{"id":18381,"date":"2025-04-04T14:37:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T12:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/04\/south-of-midnight-review-beautiful-surfaces-cant-hide-thin-gameplay\/"},"modified":"2025-04-04T14:37:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T12:37:16","slug":"south-of-midnight-review-beautiful-surfaces-cant-hide-thin-gameplay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/04\/south-of-midnight-review-beautiful-surfaces-cant-hide-thin-gameplay\/","title":{"rendered":"South of Midnight review \u2013 beautiful surfaces can\u2019t hide thin gameplay"},"content":{"rendered":"

PC, Xbox; Compulsion Games
<\/strong>A spell-casting high-school athlete ventures into the heart of southern folklore in this distinct yet uneven action adventure<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Soaring development costs; protracted production cycles; cautious C-suites looking to deliver reliable returns for shareholders: for many reasons, there is a dearth of original programming in big-budget video games. Already this year we have seen the arrival of the seventh mainline Civilization<\/a> game, the 14th entry in the Assassin\u2019s Creed<\/a> franchise, and, most brain-melting of all, the 27th Monster Hunter<\/a> title. But look: here\u2019s a magical-realist tale set in a moody, hurricane-ravaged imagining of the American deep south, whose title, crucially, bears no numerical suffix.<\/p>\n

South of Midnight makes a brilliantly atmospheric first impression. Winds bludgeon flimsy abodes; rain lashes down on tin roofs; the world is rendered with the macabre and crooked details of a Tim Burton film. Within minutes, a house \u2013 that of high-school athlete Hazel and her mother, a social worker \u2013 is carried away along a roiling flooded river. Playing as Hazel, you give chase, bounding with a lanky teenage gait across various platforms until the storm abates. In its wake lie miles of stagnant, fetid swamps. At one grisly point, you explore a farm stacked with the carcasses of pigs who did not survive the typhoon.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nPC, Xbox; Compulsion GamesA spell-casting high-school athlete ventures into the heart of southern folklore in this distinct yet uneven action adventure<\/p>\n

Soaring development costs; protracted production cycles; cautious C-suites looking to deliver reliable returns for shareholders: for many reasons, there is a dearth of original programming in big-budget video games. Already this year we have seen the arrival of the seventh mainline Civilization game, the 14th entry in the Assassin\u2019s Creed franchise, and, most brain-melting of all, the 27th Monster Hunter title. But look: here\u2019s a magical-realist tale set in a moody, hurricane-ravaged imagining of the American deep south, whose title, crucially, bears no numerical suffix.
\nSouth of Midnight makes a brilliantly atmospheric first impression. Winds bludgeon flimsy abodes; rain lashes down on tin roofs; the world is rendered with the macabre and crooked details of a Tim Burton film. Within minutes, a house \u2013 that of high-school athlete Hazel and her mother, a social worker \u2013 is carried away along a roiling flooded river. Playing as Hazel, you give chase, bounding with a lanky teenage gait across various platforms until the storm abates. In its wake lie miles of stagnant, fetid swamps. At one grisly point, you explore a farm stacked with the carcasses of pigs who did not survive the typhoon. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PC, Xbox; Compulsion GamesA spell-casting high-school athlete ventures into the heart of southern folklore in this distinct yet uneven action adventure Soaring development costs; protracted production cycles; cautious C-suites looking to deliver reliable returns for shareholders: for many reasons, there is a dearth of original programming in big-budget video games. Already this year we have …<\/p>\n

South of Midnight review \u2013 beautiful surfaces can\u2019t hide thin gameplay<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":18382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18381"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}