South of Midnight: 60fps Stop Motion on Xbox Series 🎮

The developer Compulsion Games continues his impressive run of visually captivating and creative projects with South of Midnight. Following his work on 2013's Contrast and 2018's We Happy Few, this time we move into a gothic fantasy setting inspired by the myths of the American Deep South.

It’s a unique premise and the studio’s third game to champion an aesthetic style – with the twist being that South of Midnight is developed using a stop-motion style. To complete the effect, the game imposes a framerate cap, particularly on its cutscenes, simulating the jerky motion of real animated film. It’s currently exclusive to Xbox and PC, so how do the Series X and Series S versions compare in delivering this visual style, and what is the extent of scalability for the PC version? 🎮

South of Midnight is a single-player adventure that runs roughly 12 hours and is a perfect fit for a Game Pass release. Compulsion Games focuses on three core gameplay pillars here: platforming, combat, and physics-based puzzles. Our protagonist, Hazel,'s spellcasting abilities offer a wealth of control options, allowing us to glide through the air, move, pull, and create landscapes, and even trap enemies in combat.

In every respect, this idea of manipulating the world with strings is well realized, achieving a satisfying flow to movement once your abilities expand into a skill tree. There are higher difficulty settings, but I found it to be an enjoyable stroll as it stands on the default mode. It's linear, to be sure—there's even an optional hint toward the next objective if you need a tip—but given the spate of open-world extravaganzas lately, it's refreshing to have a more change-driven experience. 🌟

In terms of technology, there's no official statement on whether Unreal Engine 4 or 5 is used, but looking at the PC installation directory, there are crash dump files that strongly suggest using UE4 as a base. However, the real highlight this time around is South of Midnight's stop-motion animation style.

To break this effect down, all cutscenes run at 30fps on Xbox Series X, Series S, and even PC. There’s no way to opt out on any platform, but it’s justified given that it forms the basis of the game’s idiosyncratic visual style. Within this 30fps upgrade, certain elements are further slowed down to create the effect; facial movements run at 15fps, creating the illusion of faces switching every other frame. Meanwhile, most of Hazel’s body movements are at 30fps, though some other elements—such as the creatures roaming the land—appear to be moving at 15fps. 👹

Overall, the stop-motion effect is convincing in its delivery, creating an otherworldly, off-kilter movement that suits the story well. We've seen this technique used in other UE games as well, most recently with Hi Fi Rush's vivid imitation of Saturday morning cartoons. Likewise, it authentically captures the anime influence in Ark System Works' Guilty Gear Strive, with fight sequences running at eight, 10, or 15 frames per second—or more. South of Midnight goes a step further, extending this to the playable game in some respects.

To be clear, the game runs at 60fps—as it should, given the focus on time-sensitive combat and platforming—and all camera movement is also scaled to a 60Hz refresh rate. Still, you'll notice that Hazel's running motion and the creatures in the world use a form of reduced animation that locks movements to either 30 or 15fps. If you don't like the result, you can disable the stop-motion effect directly in the Xbox and PC menus, though this change won't affect cutscenes. 💨

As far as comparisons go, this is remarkably straightforward. The big difference between the Series S and the Series X are their resolution targets. On Series X, resolution scales from 1080p to 4K internally, while Series S works in a range of 540p to 1080p. This is then scaled on each machine to a fixed output resolution, 4K on Series X and 1080p on Series S, using what appears to be Unreal’s TAAU method.

Unfortunately, this means the Series S suffers a drop in image quality, especially in an early storm sequence where any flashes of lightning reveal the raw pixel structure for a few frames. Fortunately, in other chapters, the Series S version holds up better. The differing resolutions have an effect on the field of view, and shadow quality appears to have been marginally reduced on the Series S, but other visual settings are evenly matched between the two machines. 🌈

A quick look at PC is also revealing. Even with all settings locked at ultra on PC and the resolution pegged at native 4K, the Series X version still produces a competitive image in side-by-side comparisons. Shadow quality is really the main dividing point this time around, with PC pushing cleaner, crisper shadows further out.

The PC edition also offers options for DLSS scaling and frame generation. My setup RTX 4080 maxes out gaming at 4K and ultra settings with frame rates between 65 and 80fps, with scaling and frame generation substantially increasing that figure to 100-120fps. However, the game does appear to suffer from some UE4 stuttering, despite a short shader compilation step upon first launch, with the appearance of 'weaver' characters causing a stutter even at a capped 60fps. Hopefully, this will be fixed with a patch, as the rest of the game runs smoothly. ⚡

The state of the console performance is also remarkably clear, with both Series X and S running at a stable 60fps for most of the game – without any alternate graphics modes as we’ve often seen this console generation. The approach makes sense for the game’s linear environment, but Compulsion still deserves recognition for delivering a great experience in a single mode. After examining titles like Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Atomfall, more RT-powered open-world adventures, it’s a relief to see a game that does not limit users of Series S with a cap of 30fps too. 🙌

There are some minor rough spots elsewhere, but they're hardly game-breaking. First, as on PC, there are occasional stuttering scrolling moments. Encounters with the weaver ghost characters early on seem to be the culprit, always causing a minor hitch in the same location on both Series X and Series S. It's rare, but stands out given the overall success in hitting 60fps.

Second, there are dips below 60fps in very specific areas. When Series X or S reach their lowest DRS ranges, the game will drop to the mid-50fps for a while, such as in the opening chapter during the storm and in one specific combat encounter in Chapter 4. The game stays well within the VRR range, if your display can handle it, but even without this feature, dips are rare enough to be overlooked. 🌬️

The last point concerns the scenes. Of course, the 30fps cap and 15fps animation aren't indicative of the GPU limits on either machine, but the 30fps cap is incorrectly synchronized across frames. This causes these scenes to animate more erratically than intended, though the stop-motion effect still works well despite this. 🌀

It's a pleasant surprise, then. South of Midnight tells a fish-out-of-water story with a commendable sense of style. The stop-motion effect is well executed, helping to elevate the mystery of its Deep South folklore. Hitting 60fps on both Series X and S isn't something to be taken for granted, with a great single-mode experience that offers a good mix of fidelity and performance.

The game's framerate delivery is solid, barring some minor streaming stutters early on, rare sub-60 drops in battle, and some frame-sync oddities. The only notable catch for the Series S is the resolution drop, but it still holds up well given its 4TF profile. All of this makes South of Midnight easy to recommend from the start, no matter which Xbox you own—and especially given that it's on Game Pass from day one. 🌍