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An Indiana Jones game was something I have been waiting for a long time. Hearing that this game was coming had me hyped until I saw the first trailer. I thought the first person would ruin it. I was wrong. I thought the game would be a full blown Uncharted-like adventure. I was wrong. I thought that the game would make me want to play it day and night. I was wrong. I thought it was going to be the best Indy game ever. I was wrong.

So what is it?

I'm not sure that the game itself knows that. But let me start from the things it actually does do very well.

First of all, the cast and their performances are absolutely stellar. Baker's impression of Ford is almost indistinguishable from the real thing. The chemistry between the characters is astounding and their interactions are some of the best element the game has to offer (don't skip the side missions!). The main villain is so obnoxious but he pulls it off so well that you just want to see more of him even though you hate his guts from the moment you see him. The music is beautiful and accompanies the game perfectly with smart Williams inspired themes combined with new tunes. The locations are wonderful (especially the Vatican) and quite vivid, even though the jungle section suffered greatly from pop-ups.

Unfortunately, that is what the game does exceedingly well. All that was marvelously used as a wrapper for everything the game actually is - a walking simulator. Now, let's be frank. This game discourages any form of physical interaction with the bad guys. If the enemies have guns, there is literally no way you win in a fight. You die in two hits, while they take more shots than the amount of bullets you can carry. As a result, you die almost instantly. If you go into fistfights, you can use a whole variety of tools that have varied durability. But even then, there is no guarantee that when you hit them with a hammer they will be knocked out.

So what do you do? You sneak and use stealth. It is incredibly clunky to be stealthy in first person if done badly. Most of the time I was just running past enemies feeling like I was jumping from cutscene to cutscene. The whip usage in battle has a few fun tricks but it generally gets you in trouble as you are almost instantly surrounded by bad guys and shot dead a second later.

Ok, so combat is no the primary mechanic and stealth is clunky. What about exploration? Using the map can be fun as it is one of the ways you can find out where to go. The setpieces are quite vast so using a map can sometimes seem difficult and tiresome, in which case I propose the lower exploration difficulty because then the game tells you where to go. However, exploration generally leads to enemy filled camps and excavation sites where you have no chance of survival unless you find camouflage. It seems quite problematic running around finding camouflage in enemy camps and barracks just to be able to roam free and explore (and the rewards are always the same regardless of the location you are at). Most of the time you will be caught and killed before you even find out where you have to look. It gets exhausting very very fast.

Ok, so the exploration is tricky and tiresome. What about puzzle solving? To that I can only say - what puzzle solving? Every puzzle I encountered could have been solved minutes from entering the puzzle chamber. They are straightforward, with no complexity and they hold no feeling of accomplishment when you solve them.

The game does, however, break this dull walking and sneaking with a few really adrenaline fueled sequences but they are few and far between. It leaves you wondering what kind of game we could have gotten if the devs focused a little bit more on those segments.

What about the story? The story is quite nice. It does have that Indiana Jones feel to it but the problem with it is the ending. It comes out of nowhere and I found it does not fit as the last piece of the puzzle. It's an intriguing story that kept me going, but the ending just felt a little to different from the rest of the game (something similar happened in the Kingdom of the crystal skull). There are no clues as to what they might find at the end during the game, so when they do, it feels like it came out of nowhere.

The technicalities of this game are also debatable. I found that there is no need for this game to have such high recommended settings, even though the graphics look really nice. I also experienced no crashes.

Overall I feel like this game wanted to distance itself from the games it inspired -Uncharted and Tomb Raider, which lead to it losing its own identity. I went back and saw the movies after this game and found out that the movies function specifically because of the great balance of action, exploration and puzzle solving. This game lost the action part, created a Hitman style exploration game without any of the nuances of a Hitman game, and created puzzles that can be solved within minutes after encountering them, effectively killing the momentum of the game.

Now, let's try to imagine this game is not an Indiana Jones game. I am not entirely sure that the game would be this well received nor this well liked. It's an Indiana Jones game that kept all of the Indiana Jones element in the cutscenes and not in the gameplay itself.

It's important to remember sometimes that games are primarily a source of entertainment. Their primary goal is to make the player have fun. Games can also invoke strong and powerful emotions, present players with important lessons etc. But sometimes gamers just want to play a good old fashioned video game like from the old days (I'm talking PS2/PS3/XBOX/360 era). South of Midnight is exactly that.

This title will immediately remind you of why we love games. Why we play them and what we have forgotten along the way. We focus way too much on 60FPS/4K and ray tracing and bloat and remakes and remasters that we forget to enjoy the smaller, more conventional games like this.

This is a full blown platforming action adventure game that has no fear of showing it. It embraces all of its influences and runs with it. For better or worse.

The game does a lot of things very, very good. The graphics are great and innovative. The stop-motion really gives the whole game a unique visual vibe combined with the settings and vibrant colors, shades and pallets. South of Midnight is a really nice looking game. Second, the music is phenomenal. Not only does it serve as a nice musical background, it is sometimes used as a narrative instrument which is quite cool once you get to those parts. The game is technically polished. I had nearly no glitches, not a single crash or stutter. The voice acting is great and the characters are memorable and empathetic. Some of the side characters have an amazing amount of weigh to them and once you meet them, you want to spend time with them. Some of them are incredibly likeable. Platforming is fun and has quite a lot of fun traversal mechanics. Nothing original or noteworthy but it all serves the main purpose - to be entertaining.

Things that should have been better are the story, the ending and the combat. The story is rounded and has a head and a tail. However, certain plot points deserved a bit more development. Certain plot points do not necessarily make sense, especially if you start to analyse them. However, it is not a bad story, just not a great one. The ending feels a little rushed and it is a shame that the final chapter doesn't expand on the idea that was being told throughout the main campaign. The side stories are, in that regard, much more interesting and pack a meaner emotional punch. Some of them stuck with me a long while after the end credits rolled. The least good part of the game is the combat. It is unfortunate that once you see the first combat encounter you've seen all of them. The boss battles mostly rely on luck as the controls tend to develop a mind of their own in certain cases; quite a few times the input lag has caused me to die or take damage I should not have taken. It is serviceable, but it is is incredibly uninspiring even with all the magic spells you can use. A shame because the enemy design is also quite nice.

This is a game that is meant for players yearning for an oldschool action adventure. It is nicely made, it has a good story and very good side stories, amazing supporting characters and creature design, but the combat is underdeveloped and dull with sometimes unresponsive controls (unlike the rest of the game). I highly recommend using a controller as the default keyboard and mouse controls are serviceable but evidently not the primary intended control scheme.

It's a game that made me have fun like a kid again playing games after school. We need more games like this.