South Park: Snow Day still a top seller despite scathing reviews

South Park: Snow Day received a less-than-favourable reception upon release. Despite a 61% critic score on Metacritic and 'Generally Unfavorable' user reviews, the game has still managed to enter the top five in the UK weekly charts.

The UK weekly charts show the new entry South Park: Snow Day at the number three position for sales, beating out Princess Peach Showtime and Dragons Dogma 2.

Topping the charts above South Park: Snow Day are Hogwarts Legacy and EA FC 24.

The weekly UK charts, compiled by GfK, consider physical video game sales in the country. Despite the less-than-stellar reviews, South Park has managed to nab the number three spot for the week.

Also lower in the charts than Snow Day are the popular managed democracy-spreading shooter Helldivers 2, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

In our review of the underwhelming hack-and-slash, we said: "It’s not often we pray for an IP to return to Ubisoft, but here we are."

We awarded South Park: Snow Day a dismal three out of ten. "THQ Nordic has truly channelled its namesake with South Park: Snow Day, an underbaked, content-less licensed game that imbues the worst of the PS2-era for a modern audience,” reads our review.

The main issues fans and critics have had with South Park are the campaign's short length (around five or six hours) and its comparison to the last two well-received South Park titles: Snow Day being a direct sequel does not help matters.

"South Park: Snow Day moves away from the gorgeous 2D RPG style of Ubisoft’s Stick of Truth and Fractured But Whole and moves towards a 3D hack-and-slash affair with online co-op, boring combat, and an overall PS2-budget game vibe that isn’t totally charmless, but is a huge disappointment after the two strong games before it."

This is a disappointment for fans of the franchise, but as the sales chart shows, it is not enough to deter them from picking up the THQ Nordic attempt at the series.

It will be interesting to see if Snow Day can maintain its top-five ranking in the UK charts next week.