With “Sifu” coming out earlier this year (feel free to check out Steven Reye’s review HERE), I thought I was pretty damn satisfied. I thought my itch for a great third-person combat action game was thoroughly scratched. To my surprise, this little gem (developed by Jacob Dzwinel and published by Humble Games) came out of nowhere and showed me there’s still a lot more to enjoy in this genre. The gem I’m speaking of is Midnight Fight Express. This hard-hitting and bone-crunching game is addictive right off the bat and pushes the player to want to do better in each level. While everything seems a bit on the simple side at first, you begin to notice that there are more layers, and while this can be a bit more forgiving than most games of the genre, its overall simplistic nature is actually the main ingredient that makes this dish served so bloody awesome.
Determined to be like a lot of classic films of the past and present, Midnight Fight Express does what it can to put the player into the action and your typical action story. You play as a guy called Babyface and, for a lot of the narrative, you will be in an interrogation room discussing moments of the past, which will be where the actual fighting will be held. Essentially you wake up with zero memory, a random drone shows up and tells you that there are people close by that want you dead. The drone also reminds you that you have one killer instinct and helps push you to a bone breaking journey of survival and unraveling your personal mystery.
The gameplay is in an isometric viewpoint, and when I initially started to look around, I got “Hotline Miami” vibes, but, as I started fighting enemies, I quickly noticed that this plays a whole lot like the “Batman: Arkham” games. It’s fast and fluid, bouncing around the rooms, using your martial arts on your enemies in any direction needed, it’s just so kinetic and fun. Being able to use objects in the room is also very appreciated and very well done, this has thankfully started to become the new standard in these types of fighting games, so I’m glad they didn’t cheap out. The more I played, the more I realized that cheaping out was not in the cards. As you complete levels, you are rewarded unlock points that you can use on one of six different skill trees (Fighter, Parry & Counter, Finishers, Grapple, Rope, Secondary Gun). There is also a large archive of unlockable cosmetic items to customize Babyface any way you’d like.
There are just over 40 levels to play through, while they’re not all that incredibly long, the sheer number of levels does tend to stack up and after a while can feel a bit repetitive, even though it’s still very fun, I recommend getting through Midnight Fight Express in shorter bursts rather than spending five or six hours to beat it all in one go. Depending on the kind of player you are, the game will try to encourage you to keep pushing forward, fighting through enemies as creatively and as seamlessly as possible to generate a larger final score for the level. So, while the game can easily be beaten in just a few short sittings, this may help encourage you to play these 40 levels several times to better your score.
On a completely different note, I need to point out that the soundtrack done by Noisecream absolutely slaps. These electronic beats are heavy hitting bangers that make me feel like I’m in a John Wick movie fight scene, as well as keeping your blood pumping to continue on to the next, and next, and next level. All-in-all, Midnight Fight Express doesn’t reinvent the wheel by any means, but is a really nice, fine-tuned little package that I think should appeal to the masses.
8/10
For more information, visit – HERE
Related: Reviews by Nick Navarro
Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87
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