Starting South of Midnight, I was brought back to purchase my PlayStation 4 in 2013; obviously, several games were bought along with it. Sitting there with a stack of new games on a big console box that I can never bring myself to throw away, I found myself with all the possibilities overwhelming me, as one might expect. This brought me to the PlayStation Plus monthly games while wandering through all the settings on the flashy new homescreen. I remembered seeing this cute little indie title that interested me; lo and behold, it became the first title to boot up on this new console. That game was Contrast, the debut title from Compulsion Games.
Were there problems with this game? Sure, it wasn’t perfect. For its part, South of Midnight on the Xbox isn’t perfect either, but since then, I have been a fan of Compulsion games and the way they embrace their themes. In all senses of the word, South of Midnight feels like a spiritual successor to Contrast from a more confident team. The most enjoyable element of South of Midnight is that it feels like a return to form in this regard, even if only one game sits between them, a reminder of just how they entered center stage in the first place.
Once Upon A Time In The South
South of Midnight stars the protagonist, Hazel Flood, a young girl we join in the middle of packing for… A hurricane-related flood. The naming convention is a little on the nose, but it honestly made me laugh. As she is packing, her mother, a social worker, arrives home. She is set to check the neighbors, only to watch the river by her house rip it off of the stilts and away along the river. Hazel gives a chance only to fail and catch it, and begin a journey to rescue her mother.
There are a lot of narratives that can draw some sort of parallel to this one, but none more so than Alice in Wonderland. Failing to rescue her mother takes Hazel from the familiar locals of a town, or its surrounds, to a slowly sifting landscape that feels fantastical with some elements of the world bleeding through. The biggest sin of this, honestly, is that the game makes it unclear if you are traveling deep into the Bayou that we as people know, warped and twisted by the flood around it, or if you are going down the rabbit hole to some fantastical land, guided by the flood. I settled on a little of both, but the levels seem to alternate this understanding, which got a little confusing. One jumping over flooded ground to reach a church where many people took shelter from the aftermath of the storm, but in the next traversing tall cliffs or old slave quarters that feel out of a dream. Despite this, the characters and cast you meet along the way really do pull you through, both being well written and well acted.
The game’s strongest victory is in its embracing of southern folklore lore which rarely gets its time of day under the sun. Early in the narrative, Hazel meets a talking catfish who honestly steals the show to serve as his guide. Now, in fairness, much of the folklore explored in South of Midnight takes its cues from multiple sources rather than adapting them from the human world, and the catfish is just one. It brought me back, of all places, to an old Scooby Doo movie which used the Louisiana bayou as a setting, where much of the lore takes some does involve a death or disappearance of some kind that morphs over the years into a beast in its own nature. Only here, the beasts are real and will kill you.
Accompanying this is a solid soundtrack inspired by Dixland Jazz, Bluegrass, and Zydeco. In traversal and combat, I couldn’t get enough of this, especially when the trumpets started blaring as the monsters you fight along the way started to form. This being said, the character pieces, which were supposed to take center stage as you solve and unravel each lore, and discover what happened and what lingering feelings morphed people into larger-than-life monstrosities, were the songs that feel flat for me. These numbers have choruses explaining the events at each point you learn, though they never feel fully cohesive, with a lot of instrumental in between. Worst yet, while you unlock each verse by completing the objects of an area, the verses similarly play out one verse per stage of a boss, meaning you never really get to hear the piece in its entirety without minutes of a fight needing to be filled with ambiance.
Duck and Weave
Hazel, early in the game, discovers that she is a weaver, which allows her to manipulate strands to bottle up the emotions of the bigger beasts, as well as fight Haints that try to stop her along the way. This was something I was hoping would be more enjoyable in the long run, but honestly, combat was a weak point for the game for me. Starting at the basics, there are no enemies along any pathway, they always take place in arena fights where you get sealed in an area until you win. In some games, you might stumble along till you see an open space, just knowing that that is where it will happen, but here it is far easier to tell, as they are the only locations set with a healing orb as well as an orb to break the area when you are done. It’s fairly predictable and only fun for the first few chapters.
In order to bottle up the main enemy’s emotions, you will need to take part in at least three per area (the rule of threes being pretty common in this game), this increases to four later, and these are the ones you know are coming, with more usually between them. Starting off the game, I did slightly enjoy them, a feeling that wore thin quickly, and the fact that you can pretty much see them like beacons on the path you are traversing gives you just enough time to groan and make peace that this is happening… Again.
To begin with, combat is a hack-and-slash formula in which enemies attack you and you can dodge out of the way, as well as use the two weaving hooks to fight with a quick flurry of slashes. Additionally, she has abilities such as one to pull enemies in, and one to push them back, and eventually a doll that can even possess enemies. These abilities exist outside of combat, too, with the doll being controllable to traverse small spaces. Weirdly, the push and pull ability roughly becomes applicable in the same situations, so in that regard, having opposite movements comes off as a little shallow.
These abilities are leveled up using Floof, small bits of magic that are left behind. What is great is that leveling up actually feels valuable, though there aren’t a lot of levels to gain, all things considered. The levels offer a few new moves, though they felt less important in the grand scheme, but a lot of abilities gain stuns or the ability to create increased damage windows. Combat is already fairly easy, so these abilities do feel like they tip the scale heavily in your favor, which, honestly, I was fine with, given how much I wanted the fights to stop.
The most annoying part is that enemies tend to have an abundance of prolonging abilities rather than those that can fully defeat you. Going in for a counterattack is often met with an enemy dashing backwards to the other side of the screen. They also have moves they perform, usually mid-health, with harder enemies getting a few, that make enemies immune to damage while they perform a major attack. These are easy enough to dodge but like the other feel more to make you unable to quickly move through combat rather than a challenge to overcome. These quick moves away also highlight the flaws in the lock on which struggles to target enemies of priority and makes it hard to manage multiple enemies. The unfortunate part is that Hazel has an even harder time attacking enemies if not locked on, making it a necessary annoyance.
Bottle It Up
Initially, I was nervous that South of Midnight was going to stumble on its boss fights. Early in the game, after bottling up the first emotions, you are confronted with Benjy, a living tree that you need to cleanse. You will traverse him, clearing out three weak spots before you will and free Benjys souls, so to speak. It was an interesting level, but I was concerned big moments would play out like this in the future.
Traversal already had a major emphasis in the game, with platforming between point A and point B being much of the gameplay till the Haints are introduced, and even after, you can expect most pathways between to play out the same exact way. These areas are, for the most part, linear with very little in the way of shooting paths, other than a few, which clearly see lead to a health upgrade of more Floof. In two early chapters, I managed to find every collectible, with later chapters only missing maybe 20 of 300 floors, if you needed a metric for how often you will miss a side route. There are about two areas that played out more open-ended, but these were small in scope. This wasn’t a turn-off for the game overall, but having seen many a game expand the usual expected formula, it dates itself a little and could have benefited from some more exploration in this flooded landscape.
Expecting traversal to play the biggest part in the cleansing of spirits was my biggest fear, but thankfully, one that wasn’t needed. The second area features Toe Toed Tom, who plays out like a traditional platforming boss, which was a setup of what to expect with the rest. Three phases, with the player ducking and dodging attacks till they can exploit and open, and then go in for a few attacks. Bosses feel like a better use of the formula, but they still have this sense that they sink time, which can be annoying. Since I had actual fun fighting them, which made it feel less noticeable. These fights play out like wars of attrition, which can be a little disheartening since the game gives limited ways to heal outside of the orbs, which can be as few as two per a three-phase fight.
Verdict
The boss fights, and my sudden surprise at how my initial reservations were sifted, in a lot of ways, sums up my experience with the game as a whole. Initial thoughts about traversal lightened up, the story kept engaging, even if it built to a lackluster ending, and bosses proved to be a highlight. All of this set to an enjoyable soundtrack helps tie all the themes together, making South of Midnight and game you will not regret your time with.
This progression also makes me more hopeful about the issues I had with the experience, from the creative team that feels to be moving forward as they grow, the character piece music lacked the oomph I think they were looking for and the game’s world was a little linear but showed a studio capable of evolution. Where they really lost was their combat, which felt less challenging and more time-consuming. This being said, I can’t wait to see what is next for Compulsion Games.
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Reviewed for Xbox Series, also available on PC
Developer: Compulsion Games
Publisher: Xbox Games Studios
Release Date: March 8th.
PROS:
+Engaging story full of folklore
+Great Cast
+Fun boss Fights
+Good soundtrack
CONS:
-Linear World
-Boring and tedious combat
-Less than good thematic songs
-Lackluster Ending
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South of Midnight
