambles, Stan's dad Randy preaches the evils of frivolous spending, causing the citizens of South Park to wear bed sheet robes and stop buying ridiculous things. Cartman is pissed, because the new trend coincides with the release of "Grand Theft Auto IV" for the Nintendo DS.

The writers might have screwed up the game name the first time around, but they get it painstakingly right the next three times, as you can see in the clip below.
You can watch the full episode online right now at Comedy Central. Ironically enough, when I watched the episode early this morning, it was sponsored by Resident Evil 5.

Rockstar dropped us a line to let us know they had nothing to do with the game showing up in the episode, but thought it was great.

South Park Studios

It sounded weird to begin with, as it was Guitar Hero, not Rock Band, as the subject of an entire South Park episode in season 11. But Rock Band is an MTV Game, and Comedy Central is part of Viacom, which also owns MTV. So, maybe someone went rogue, made up some tracks for a competing game because that's what was used in the show, and got shot down. Or, as Xbox 360 Fanboy speculates, retailers said "Rock Band" meaning "Guitar Hero," the same way I still hear old people still say "Sega" when they mean "any console you plug into a TV." (Yes, "Sega." It was in the grocery store about 10 days ago. I know, I know.)

Who knows. Bottom line, you're not getting any South Park Rock Band tracks. Cartman thinks your tears are yummy and sweet.

Important Update About Rock Band Bonus for South Park [TV Shows on DVD, via TV Squad]

Later this year, folks who buy the South Park season 11 DVD set will be treated to a trio of unspecified Rock Band tracks alongside top shelf poop and dick jokes. Details? Scant! All this cross selling makes us wonder: Could Rock Band be the greatest cross promotion tool ever to grace the video game medium?

Best Buy Promoting Exclusive Rock Band X360 DLC; Tracks Will Be Publicly Available in June [Shacknews]
South Park - Interesting Bonus Item, Early Box Art forThe Complete 11th Season: Uncensored [TV Shows On DVD]

Hit the jump for an entry from South Park's production blog about the experience of making the episode.

...tonight's episode is a sobering experience. After watching it come together I feel like maybe we flew a little too close to the nerdy sun with Guitar Hero. Maybe we should take a step back and look at the dark side of being a Guitar Hero:

More often than not, a dude who pulls out a guitar looks and behaves like a total douche. We've all seen it before: some jerk trying to impress the ladies with his badass skills banging out Coldplay as hard as he can. Ugh.

Well, imagine that douche . . . now take away the guitar and replace it with a plastic video game controller. We're even worse than that loser, because we're pretending to be him, all the while tapping our feet and clicking our fingers with the same proud idiocy that the real-life jerk performs with.

Mike McMahan, Production Assistant: The Long And Nerdy Road [southparkblog]

Eat it, world. Mario is as big as Mr. Clean.

Mario on South Park [gonintendo]

Reader Sylient points out that the South Park homage to World of Warcraft, Make Love, Not Warcraft, won the 2007 Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for programming less than one hour). As a fellow Coloradoan and gamer let me be nowhere near the first to congratulate Trey Parker, Matt Stone and his team for the much deserved award.

Hit up the exclusive snippet of Make Love Not Warcraft commentary in the clip above to get a taste of how the creative process worked in the now award-winning episode.

The South Park gang was kind enough to shoot us this exclusive early look at some of the commentary included in the Make Love Not Warcraft episode. I also had a chance to watch through the gaming episodes and listen to the commentary. Pretty interesting stuff in there.

The guys said they had been thinking of doing a WoW episode for quite awhile, mostly because nearly everyone on their team plays the game. Though one of the guys, it's hard to tell who was talking, said that he played it for about hours and then got sick of it... that's exactly what WoW was like for me too. How weird. They go on to talk about making the episode and some funny problems they ran into.

More interesting, I thought was their discussion about the Wii episode which lead to, they say, both of them getting free Wiis from Nintendo. One of the guys says that during the lead up to Nintendo's new console like "95 percent of my day was the Wii. I'd been waiting for it to come out for five months and at the end of the day that's what I was concerned about."

He said that's a good explanation of his religious beliefs too and his take on atheism. "You can argue and you can get upset at these people and they can get upset at them, but the fucking Wii is coming out."

The shows themselves are, of course, hilarious, so the gaming connection, and that free WoW trial, are just the cherry on top.

The DVD collection goes on sale August 21 for a manufacturer suggested price of $49.99, but can be had for far less at the right retailers. No word on when Blizzard will finally seal that deal with God himself to imprint trial versions of WoW on our DNA. Keep reading for an extremely rare press release.

COMEDY CENTRAL Home Entertainment(R) Releases 'South Park: The Complete Tenth Season' DVD to Hit Stores on Tuesday, August 21

Bonus Material Features Mini Audio Commentaries on All 14 Episodes by Creators Trey Parker and Matt StoneMemorable Tenth Season Includes the Emmy-Nominated Episode, 'Make Love, Not Warcraft,' 'Tsst' and 'Cartoon Wars Parts I & II'Free 14-Day Trial Edition 'World of Warcraft' DVD-ROM Included With Purchase

NEW YORK, Aug. 6 /PRNewswire/ — In the tenth season of "South Park," Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny band together to defeat a virtual villain, witness the death of their beloved Chef and are enlisted by former Vice President Al Gore to help search for the elusive Manbearpig. Released via COMEDY CENTRAL Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment, "South Park: The Complete Tenth Season" DVD arrives in stores nationwide on Tuesday, August 21 and will also be available at http://shop.comedycentral.com.

"South Park: The Complete Tenth Season" DVD is an exclusive three-disc collector's edition comprised of all 14 legendary episodes. In addition to the Emmy-nominated episode, "Make Love, Not Warcraft" (original air date: October 4, 2006), a free 14-day trial edition of the "World of Warcraft" DVD-ROM is included with the purchase of the DVD set. This unforgettable compilation also features the episode "Tsst" (original air date: May 3, 2006) in which Cartman's Mom seeks the help of Cesar Millan, the "Dog Whisperer," to gain control of her son. The bonus material contains five-to-seven minute mini-commentaries on all 14 episodes by creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Launched in 1997, "South Park" remains the highest-rated series on COMEDY CENTRAL. The animated series was honored with the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award in the 65th Annual Peabody Awards competition and has been nominated for seven Emmy Awards, winning the Emmy in 2005 for Outstanding Animated Program (less than an hour). Trey Parker and Matt Stone are co- creators and executive producers of "South Park," with Anne Garefino also serving as executive producer.

Paramount Home Entertainment (PHE) is part of Paramount Pictures Corporation, a unit of Viacom , a global entertainment company that produces and distributes filmed entertainment through the Paramount Motion Picture Group. PHE is responsible for the worldwide sales, marketing and distribution of home entertainment products on behalf of various parties including: Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks SKG, Paramount Vantage, Paramount Classics, Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, CBS, PBS and Hasbro and for providing home entertainment fulfillment services for DreamWorks Animation Home Entertainment.

COMEDY CENTRAL, the only all-comedy network, currently is seen in more than 91 million homes nationwide. COMEDY CENTRAL is owned by, and is a registered trademark of, Comedy Partners, a wholly-owned division of VIACOM Inc.'s MTV Networks. COMEDY CENTRAL's Internet address is www.comedycentral.com. For up-to-the-minute and archival press information and photographs visit Press Central, COMEDY CENTRAL's press Web site at www.comedycentral.com/press.

The Make Love, Not Warcraft episode of South Park received an Emmy nomination today for outstanding animated program (less than one hour). And it better win it, the outstanding show is up against Avatar, Robot Chicken, SpongeBob and The Simpsons. OK, I do LOVE Robot Chicken, but that South Park episode was brilliant.

The winners will be announced during a live event broadcast on Fox on Sept. 16. Good luck South Park.

Primetime Awards [Emmys, thanks Phil]

Dancing or not, Rock Man (AKA "Mega Man") so makes everything better. Yes, even South Park. Works especially well seeing how the cartoon has referenced Power Ranger-type "Mega Man" toys in the past. Brian Ashcraft

Fan Made Wallpaper Here [*108 Yuuyaku ni Maketa...orz]

Chris Kohler over at Game|Life is reporting that the first South Park episode ever to be presented in HD will be an Xbox Live exclusive. Starting Tuesday, March 6, the episode, Good Times With Weapons, will be available on the Xbox Live Marketplace free of charge for the first two weeks. Then, from March 20 to April 3, Best Buy will be giving away free copies of the episode on HD-DVD with the purchase of an Xbox 360 or it's HD-DVD player.

In case you're like me and episode titles mean nothing to you, Good Times With Weapons is one where the boys acquire ninja weapons from the county fair. The bulk of the remainder of the episode is presented in letterbox format and animated in a great spoof of anime style. If you haven't seen it, I would highly suggest checking it out as it is (in my opinion anyway) one of the ten best South Park episodes ever made. You get ninja weapons, dead on anime style animation, Butters as Professor Chaos and Cartman's genitals. Who could ask for anything more? Flynn De Marco

First HD Episode of South Park Exclusive to Xbox 360 [Game|Life]

Ya know, it's just not funny in simi-realistic 3D. At all. Brian Ashcraft

South Park Sims [The Last Boss]