South Of Midnight Passes 1 Million Players With The Help Of Xbox Game Pass

Great game with a great story and graphics and general vibes and I enjoyed the combat aswell and it's not half as bad as people make out!!
Some people are never happy what can you do not every game is perfect 🤷

Solid game. I wanted to complete it (and did). Great story and design.

I wrote a bit about it on Last Game You Beat.

https://www.purexbox.com/forums/px_other_gaming/last_game_you_beat?start=740#reply-745

Loved it and it wasn't even a game i was particularly looking forward too but it was beautiful and just the right length for the type of game it was. Soundtrack was fantastic too.

For some strange reason I couldn't play the PC version using a PlayStation controller. Apparently, it is unsuported!

It’s a decent game, but nothing remarkable in my opinion. It just didn’t click with me in the same way as others.

The combat becomes pretty repetitive rather quickly with limited enemy variety, and the skill tree doesn’t really help with that. The level structure is quite basic and formulaic and the same can be said for the platforming challenges. The music, art style, and voice acting are all legitimately great and that’s what holds the game up for me.

The story wasn’t as compelling as I was hoping for and I think that’s largely because the ending feels a bit rushed and hollow. My favourite character by far was the catfish and I loved the back-and-forth banter between him and Hazel. So I was super disappointed how he just disappears late into the game and only has one single line of dialogue in the post-credit scene. He was very involved in the narrative up until that point so it felt so odd that he just gets essentially forgotten by the narrative after a certain point, just so the story can focus on Hazel’s incredibly unlikeable grandmother instead.

So it’s good overall but I wouldn’t call it great, too many flaws for that. Music, art, voice acting are absolutely on point but the formulaic combat, platforming, level design, and disappointing final act of the narrative drags it down for me. I don’t regret playing but I think I’d be regretting my purchase if I had bought at full price - just to be brutally honest here.

Actually, the end is great. When you think you reached a formulaic conclusion, you did not.

That's very commendable given how busy it was weeks prior and post release. I haven't touched it myself.

A million players. I wonder how many actually bought the game? Sounds like every small business owner’s dream, having a million lookee-loo’s but nobody buying whatever you’re selling.

@Cakefish Game started off great for me, but likewise completely agree that combat was very repetitive, it is like each checkpoint you get to you need to do the same combat x3 + limited variety of enemies. I finished the game, mostly because I had got far enough that I wanted to see the end, but getting there was a chore.

There is no way I am ever playing this game again. Zero replayability.

@Balaam_ Did you ever rent a video game or film years ago from the rental store??
Not trying to offend you but you seem obsessed with sales numbers and physical games and renting anything or buying digital games is the devil!!
The people who make the games make money from it being on gamepass you know and it must be enough where it's profitable expedition 33 is prime example it sold well over a million copies by a week later and they still chose to be on gamepass why??? 💰

@Ricky-Spanish @balaam_ The game developers received a hefty sum of money to be on Game Pass to begin with to make up for the cannibalizing of the sales, but they also received payment for those that did sell. Either way, they're happy.

@Balaam_ exactly. So many people seem to have the misconception that because you played it via a subscription service, you're supporting the developer. They always fall back on the deal Microsoft made with the publisher to get the game on gamepass, acting like every game gets a huge amount of cash upfront when in reality each game comes with a different deal. Microsoft's upfront money only covers so many potential sales lost, not every sale.

@Ricky-Spanish and they still chose to be on gamepass why???

Without picking sides, or even commenting on this game specifically, I think a lot of the reason is that Gamepass has made Gamepass kind of neccessary in order to succeed on the series consoles. More so in the last 18m now that MS have purchased some very large companies and wrapped them up into GP.

Take something like Expedition 33 which by all acounts is a very very good game (not got round to it yet myself). Had that not been on GP you have to question how well it would have done on Series consoles when it was around Oblivion and other games of that ilk which where available on the Sub. At that point it probably makes more sense to take the GP deal for smaller games.