Having just recently gone over South of Midnight in general, discussing its (folk)lore and the central narrative crux, now's the time to shift gears and get back to the real star of the show: gameplay. On that front, it's not hard to figure out the very basics: South of Midnight is a third-person action-adventure game. Beyond that, though, the specifics get hazy.
What we mean by this is that there's a massive gulf between a game such as a Devil May Cry and, say, God of War when you really look closely at them. South of Midnight broadly fits into this very same category, but it's also wildly different from most anything we've seen so far. Curiously, the footage we've seen so far looks like - believe it or not - something along the lines of Psychonauts 2 more so than anything else.
What does this mean in a practical sense, though? Well, we'll tell you. Down below, after you watch a short Xbox gameplay demo.
Whereas many modern action-adventure games place extremely heavy emphasis on combat, this wasn't always the case. The long-gone era of three-dimensional mascot games, like Jak & Daxter, Spyro, or Ratchet & Clank focused much more so on platforming and level manipulation than anything else, and we're thrilled to report that South of Midnight is essentially a modern take on this same concept.
Though we've compared South of Midnight to God of War to set a mainstream example, the fact of the matter is that this game de-emphasizes combat to the level that the player desires. There are bespoke difficulty modifiers for, just to name a few, enemy health and damage outputs, and we'll be free to modify them however we see fit.
The absolute focus of the experience is twofold: the vibes and the atmosphere of South of Midnight's delightful classic Americana, and the main story. Everything else is a byproduct of how the two aforementioned aspects of the game interrelate with one another.
We genuinely think this works in South of Midnight's favor based purely on its setting. A magic-infused version of Louisiana is something we've basically never had the chance to explore in a video game, and this specific sub-division of classic American folklore doesn't get brought up nearly as often as it should. Putting all the bets on combat would've been a huge disappointment for South of Midnight in our book, so we're thrilled with this development.
And on that note, the modern gaming industry desperately needs more games like Psychonauts 2 and Astro Bot. We didn't expect for South of Midnight to entertain this same niche, but the fact that this is on the menu at all is a very promising showcase of things to come.
With South of Midnight, you're getting an exciting and unique modern fable action game that will take you about 12-15 hours to beat. If that's precisely what you're looking for amidst all these huge, dozens-of-hours-long ARPGs and forever-lasting sandbox games, stay tuned.
Kicking butts, Southern-style.
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