Midnight Fight Express review

Brainless “Babyface” Killer

There’s nothing rarer in the gaming industry right now than a good single-player beat ‘em up game. This was one of the genres in gaming that truly pioneered us into an era of action-adventure games, that relied on precise movements, limited tries and a ton of action. Games such as Streets of Rage, Final Fight and Double Dragon defined a whole generation of beat ‘em ups, but they’re a rare breed now. However, occasionally, there comes a unique game that truly exceeds expectations on every front. Midnight Fight Express is exactly what you’d think from its title, a rigorous night of fighting, a whacky adventure full of surprises, and a game that aims to perfect the formula for modern beat 'em up games.

The plot follows the protagonist known only as Babyface. A former gang member with amnesia, Babyface is a 'one-man army' who could give heroes of old martial arts films something to think about. The plot is an homage to action cinema of the 90s, with most of the dialogue rife with pop culture references, and a level design that will keep you on your toes. As Babyface, you go through 41 small levels, with your goal being taking out every single criminal in the city, to thwart their plans of a hostile takeover. You wake up in your apartment and are confronted by Droney, a mechanical ally who will tell you what to do and take you through this adventure. Babyface is 100% brainless, as most of the decisions he will make are just what Droney tells him to do, but this is what makes for the somewhat exciting narrative. Now, while I do have to say that the plot is interesting and full of fun little twists and turns, the real meat of this game is the combat.

Fight Night, All Night!

It takes some time for the game's immensely rewarding and very complex fighting system to become apparent. Midnight Fight Express revolves entirely around giving you the power to become a ruthless killing machine, so you can put an end to all crime in the city. Mostly anything you see in this game world can be picked up and hurled at enemies, and there is so much weapon variety that it gets overwhelming. Of course, you only find weapons in each level, so the gameplay relies on you taking down opponents, stealing their weapons and beating them down with it. The combat is tight, with very responsive controls. Of course, the window of dodging and parrying is quite thin on the hardest difficulty, which means that you’ll have to master the mechanical gameplay. Especially since the enemies in this game won’t make it too easy for you through most of the levels. There’s a ton of enemy variety here, and they are brutal at times. However, the Rage Mode (which automatically activates whenever your focus builds up) will result in you getting some quick slams, though it doesn’t make you invincible, so you still must be careful. I played the game both with a Mouse and Keyboard, as well as an Xbox One Controller. In my opinion, the game played much better with the Mouse and Keyboard, the Xbox One Controller did have some slight input delay but I’m sure that’s going to be addressed with an update in the future. Most of the levels are very varied in terms of their art design and their quality. Both the universe and the level design are very diverse. You fight through typical metropolitan areas of the city, from nightclubs, kitchens, offices, bars, diners, sewers, train stations, sky-scrapers, factories, docks and even a game development studio. However, certain levels entirely switch things up, such as the unexpected speedboat chase section that had me on the edge of my seat, or perhaps the game development studio level where you had to engage in a pillow fight against innocent people. I just chose shooting most of them with a BB gun. The thing that keeps the level design consistent with the story is a phenomenal, pulsing, high-octane electronic soundtrack that you can totally feel radiating those dark action hero vibes.

After finishing each level, you unlock a skill point, which you can then use to enhance your basic set of moves through a super-well thought-out skill tree. This gives players the ability to move sets in any way that they see fit. There’s a TON of variety here, and you can basically turn your version of Babyface into John Wick! For example, I chose to invest almost all of my skill points in upgrading the parry system for my character. This gave my character the ability to do counterattacks, parry melee weapons and even slow down time at points to give myself a larger window of parrying. The other three categories that you can upgrade are the Finishers, Combo Attacks and Grabs. Later in the game, you can also unlock new types of ammunition for your secondary weapon which you will obtain around the 20th level of the game. You can also customize your character in essentially any way that you like, with around 150 cosmetic items from outfits, fully customizable body tattoos, hair color, headgear, gloves and shoes!

Rewarding Your Brutality

The game takes its time with the gradual introduction of new moves and skills. This keeps things interesting for you, it lets you learn and master each of the skills that you’re unlocking before letting you unlock more in the next level. Aside from this, learning how to chain moves together was also a rewarding experience, especially with the game’s inclusion of a scoring system. Every time you play through a level, you rake up a certain score. This increases the more enemies you kill in various ways and flashy approaches, the less you get hit and there’s even a ‘no-death’ bonus. It took a long while before I managed to get better, and even then, after hours of struggling, the maximum I could get was an ‘A’ rank on the hard difficulty.

Midnight Fight Express is one hell of a beat ‘em up. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table. However, it didn’t intend to do anything of the sort, and the only thing that developer Jacob Dzwinel intended to get out of this game was a ton of action goodness. It marks itself as a unique beat ‘em up experience, that combines so many elements from popular games in this genre, turning them all into phenomenal gameplay