South of Midnight is sort of a bowl of Southern gumbo served at a series restaurant. It appears to be like unimaginable. Smells nice. It’s clearly been plated with love—beautiful presentation, a great deal of type. However the second you dig in, one thing’s off. The flavour’s flat. It’s lacking that soul, that secret ingredient handed down by generations in a dusty outdated recipe e book. It’s not unhealthy—it’s simply bland. And that, in a nutshell, is South of Midnight: a sport with phenomenal artwork course, killer environment, and a banging soundtrack… however gameplay that feels undercooked.
Hazel Flood, our protagonist, is instantly compelling. She’s pissed off along with her mom—and honest sufficient. Mama took too lengthy serving to different folks whereas Hazel was left packing up earlier than a storm hit, scared and alone. There’s a transparent love between them, but it surely’s sophisticated by Hazel’s frustration at all the time coming second. What Hazel can’t see—at the least at first—is the emotional weight her mom carries. The exhaustion. The quiet sacrifices. The compulsive want to assist others, even when it prices her time along with her daughter.
Out there On: Xbox, PC
Reviewed On: PC
Developed By: Compulsion Video games
Revealed By: Xbox Video games Studio
Then the storm hits. Hazel’s house is swept away by floodwaters, her mom together with it. In a second that’s each tragic and surreal, Hazel sprints after her drifting home, launching herself right into a Southern Gothic fever dream. The sport dives headfirst into folklore and fairytale, portray a world of magic, trauma, and speaking catfish. Some creatures wish to assist. Others need Hazel lifeless. Typical Tuesday within the bayou, actually.
Hazel is a “Weaver”, a magical being that may see the “strands” that weave collectively to make our universe. Utilizing these powers she is destined to assist heal damaged souls by unravelling their “Stigmas”—psychic trauma knots with a contact of magical realism. It’s a intelligent idea, one which lets the sport dip into themes like generational ache, forgiveness, and the tales we inform ourselves to outlive.
And hey, generally it works. Hazel’s nice. The voice appearing? Wonderful throughout the board. Among the characters she meets are equally compelling. However for each robust emotional beat, there’s one other subplot that fizzles out like a moist firework. The Benjy and brother arc, for instance, insists Hazel “healed” them… however I used to be left staring on the display screen questioning how, precisely. Did I miss a scene? A dialogue choice? A aspect quest the place I hugged them into emotional wholeness? The catchy musical quantity that narrates Benjy’s tragic life was nearly sufficient to make me breeze again the dearth of actual closure. Nearly.
Graphically, the sport slaps exhausting. South of Midnight appears to be like stunning and employs an attention-grabbing stop-motion type. In different phrases, it looks like each few frames is lacking, a visible quirk you may need seen in motion pictures like Throughout the Spider-Verse or Puss in Boots: The Final Want. The artwork type appears to be like like Southern folklore delivered to life by muddy bayou magic, earthy color pallettes and exaggerated animations. It’s slightly bit Tim Burton, a smidgen Guillermo del Toro, however with its personal twisted appeal.
The plain flaw of stop-motion in a online game is that it may possibly come throughout not as a creative selection, however extra like your body fee deciding to go on a trip. Is my historical Nvidia 1080ti lastly dying? Nah, it’s simply the stop-motion doing its factor. Fortunately, the sport’s efficiency appears steady, which is nice as a result of I’m positive stop-motion and a low FPS could be horrible to take a look at. If something, I really want the sport had leaned tougher into the stop-motion as a result of I actually didn’t discover it more often than not.
Oh, and you may decide to show off the stop-motion in order for you. Sadly, you possibly can solely flip it off in gameplay – cutscenes will nonetheless have these lacking frames.
If the visible presentation is killer, then the soundtrack is superb fucking homicide (in one of the best ways) dedicated by composer Olivier Deriviere. Hand this man an award or 5, as a result of his soulful, catchy tunes abound, from the quieter backing tracks that assist set the temper as you discover swamps to the jazzy tracks which can be distinctive to particular person ranges and encounters. Some tracks even have lyrics tied to particular characters, giving scenes a punch of theatrical aptitude. It’s the sort of soundtrack that deserves an award—and doubtless a vinyl launch. The worth I paid for the Premium Version improve was price it simply to get my grubby-ass palms on the OST.
Diving into the gameplay, although? Mid. Generally, even lower than that.
This purely a linear, guided sport and I’m completely okay with that. It’s actually refreshing to step again from the infinite parade of open-world adventures that anticipate me to spend 80 hours on nonsense. The managed nature of video games like this could enable for smarter pacing, and for essentially the most half that’s what South of Midnight manages to do because it brings you on a tour of thorny forests, creepy bayous and farmland.
The fight is aggressively mid. Hazel costs into battle with precisely one assault button and 0 regret. You’ll spam it like a ‘Purchase Now’ button on a sneaker drop. That’s it. You possibly can unlock some additional powers—possessing enemies, yanking them round—however they really feel like seasoning sprinkled on stale meat. They’re boring, and have been performed much better in quite a few different video games.
The sport tries to ramp up problem by throwing extra enemies at you, however the fight system clearly wasn’t constructed for crowd management. After a couple of hours, you’ll have seen each enemy kind, each combo (all one in every of them), and each equivalent “area” structure the sport has to supply. Towards the tip, I began sighing each time I stumbled into one other sealed-off combat zone. Not as a result of it was exhausting, however as a result of it was predictable. On high of that, enemies all sort of look the identical, and there are points with studying enemy assaults, particularly the fundamental Haint’s strikes. However on the plus aspect, I did study that “haints” are an precise outdated south type of ghost, in order that’s cool.
Platforming fares no higher. It’s the identical fundamental climb-and-jump setup we’ve had for the reason that Uncharted days. Hazel can summon ghostly objects to climb and zip round a bit like bayou Spider-Man, however the sport by no means asks you to do something intelligent with these instruments. No timing puzzles. No tight motion challenges. Simply “go right here, press button, transfer on.”
Exploration is barely price mentioning. Regardless of some beautiful stage design, it’s principally window dressing. You possibly can acquire “Floofs” (sure, that’s actually what they’re known as), the sport’s forex for an improve system that basically doesn’t have something price speaking about.
The entire sport adheres to a inflexible construction that turns into repetitive after only a few chapters. A little bit of platforming, one other apparent fight area the place you’re sealed in till every part is lifeless, a bit extra platforming, a brain-numbingly simplistic puzzle, one other area and repeat till the credit score’s roll. All of this all the time results in a barely open space the place you unravel 4 bits of Stigma which helps you to end up the chapter, generally resulting in a boss combat. You then repeat it another time about ten instances.
Boss fights? A blended bag. Visually and musically, they’re superb. Every one appears to be like like a fever dream and feels like a Broadway quantity staged in Hell. However mechanically, they’re insultingly easy. Rule of threes is in full, unrelenting pressure. Dodge, hit, repeat. The ultimate boss specifically was a story and gameplay moist fart. No rigidity. No payoff. Simply… performed. Though the general narrative wasn’t something superb, the sport’s southern vibes, characters and foot-tapping good music did have me desirous to see the tip, however when the credit rolled it simply didn’t fairly land.
Look, by their very nature video games are repetitive and have repetitive constructions. They’re constructed round gameplay loops, in spite of everything. However the very best builders can cover this truth, utilizing attention-grabbing twists on established gameplay, narrative, presentation and different methods to distract you from the repetition. Or, after all, the gameplay can simply be so good that you simply don’t care in regards to the repetition. However for the reason that fight, puzzle fixing and platforming in South of Midnight are weak, the inflexible construction of the sport turns into increasingly more pronounced as you play.
South of Midnight left a mark. Not as a result of it performs nice—however as a result of it tries to say one thing. About grief, about legacy, about rhythm and soul. It doesn’t all the time hit the mark, but it surely tries. It’s a disgrace the gameplay couldn’t sustain with the vibe. It simply wanted a bit extra time put into the gameplay and a bit much less into every part else. However then once more, if Compulsion did that, South of Midnight wouldn’t be anyplace close to as attention-grabbing as it’s. But when Compulsion Video games ever make an animated movie? I’m first in line. Ideally with a correct bowl of gumbo.
And to all my southerners on the market, I’m very sorry in regards to the horrible gumbo metaphors. However not sorry sufficient to take them out.
