South Park is one of the only franchises I'd be happy to see annualised, after The Stick of Truth showed us that a modern South Park game plays just like an extended episode - outside of combat, the two mediums are almost indistinguishable. The Fractured But Whole continues that trend pretty literally - it takes place immediately after the events of The Stick of Truth, with South Park's not-so-charming group of 4th graders now LARPing as Superheroes, with their own hypothetical movie franchises and Netflix series'.

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After Ubisoft's press conference yesterday, where we already saw a meaty amount of gameplay, I was able to feast my eyes on an extended demo, with more fart sound effects in 20 minutes than I've ever heard in any other video game. We started out with our protagonist, literally called Douchebag, looking for Coon And Friends in Eric Cartman's house. There's a keypad barring you from the basement, though, with inscriptions of words I can't write here without getting an angry email from a young IGN reader's mother. So, you set off to find the code, interacting with cabinets and drawers that deliver an odd variety of crafting loot, though we didn't get to preview the crafting system.

Upstairs in Cartman's show-accurate house, we were introduced to 'sphincter control' - a proponent of Ubisoft’s clearly very serious goal to introduce more “interactive humor” to South Park: The Fractured But Whole

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Beyond the farts, though, going on to explore Cartman’s house to find the keycode plays very similarly to The Stick of Truth, and then eventually punching in the correct code leads to a flawlessly transition cutscene, complete with authentic South Park humor and voice acting. The segment lead into the introduction of Douchebag that we saw at Ubisoft’s press conference, but with a little more time spent to show off the new combat system, and the classes. Classes in The Fractured But Whole are unlocked as you progress through the game - though we don’t know exactly how, just yet - and you can seemingly swap between them at any point in time, as well as combine classes in later stages of the game. The names and special abilities are inspired by common superheroes but have classic RPG roles like tanks and healers, which suggests a very heavy dependence on party-based combat.

The Fractured But Whole still features a turn-based combat system, but that’s probably the only similarity it has to the first game’s combat. Now, you have the option to move a character anywhere within a grid in order to attack someone else, or position yourself away from someone else - you might not want to keep your squishy characters near the opposing damage dealer, for example. Moving a character thankfully doesn’t use up a ‘turn’, but it does seem like it’ll require a lot of careful thought. If you have two characters in the range of a character that does a move with splash damage, for example, they’re both going to get hurt.

The combat actually seems intimidatingly complicated compared to The Stick of Truth - it’s a lot more like Fire Emblem than the pseudo ‘QTE’ style the first game had, and it’s likely to require an acute understanding of each character in your party, and the opposing team’s party. I definitely need to see more of it to make a proper assessment on whether I like it or not, though, so let’s get back to farts.

Because it’s a Ubisoft game, South Park: The Fractured But Whole also features a very cheeky (pun absolutely intended) version of Parkour, known as ‘Fartcour’. We saw Douchebag jumping between buildings to find some loot on a roof, aided by his own farts, and Kyle's kite. Different pairings of characters will allow for different kinds of these non-combat abilities that are in place to lead you to different items - whether they be some kind of collectibles or loot - seemingly depending on characters’ individual classes.

Overall, it seems like South Park: The Fractured But Whole is going to feel just like another extended episode of South Park - which is exactly what I want - except with more tactical, JRPG-style combat upgrades, more significant classes, and a more in-depth party system. It’s like South Park: The Stick of Truth just matured a little - oh, also, did I mention farts?

Alanah Pearce is an editor at IGN, and she has never written the word 'fart' so many times in one article. She's glad you're here to witness this monumental new record. You can find her on Twitter at @Charalanahzard