South of Midnight Review – WGB

South of Midnight is sort of a bowl of Southern gumbo served at a series restaurant. It seems unimaginable. Smells nice. It’s clearly been plated with love—beautiful presentation, a great deal of fashion. 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 It’s lacking that soul, that secret ingredient handed down by way of generations in a dusty outdated recipe guide. It’s not unhealthy—it’s simply bland. And that, in a nutshell, is South of Midnight: a recreation with phenomenal artwork path, killer environment, and a banging soundtrack… however gameplay that feels undercooked.

Hazel Flood, our protagonist, is straight away compelling. She’s pissed off along with her mom—and truthful 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, nevertheless it’s sophisticated by Hazel’s frustration at at all times coming second. What Hazel can’t see—a minimum of 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.

Obtainable 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, typically it works. Hazel’s nice. The voice appearing? Glorious throughout the board. A few of the characters she meets are equally compelling. However for each robust emotional beat, there’s one other subplot that fizzles out like a humid 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 possibility? A facet quest the place I hugged them into emotional wholeness? The catchy musical quantity that narrates Benjy’s tragic life was virtually sufficient to make me breeze again the dearth of actual closure. Nearly.

Graphically, the sport slaps onerous. South of Midnight seems lovely and employs an attention-grabbing stop-motion fashion. In different phrases, it looks like each few frames is lacking, a visible quirk you might need seen in films like Throughout the Spider-Verse or Puss in Boots: The Final Want. The artwork fashion seems like Southern folklore delivered to life by way of muddy bayou magic, earthy color pallettes and exaggerated animations. It’s somewhat bit Tim Burton, a smidgen Guillermo del Toro, however with its personal twisted allure.

The apparent flaw of stop-motion in a online game is that it could come throughout not as an inventive alternative, however extra like your body charge deciding to go on a trip. Is my historic 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 truly 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 choose to show off the stop-motion if you’d like. Sadly, you may solely flip it off in gameplay – cutscenes will nonetheless have these lacking frames.

If the visible presentation is killer, then the soundtrack is wonderful 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 might 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 possibly 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 recreation and I’m completely okay with that. It’s actually refreshing to step again from the limitless parade of open-world adventures that anticipate me to spend 80 hours on nonsense. The managed nature of video games like this could permit for smarter pacing, and for probably 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 nil regret. You’ll spam it like a ‘Purchase Now’ button on a sneaker drop. That’s it. You possibly can unlock some further powers—possessing enemies, yanking them round—however they really feel like seasoning sprinkled on stale meat. They’re boring, and have been carried out much better in quite a few different video games.

The sport tries to ramp up issue by throwing extra enemies at you, however the fight system clearly wasn’t constructed for crowd management. After a number of hours, you’ll have seen each enemy kind, each combo (all one in all them), and each similar “area” format the sport has to supply. Towards the top, I began sighing each time I stumbled into one other sealed-off battle zone. Not as a result of it was onerous, however as a result of it was predictable. On prime of that, enemies all sort of look the identical, and there are points with studying enemy assaults, particularly the essential Haint’s strikes. However on the plus facet, I did be taught that “haints” are an precise outdated south type of ghost, in order that’s cool.

Platforming fares no higher. It’s the identical primary climb-and-jump setup we’ve had because the Uncharted days. Hazel can summon ghostly objects to climb and zip round a bit like bayou Spider-Man, however the recreation 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 largely window dressing. You possibly can gather “Floofs” (sure, that’s actually what they’re referred to as), the sport’s foreign money for an improve system that actually doesn’t have something price speaking about.

The entire recreation 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 the whole lot 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 at all times results in a barely open space the place you unravel 4 bits of Stigma which helps you to end up the chapter, typically resulting in a boss battle. Then you definately repeat it another time about ten instances.

Boss fights? A blended bag. Visually and musically, they’re wonderful. Each seems like a fever dream and appears like a Broadway quantity staged in Hell. However mechanically, they’re insultingly easy. Rule of threes is in full, unrelenting drive. Dodge, hit, repeat. The ultimate boss particularly was a story and gameplay moist fart. No stress. No payoff. Simply… carried out. Though the general narrative wasn’t something superb, the sport’s southern vibes, characters and foot-tapping good music did have me wanting to see the top, however when the credit rolled it simply didn’t fairly land.

Look, by their very nature video games are repetitive and have repetitive buildings. They’re constructed round gameplay loops, in any case. However one of the best builders can disguise this truth, utilizing attention-grabbing twists on established gameplay, narrative, presentation and different tips to distract you from the repetition. Or, in fact, the gameplay can simply be so good that you just don’t care concerning the repetition. However because the fight, puzzle fixing and platforming in South of Midnight are weak, the inflexible construction of the sport turns into increasingly 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 at all times hit the mark, nevertheless it 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 the whole lot else. However then once more, if Compulsion did that, South of Midnight wouldn’t be wherever 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 concerning the horrible gumbo metaphors. However not sorry sufficient to take them out.