Welcome back to The Spotlight, a monthly roundup of insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and everything in-between. Sure it’s a few days late, but I’ve been miserably sick, so this is the best I could do. For the month of April, 2025, here’s what I’m shining The Spotlight on.

South of Midnight

South of Midnight feels like somewhat of a throwback to the single-player action games of yesteryear — things that one might find on the PS2 or in the early stages of the Xbox 360. I say that with a lot of reverence, even if those games were in some cases, deeply flawed, and South of Midnight is no different.

South of Midnight is a third-person action game that sees you battling your way through a Gothic fantasy inspired American Deep South. You play as Hazel, a young woman who is in search of her mother who was stuck in their home as it was swept away by a flood. One thing leads to another, and you gain magical powers that allow you to cleanse the areas you come across of the overwhelming negative emotions that have corrupted them. The game explains this a lot better than I am, but the idea is that the people in this world have experienced some pretty nasty stuff in their lives and more often than not, responded to it in an equally nasty fashion. That guilt and despair literally poisons the areas, and Hazel has to do some pretty unremarkable and repetitive combat in order to cleanse it.

To hearken back to my comparison to the era of PS2 games, South of Midnight is extremely repetitive. Outside of a handful of boss fights, you only fight about five or six different types of enemies throughout the 12 hour duration of the game. These fights take place in very obviously indicated arenas, and you have to do a set amount of them before you can cleanse the area and move onto the next area, all to do it over again there.

South of Midnight isn’t a bad game by any metric, it’s just an extremely mediocre one that happens to look very nice. The story is pretty interesting even if the ending doesn’t stick the landing, and for as repetitive as the combat is, it’s still serviceable. I wouldn’t pay full price of South of Midnight, but I fully endorse giving it shot when it’s on sale or if you have Xbox Game Pass.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

I have never been a huge fan of the Bethesda RPG for a litany of reasons, but I’ve always respected them from a distance. The short version is that I find them unforgivably buggy, filled with more unremarkable quests than good ones, and generally have bad combat. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has not changed my opinion of these games, but I am still having fun playing it anyway.

Considering the gameplay side of Bethesda RPGs has always been a sore spot for me, I tend to resort to using console commands pretty quickly in order to be able to power through that shit and see the breadth of the world-building and storytelling without worrying about soul gems or Nuka-Cola or whatever. Oblivion Remastered might be the fastest I’ve ever broken that seal, primarily so I could break out of the prison cell you start in and go beat the hell out of that guy across from you that talks shit to you when you first start the game. This has led to me becoming the god of gods in Tamriel.

I can punch a hole through a bear, I can leap over mountains, and I know all the spells. This is a much better way to play these games. Don’t need to worry about shitty level-scaling when you can fire death beams out of your fingertips.

I’m sure this is all horrific to hear about from the purists out there who get off on picking digital flowers in order to craft potions or whatever, but I don’t give a shit. As far as I’m concerned, I am playing the definitive version of this beloved RPG and having a fucking stellar time doing so. Even if all of the dungeons and caves are filled with jack shit, even if all of the NPCs look like high-definition nightmares, even if the world is suspiciously empty save for the same fucking broken down fort that’s been copied and pasted a hundred times, and even if there are an embarrassing amount of loading screens, I’m finally seeing what all the fuss is about. I do wish it ran better though.

Crime Scene Cleaner

I’ve talked about Crime Scene Cleaner before, so I won’t belabor the point here. It recently came out on Game Pass, giving me the perfect excuse for playing it again. I can’t speak to the PC version, but the console version is highly compromised and buggy in a way that might impede progress. I had to repeat the final mission 2 times because objectives would just vanish or I could no longer interact with anything. I still managed to finish it and had fun doing so, but this version is rough.

Half Sword

Now this is what I’m fucking talking about. Half Sword is a physics driven medieval fighting game that’s easily the most gruesome thing I’ve played. Sure it looks hysterical with its bumbling characters tripping over one another and getting their weapons stuck between their legs, but when you land a good hit, you feel that impact. Blunt weapons discombobulate your opponents and leave hideous bruises, while the blades cleave off body parts with shocking ease. Describing and recommending this game feels borderline psychotic, but damn, it’s really fun and extremely satisfying.

Technically this is just the demo that I’m talking about, as it’s freely available on their Steam page. It’s expected to launch into early access eventually, which I can promise you I will be buying into the moment I can. I think you should try it and fool around a bit with the demo to see if it’s something you’d enjoy or if I’m just a weirdo.

Nextlander

I lamented the departure of the original Giant Bomb crew when that whole thing went down a few years back, and it left me feeling pretty cold on the whole concept of video game coverage. I’ve never really jived with a lot of the modern offerings out there, so I kind of had no place to go even if I wanted to participate in that stuff again. There was a certain charm and earnestness to the coverage from Giant Bomb, and I really appreciated how they produced and presented their video content. Early Giant Bomb was effectively how I wanted The Bonus World to be, but that never panned out for a whole host of reasons.

This is all set dressing for me to sing the praises of Nextlander. Nextlander is the continuation of the Giant Bomb I loved, run by the people who made Giant Bomb what it was — well, most of them at least.

When it comes to games coverage and entertainment, I always endorse the idea that you follow people over publications, or in this case, organizations. That’s what I’m doing with Nextlander. I trust these people’s opinions on games and their critical eye’s, as well as enjoy their sense of humor. It was a no-brainer supporting them on Patreon and I wholly recommend that if you, like me, are off-put by the over-the-top Twitch overlays, YouTube thumbnails and Tik Tok clips of people freaking out over video games, I suggest checking out Nextlander. Nextlander is like the retirement home of video game coverage, and I’m loving it.

News

Bethesda and Zenimax union authorize a strike

The mesmerizingly stupid saga of tariffs and the Nintendo Switch 2

Mario Kart World is 80 damn dollars

Shenmue is the most influential game ever according to a terrible BAFTA community poll

Nintendo has learned nothing from their Joy-Con debacle

Nintendo Welcome Tour is another example of Nintendo trying to squeeze as much money out of you as possible

Tariffs threaten tabletop industry, because of course they do

Baldurs Gate 3: Act Two Expansion looks incredible

Ubisoft argues that you never owned that copy of The Crew and they were totally fine to yank it from personal libraries

Another brilliant move from Nintendo, charging $90 for the complete version of an 8-year old game

Sony hikes console prices in certain territories

Ubisoft does something cool for a change and releases open source tool to help devs tailor games for colorblind players

Steam tool reveals how much money you’ve spent on their platform

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight this month. I’ll be back at the end of May with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.