{"id":4110,"date":"2025-04-08T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/?p=4110"},"modified":"2025-04-10T18:20:31","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T18:20:31","slug":"south-of-midnight-review-shallow-gameplay-in-the-deep-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/08\/south-of-midnight-review-shallow-gameplay-in-the-deep-south\/","title":{"rendered":"South Of Midnight review \u2013 shallow gameplay in the Deep South"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\"South\t<\/div>
South Of Midnight – it looks better than it plays (Xbox Game Studios)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The creators of We Happy Few return with one of the best looking games of the year, featuring some stunning stop motion animation.<\/p>\n

Microsoft<\/a> has bought a lot of developers over the last decade or so but perhaps the most inexplicable purchase is little known Canadian studio Compulsion Games. Up until now their only games have been the relatively ambitious, but intrinsically flawed, Contrast<\/a> and We Happy Few<\/a>, and it\u2019s never been clear why Microsoft became interested in them.<\/p>\n

Perhaps they, like everyone else, was swayed by the intriguing but highly misleading teaser trailer for We Happy Few, but Compulsion is definitely the odd one out in the Xbox<\/a> Games Studios line-up, since they\u2019ve never had a critical or commerical hit. And yet somehow it\u2019s Tango Gameworks that got shut down<\/a>.<\/p>\n

South Of Midnight is the best thing they\u2019ve ever done, but not by much, and the end result feels outdated and generic, despite the attractive art design. In fact, we\u2019re beginning to think Compulsion would be better off making animated movies rather than video games<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You probably know South Of Midnight best as the game with the stop motion style animation, that\u2019s been featured in the last few Xbox showcases. However, in a We Happy Few style bait and switch, it\u2019s only the cut scenes that are animated that way.<\/p>\n

The characters look the same during gameplay, but they\u2019re animated essentially normally, with only a faint attempt at mimicking the stop motion style in things like idle animations and the larger boss characters.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Compulsion found that style of animation was too distracting during gameplay, or it was technically too demanding, but either way that immediately scrubs out one of the key selling points before the game has even begun.<\/p>\n

The art style is still attractive, no matter how it\u2019s animated, with characters having been made as physical models before being scanned in for use in the game, but the other main draw is the story and setting. You play as Hazel whose house, in the Deep South of the US, is destroyed during a storm, taking her mother with it, in a twist on the Wizard of Oz.<\/p>\n

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