David’s Retro Rewind – South Park: Chef’s Luv Shack

Have you ever played a game you knew full well was terrible just for the sake of catharsis and needing something to complain about? I’ve just done exactly that for this installment of Retro Rewind. South Park: Chef’s Luv Shack is a valiant attempt at a party game that was developed and published by the ill-fated Acclaim Entertainment. It was released in North America on October 12th, 1999 for the Nintendo 64, then subsequently re-released on December 1st of that same year for the Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation, and (apparently) Microsoft Windows PCs.

I’ll be discussing the PlayStation port of the game today, as that’s the one I had on hand. I’m not going to waste your time and mine by going into too much detail about the premise of this title. I’m going to operate under the assumption that virtually everyone in our audience at least knows what South Park is, regardless of whether you’re a fan of the show or not.

“Chef’s Luv Shack” is a game show that (for the purposes of this game) airs weekly on South Park Public Access. It’s hosted by Chef, obviously, and its contestants are supposed to be “young, vivacious, uninhibited swimsuit models” competing to win a “passion-filled weekend with Chef.” The show’s announcer then hurriedly reveals in a hushed tone that “due to the lack of young, vivacious, uninhibited swimsuit models, today’s show will feature youngsters from South Park Elementary.” That’s right, everyone’s favorite quartet of foul-mouthed troublemakers is going to be on TV!

In that case, I would certainly hope Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman aren’t playing to win that romantic getaway with Chef. That does raise the question of what the winner’s ultimate prize will be. Maybe an extra helping of Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes at lunch next Friday. Trust me, I’m keenly aware that I’m looking far too much into this, but I feel like I kind of have to because the game really doesn’t give me much else to work with.

I’m going to level with you. I don’t know where to even begin with this game. In all honesty, another big reason I wanted to cover the PlayStation version of it specifically is that the PlayStation has CD-quality audio as opposed to the heavily-compressed stuff you’ll find in most Nintendo 64 games. Because of that, I thought Chef’s Luv Shack would at least feature halfway decent audio, voice work, and sound effects that wouldn’t be too crunchy due to compression. Boy, was I wrong about that!

Don’t get me wrong. The PS1 version of this game does indeed have uncompressed voice lines that I would argue actually sound pretty good, all things considered. It’s just that the game can’t seem to decide when it wants to actually use those particular audio files. During the 20+ minutes I spent with Chef’s Luv Shack getting footage for this article, it seemed like about 75% of the voice lines I heard were terribly compressed. I don’t think I need to tell you that’s not a very good ratio.

Audio issues aside, what does Chef’s Luv Shack’s core gameplay loop consist of? Well, before the game show begins, players select the number of rounds in which they’d like to participate. You can choose either two, four, six, or eight rounds. Each round starts with three trivia questions on various topics, which are usually introduced with titles that show off that trademark South Park self-referential sense of humor.

That isn’t to say all the trivia questions will directly reference something from the show, though. Most of them don’t (in my experience) but are still somehow related to moments from the television series. Now that I’m playing Chef’s Luv Shack again as an adult rather than the kid I was when I first played it all those years ago, I find myself able to correctly answer quite a few of the game’s trivia questions compared younger attempts.

For instance, I was particularly proud of myself when I instantly answered that a vestal would be the least likely among four particular adjectives to have a venereal disease. I knew that bit of information thanks to Darkest Dungeon. There was also the time I was able to rapidly tell Chef exactly which Foreigner album contained their well-known song, “I Want to Know What Love Is.” It’s funny, the seemingly random sorts of knowledge that stick with you as you age.

Anyway, you earn points for each of Chef’s trivia questions that you answer correctly. After a set of three questions, the game jumps into a mini-game round to give you a chance to earn even more points based on how well you do. The mini-games have little originality to offer. Most of them are either knock-offs of classic arcade titles like Asteroids or stuff we’ve all played before even outside of arcades, such as whack-a-mole. I suppose that does at least provide a sense of familiarity in some cases. Sadly, that’s about the nicest thing I can say about most of Chef’s Luv Shack’s mini-games.

That’s basically the gist of it, folks. You get a round of trivia questions, then a mini-game, then repeat until the selected number of rounds have elapsed. Whoever has the most points at the end of all the rounds is declared the winner. Your guess is as good as mine as far as what they’re winning.