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This game gnawed at me—not because it lingered in my thoughts, but because I kept convincing myself I must have missed something. That I was the numb one. And that’s the most infuriating part. In a way, I was compulsed into thinking what was not unfolding before my eyes.
First, some context: Compulsion has been in this industry for over a decade, yet they’ve only released three titles. When I played Contrast as a teenager, I recognized its jank, its staged moments, but I also saw something clever, warm, and painfully underappreciated. Guillaume Provost’s vision may not have fully crystallized, but it was a short, sweet, and oddly charming experience.
Fast forward to today. The ongoing narrative is that industry is bloated—$80 price tags (we are really there huh), open-world excess, the relentless sprawl of "more" at the cost of meaning, games bloating themselves to death only to increase the cost of development and the effort that's put in. Yes, I crave tighter, more focused games just like this. But not exactly like this, you know. South of Midnight (SoM) understands its scope, yes. It’s self-aware, unfolding over a single day, steeped in urgency. Yet, for all its aesthetic ambition, it feels like a relic—a PS3-era curiosity without the conviction of its predecessors. Think of Puppeteer, Heavenly Sword, Dante’s Inferno, even Tokyo Jungle. All stuck in that era. None were revolutionary, but they had identity, some bizarre ideas. They left marks. SoM, on the other hand, is the kind of game you forget within days, only to vaguely recall years later—not with nostalgia, but with a shrug. Oh, right. That existed. I felt that as soon as I grabbed the game which is a shame because it plays overly safe and still seemingly underperforms.
How did we regress from Contrast’s light-and-shadow puzzles to… pushing boxes and carts? A mechanic so tired it was memed heavily after Uncharted 4, a game that, at least, justified its simplicity with cinematic flair, grounded storytelling, and still a dozen of intricate puzzles. SoM offers none of that evolution. Its mechanics are skeletal: a handful of underbaked abilities with no weight, combat that’s neither punchy nor thrilling, and a "challenge" that boils down to getting cornered by off-screen mobs while locked onto a single enemy. This isn't progress - it's stagnation. A misguided attempt to recreate Contrast's magic in a zeitgeist that has long moved on.
I wanted to forgive the combat. Nailing melee systems is hard. But SoM falters in nearly every other department, save two:
Optics – The stop-motion aesthetic is stunning, a dying art resurrected with care. But here’s the irony: it’s too effective. The choppy animation triggered headaches, and the occasional frame-rate dips (especially in Chapters 5–7 and 10–11) turned play sessions into endurance tests. Thankfully, the option to disable the effect exists, a small mercy to improve my gameplay and ease distress. I appreciate trying to impletent such a technique but once I couldn't hold on to that gimmick, I felt like all was lost. To me, it was a bit too much and I rarely get motion sickness.
Soundtrack – Some blues, some honky tonk, bits of jazz. This game, for real, has some of the best pieces of an original score. It's woven to its gameplay so neatly that simple chase sequences, boss fights, even quiet platforming stretches are elevated by the music.
But these strengths are betrayed and underminted by the rest which is the exact skeleton of the game: its gameplay. The world is pretty, yes, albeit lifeless. You’ll scavenge currency for trivial upgrades, skim forgettable collectibles, and endure platforming that never evolves beyond its first few initial hours. Hazel’s traversal abilities feel static—no fluid combos, no chaining stuff,no synergy with combat, just stiff, functional movement. Puzzles? Push this push that. Use Crouton (your Tonberry-like little doll guy) to reach a ledge. Repeat.
Combat is a slog of dodge-poke-unravel cycles. No parries, no blocks—just awkward crowd control in claustrophobic arenas. The "unravel" mechanic (a finisher that acts like a finisher which restores slivers of health) feels pointless. Ghostwire had a similar execution style in which you were able to blast your opponents with a wider range and finish multiple opponents at a time. I was not a fan of it but seeing this, oh my. I called Hellblade 2's combat an on-rail swordfighting (which was) but it was nevertheless a spectacle. Here, when we have Kena at hand, I don't know anything. It's good for nothing.
Even the escape sequences lack high stakes. I didn’t realize what was chasing me until six chapters in—a formless fog-like entity, devoid of anything like Alan Wake’s oppressive dread. Just… run. Platform as usual. Repeat. Nothing intense if it was not for the BGM. The bosses are not half bad but very generic stuff. The final boss is overwhelming and incredibly anticlimactic, it just spawns waves of mobs that you've been fighting since day one. During my playthrough one of the bosses (Molly) was bugged and softlocked progression, adding insult to injury, but instead of reloading I just skipped the boss fight, hurray! It did save me of replaying a boring fight! Accessibility has gone too far to skip an entire game to question yourself at a point why am I even playing it but I am not against it. Because, hey, it worked in my favour. So, you can skip any combat, escape sequences and pretty much anything in-between besides going from A to B.
And then, the story. The heart of this Southern tale. Surely, this would salvage the experience? No. The game leans hard into trauma, south folklore, and macabre, but its themes fray like old rope. Hazel’s journey is undercooked, her potential squandered. Jellyfish, her oddball yet amusing companion ends up with no closure. Even Hazel’s mother and grandmother, central to the emotional core, feel like sketches.
SPOILERS AHEAD -regarding the ending
The ending is where the threads fully snap. Hazel reunites with her mother (lost in a hurricane) and accepts that some wounds can’t be fully seen or healed—a metaphor for her role as a Weaver (that bottles pains?), yes, but also a clumsy nod to generational trauma. Her grandmother, who committed some atrocities to save her daughter (like ripping heart of an innocent creature), confesses her envy of mundane joys (like "There’s a child in this car" signs gut her). It’s a raw, human moment which often is hard to convey—until another character offers her a Morpheus-style cop-out: the illusion of her child’s return. A delusion to numb the pain. She accepts. What the fuck?
After all this—the suffering, the confronting, the unraveling—the message is… give in to the lie? The house collapses (no clue why), Hazel escapes, and she promises her mother "so much to tell"—but there’s nothing left to say. Credits roll! It's dumb as rocks.
I really can't puzzle out how this game critically placed alongside the PS3-era titles I mentioned—or even newer releases like Atomfall or Khazan. It reminds me of all the Recore again only prettier and safer.
SoM is a tapestry with gorgeous threads and no pattern. It looks like art. It sounds like art. But peel back the veneer, and you’ll find a game that makes you want to punch a hole in your wall—a game that mistakes aesthetic for depth, folklore for meaning, and trauma for storytelling which is all too similar. Getting stigmatized as some might claim. I wanted a game that is lyrical but SHARP, melancholic but BITING. This ain't it chef.
As much as I dislike how SoM was directed I would not want Compulsion Games to suffer heavily from it. There are hints of creativity for sure. However, I also feel like it's not gonna getting actualized under Microsoft's roof.
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
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