When I sat down to play the 90-minute South of midnight Preview, I had a big question: Why does the frame rate look like this? The trailers show a deliberately chopped animation style that is supposed to remind you of stop motion, but it was not clear how this effect would be used in the cutscenes, the struggle and passage of the game. After playing the preview, I’m still not sure.
I should indicate my bias above: I’m well prepared to enjoy South of midnight. I’ve been a fan of forced games since the studio debut contrast in 2013 and me eagerly followed The development of his follow-up, We have only a few happyUntil 2018. The games from Compulsions are stylish, with a focus on polished 3D graphics and lanky characters in fabulous outfits. Microsoft took over the compulsion in 2018 and the studio worked on it South of midnight Since. My intrigue has only grown last year after a dripping feed from trailers with lush southern Gothic environments, a bluesy soundtrack and the magic webing protagonist of the game, a young black woman named Hazel, the game of the game.
First let’s talk about what the game is doing well. The preview begins in Chapter 3 after Hazel has discovered the basics of her magical skills, but did not master the strength that flows through her veins. Hazel is a weaver who is able to manipulate the invisible strands that hold reality together, and she is looking for her mother Lacey after a hurricane has swept through her hometown Prospero in the American deep south.
When hazel is the main character in South of midnightThe environment is your co-star: the swamps of Prospero are illuminated with a rich, golden color and it buzzes with surreal life. Highly towering cypresses, lush ferns and thorny vines the size of tree trunks weave through the forest and its cloudy pools. The houses, the semi -died huts that are connected by crumbling wooden platforms over the Bayou, are filled with rotting jewelry and faded photos, and many have evacuations that are recorded at the front doors. Car size peaches endow the landscape, clumsy pink skin that protruded from the swamp water and are buried on the bases of the trees. This country drowns in magic.
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Although Hazel is on a linear journey to find her mother, there are numerous ways to explore Prospero. Chapter Drei contains a handful of hidden paths, which are completed with bright fuel, the currency of the game, so that Hazel collects. These alternative routes are positioned within sight, but they are integrated into the landscape away from the leaked paths so that they are easy to overlook if they are not careful. Hazel researched by running, jumping, jumping, gliding, gliding and walking, and its movements through the world feel extremely natural. Their skills build up well and they react perfectly and create a Mini Parkor River that I hadn’t expected in this game. Sometimes Hazel uses Magic to transform ghostly objects into material platforms, and their double jump and sliding combination is particularly fun.
Hazelnut always looks cool, regardless of the frame rate. It moves its long, thin limbs with the random self-confidence that corresponds to a teenager extension star, and her clothes-like sweatshirt, which is bound around her waist-are strongly structured and give every piece a tangible feeling. Hazel’s dialogue is also delivered with a strong amount of teenagers, and I laughed out loud when she hit the huge speaking catfish and was immediately like “no” and turned me away. The actors Nona Parker Johnson, who perform Hazel’s motion capture and stunts, and Adriyan Rae, Hazel’s voice, have done some fabulous work here.
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In the preview, Hazel meets an eccentric locals, a few magical creatures and at least one mighty ritual, and she finally follows the spirits of two brothers, one of whom died after being stuffed into the trunk of a tree. While she chases her memories and catches her pain in a blue bottle, Banjo music drinks into the scene until she becomes a full folk song that tells the tragic history of the brothers. It is a unique and effective mechanic. The world around Hazel is made up of dark and surreal beauty, and after seeing (and hearing) gameplay splinters, I endeavor to uncover all the hidden stories of Prospero.
Fight in the South of midnight The preview takes place in stadiums contained, with spiky vines barred the outputs as soon as the fight begins and the Haints – Spirits in Hazel’s colloquial language – appear. The enemies in this chapter are available in three basic forms: Tall Floaty Hainy, inpatient Haint -Nest and Floaty Blob Haint. The enemies consist of sticky black tendons and red magic and attack depending on the type. The big one moves quickly and hurries forward, the nest spits out exploding beetles and the floating blobs shoot parabelle projectiles.
Hazel has a basic attack, dodging, healing movements and four magical skills: weaving, strand, strand, strand and a final closed movement. Walk an enemy while beach pull and push can be used to throw objects back into the faces of the Haaten. Each combat level begins with a healing totem that hazel can use as long as she can achieve it, and (on the Xbox series X) Press Y. It also receives health regulations by y near a bunch of freshly killed Haint Press the meat, dissolve their essence for a small thrust. These piles are only available for a few seconds after each killing, so there is a slight strategy to stay alive in the middle of the framework.
Forced games
The battles flow well and a lock-on system enables Hasel to exchange their attention under the groves on the current flies. Paragating projectile is the most difficult ability to master in the preview, but with a little more time to practice, I think it becomes second nature. South of midnight Is not an open world RPG or something, but Hazel has a small capacity with three upgrades for each of its magical skills and nine slots to unlock movements such as ground slam. A second screen contains Hazel’s collection of magical objects (five slots), patterns (six slots), reading can (104 slots) and storybooks (14 slots). At the end of the demo I collected four magical objects and a readable one. Just looking at the menus seems how it seems South of midnight is an experience in the sub-20-hour experience.
I think it’s time to talk about the animations of the game. South of midnight Starts with a beautiful, handmade stop-motion intro film, which brings Hazel and her storybook adventure to life, but afterwards only the game’s stop-motion gland. Hazel’s movements and the world are supposed to render 60 fps, while their facial expressions in cutscenes to a little closer to 15 fps and the “animated in Twos” style of imitation In the spider verse. This seems to be the case for everything in the game, and it is particularly clear with the character of the Wel, which is basically the entire mouth. When everything comes together as a compulsion, the effect looks and feels very cool and feels very cool. Unfortunately, this is a rare event.
In practice, the stop-motion effect in moments of exploration and close-ups of the third is inconsistent and tends to feel less artistic and, like the game, simply has an irregular frame rate. It is possible to switch off stop-motion effects and I tried it, but to be honest I couldn’t see the difference. Even with the stop motion switched off, hazel is rendered at an unpredictable speed, which often drops well below 60 fps. The frame rate problem appears in characters and vignettes and is particularly shitty in brightly lit memory scenes, in which NPCs appear in front of hazel as bright white spirits, filled with particles and visually stuttering stuttering everywhere.
South of midnight Goals 4K/60 on the Xbox series X, but my preview sometimes felt like it had tried to entertain 30 FPS. Even with the stopped stop motion, the picture never felt stable. However, what is more worrying is the screen that appears throughout the preview and was due to the use of A-Sync through the game. The tear often appears near the middle of the screen, which indicates that the game is far from its performance goal. Of course, the compulsion also works to optimize South of midnight And there is some time to tackle these problems before the game comes out on April 8th – but they cut them.
I think the stop-motion effect is a great idea and it would work well if the compulsion to go to the piece. If the frame rate should be low, keep it low instead of getting in and out of higher frame rates, which feels like a mistake. Consistency is the key and South of midnight Has not yet nailed.
This is the first attempt by Compulsion to create a game with all the resources and attention that Xbox Game Studios offers, and the studio has created a beautiful, mysterious and unique world with an ambitious mechanical imagination and a bad protagonist. The stop-motion effect is still a hit-or miss, but that does not affect the other successes of the game. I am incredibly enthusiastic South of midnight.
South of midnight is due to the Xbox series X/S, PC and Game Pass on April 8th.
This article was originally displayed in Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/south-of-midnight-piew-stopped-motion-Toot-totion-160003119.html?src=rSS
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