First Impressions: South of Midnight

     South of Midnight is a videogame developed by Compulsion Games and published by Xbox Game Studios. I am currently playing on the Xbox Series X on a 1080p 80" television. In the next few paragraphs, we're going to take a look at what I like about the game, what I don't like about the game, and my overall experience with South of Midnight. 

The Combat

Combat in the game is a lot of fun. With a good variety of moves, you can combine combos with magical powers and dodges that takes precise timing to pull off in order to keep your health-bar intact. Fast paced and intense, the enemies in the game, Haints, will give you no quarter. These suckers like to get in close, and their swipes take a good chunk out of your health-bar. 

So far, I'm assuming it's my timing and distance, but I'm not finding the charge attack to be very powerful and that's even after I leveled it up. That's right, you can level up stuff in this game too. Attacks, magic spells, and your health-bar (as long as you search your environments closely for health-bar upgrades as you need a trio of the upgrades to even trigger a health-bar upgrade). 

I do not know how long this game intends to be, but so far it chock full of collectibles. Combat so far has only taken place inside combat zones so we'll see if that changes in the future. I'm also excited to see what boss fights look like. I'm a couple of hours into the game and still no boss fight. 

The Graphics

The graphics in South of Midnight are amazing. It looks like they're going for some sort of Spider-Verse/Claymation hybrid and it fucking rocks! This is one of the more unique looking games I've played and it's so colorful (sometimes too colorful). What I mean is that in combat you've got your weaver skills triggering blasts of weaver juice or whatever is going on and then you've got haints attacking and they leave trails of their attack and so it looks like a beautiful colorful mess sometimes which can lead to missing enemy attack animation start-ups, so my dodge timing is off. Again, probably just my skill level combined with my old man eyes, but I find combat to be a bit challenging due to the colors lingering on the screen. 

Other than that, the graphics kick ass. There was a moment where I was running in the beginning through a hurricane trying to get to my grandmother's house and as you're running through town the winds are blowing trucks in front of your path or rooftops are flying off and falling in front of you. It's a very fun platforming moment where the graphics just really display what this game is capable of. 

The Story

South of Midnight stars Hazel, a teenager fresh out of high school about to start college. It's her last summer home and a hurricane has started up in her small town of Prospero. This track star mourns her losses of being on the school bus and singing with the team and the death of her father. She's also angsty with her mom; angry that she dedicates so much time to helping other people (she's a social worker) when she could be focusing more on Hazel. Hazel is packing when her mom comes home, and they get into a small fight before her mother tells her to go and check on the neighbors. 

Before Hazel can make it back home, her house along with her mother are swept away in hurricane flood waters. Using her track speed and agility, Hazel chases after her house floating down the river. She'll platform her way past some pretty crazy stuff happening (a giant spider-woman roaming the forests off in the distance?) all while dodging hurricane storm shenanigans like rooftops blowing in front of you or semi-trucks just getting tossed down in your path. 

Hazel eventually winds up at her estranged grandmother's estate which is a literal mansion compared to Hazel and her mother's ramshackle trailer on the river. Her grandmother has her maid draw her up a guestroom and locks Hazel inside to sleep away the night while she figures out what to do about her missing mother. Hazel wakes up and doesn't like being locked up, and this is where the story turns. Hazel is a weaver and she can see strands of great joy and great pain in the tapestry of life around her and as you guide her along her path, you'll discover more powers and tools that allow you to disrupt the tapestry of life, unmake the bad, bottle the pain and sorrow of the lands, and heal the wounds of a people who have been wronged so bad that their sadness has bled into the ground and caused the world to go all hinky. 

Final First Thoughts

South of Midnight is a very fun action-platformer that is telling an intriguing story that features vibrant, colorful characters and great controls. This is a top notch, very well-designed game, that I can't wait to get to play more of. If there is one thing I would say that would be a bit negative, I am near 40 years old now, so I've played a lot of video games. Outside of the imaginative world that this game is set in--gameplay wise you're not doing anything you haven't done in countless other videogames available. You've got a spunky, wise-cracking protagonist who collects ability points and whose magic powers equate to press this button to re-create an item from the past or push or pull this object. 

Powers also work in combat the same way they work in many other games. You can put an enemy in stasis mode and freeze their actions making them more susceptible to damage. You can pluck flying enemies out of the sky and toss them at other enemies. You can double jump; jump and ground pound; press the X-button 5 times to do a combo, press the B button to dash, etc. Have you played an action game in the last 15-20 years? Same concept here.

South of Midnight is a very fun game, but it is something that if you're a seasoned veteran of the gaming world like me, then you might want to pass unless you find the story and graphics to be as appealing as I do. I'm not expecting every game to reinvent the wheel in terms of gameplay and level design. I am really digging the story. I love games that put you in cinematic scenarios and, have you platform your way through them. I like the simplistic nature of combat and how everything sort of rock-paper-scissors together. This is a very well-made game, and I think anyone that downloads it from GamePass is at the very least going to have a good time.