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South of Midnight particulars
(Picture credit score: Compulsion Video games)
Writer Microsoft Sport Studios
Developer Compulsion Video games
Launch date 8 April 2025
Format Xbox Sequence X/S, PC (reviewed)
Engine Unreal Engine 5
It is the yr 2025 and having a sport with a Black lady as its lead nonetheless looks like as soon as in a blue moon. However fortunately that’s one thing that Compulsion Video games will get so very proper in South of Midnight. Hazel Flood is a breath of contemporary air – sensible, succesful, susceptible and empathetic, and a weaver of magic besides.
I discover it exhausting to not evaluate her portrayal with Frey Holland in Forspoken, by the way the final time a significant blockbuster sport featured a Black feminine protagonist. Even then, the 2 video games really feel like polar opposites of their strategy. As a substitute of a bloated and empty open world, South of Midnight is a tightly woven linear action-adventure with absolutely hand-crafted ranges and sequences; moderately than chasing next-gen photorealism, it opts for a singular aesthetic that mimics stop-motion animation; and whereas the opposite absolutely transports you to a different fantasy world that you just by no means actually spend money on, South of Midnight’s surreal world stays rooted in actuality with tales that talk to the guts.
You discover out extra about South of Midnight’s visible design in my interview with the sport’s artwork director and animation director, and I contact on it extra on this evaluate.
(Picture credit score: Compulsion Video games)
Southern delights
Set throughout greater than a dozen chapters that unfold like pages from a fairytale e-book, South of Midnight is about Hazel’s journey to rescue her mom after a storm from a hurricane washes away their cell house. Earlier than that nonetheless, even in just some minutes of dialogue, it actually does a beautiful job in establishing their relationship and tensions. There is a pure and genuine stream to their speech, neither tiresome Whedonesque quips nor poor stereotypes of Black characters from the Deep South.
Made in Unreal Engine 5, it is also an unimaginable showcase for the expressive textural hand-crafted aesthetic that captures the impact of stop-motion animation, although all the pieces feels clean as soon as it cuts to gameplay. All of it seems to be extraordinary, particularly while you’ve bought the combo of the whimsical, from large speaking catfish to a childhood ragdoll puppet that involves life, with the number of locales within the Deep South, as Hazel’s journey takes her from the swamps to the mountains, dilapidated shacks to fancy homes.
A recurring theme is that these locations are additionally crammed with previous trauma, manifested as darkish Stigmas that additionally trigger darkish spirits known as Haints to seem. Hazel additionally has the flexibility to see reminiscence echoes, exhibiting visions of the previous, the objects from these reminiscences she will even materialise into being within the current, a moderately fancy manner of making platforms.
There’s a number of making metaphors literal, in order a weaver, Hazel’s magic comes from wielding precise weaving instruments similar to a spindle and distaff, deep-rooted ache manifests as sharp thorns within the surroundings, and also you bottle up painful reminiscences with a magic bottle. Whereas I do admire the picture of cursed thorns, there’s positively an over-reliance on them as environmental traps. Maybe they’re too efficient as a result of I may really feel bodily discomfort as I time my actions to keep away from the crops that shoot out lengthy sharp thorns in intervals.
(Picture credit score: Compulsion Video games)
Previous is not previous
As wondrously surreal as South of Midnight’s world is, enjoying it’s a extra acquainted and standard affair. In some ways, it looks like a throwback to single-player action-adventure video games from earlier generations, as you climb throughout as many ledges as Nathan Drake and squeeze by means of many slender gaps. But I additionally discover it refreshing that it does away with a number of bloat from fashionable video games, hardly ever diverging you off the trail save for the occasional lore pick-up or ‘floofs’ used to improve your talents.
What does undermine this are the fight encounters with the Haints themselves. They remind me of the Hiss in Management – regardless of being launched to differing types over the course of the marketing campaign, all of them have the identical boring aesthetic and palette, and every time you attain a Stigma you are locked right into a fight area a bit like Satan Could Cry however the place the fight is merely serviceable moderately than one thing you’re feeling compelled to grasp.
It is also why I truly welcome Compulsion’s resolution to incorporate an possibility the place you’ll be able to merely select to skip fight. I had no regrets doing this from the midpoint onwards as I used to be merely extra eager on the rhythm of traversing a degree. Double-jumping gliding and wall-running might also be fairly acquainted now however that does not make it any much less satisfying, particularly once they’re mixed to make up occasional intense chase sequences, normally within the lead-up to a boss.
In contrast to the by-the-numbers design of the Haints, bosses are constructed up rather well over complete chapters. Moreover being large nightmarish creatures, you additionally be taught their backstories that are not simply tragic however typically fairly harrowing, as Compulsion does not shrink back from delicate topics that have an effect on kids, together with neglect, abduction and bodily abuse. Evidently, the studio did not simply research Southern Gothic folktales however Guillermo del Toro’s strategy to humanising the monstrous (fittingly, del Toro can be a fan of stop-motion animation).
Whereas the fights go on a bit longer than I would like, the totally different phases are made all of the extra particular as they construct to a crescendo of toe-tapping music that brings in vocals of different Southern traditions, together with choirs and jazz. What’s maybe equally admirable is when the sport resists the urge to shoehorn in a boss combat for each chapter. The place some would possibly take into account it anticlimactic, I believe it is a mature understanding that generally it is the message that issues most.
