After loving my time with sifu earlier this year I was excited about the look of Midnight Fight Express when Summer Game Fest unveiled it in June. I’m happy to say that Midnight Fight Express scratches the itch of a well-made, modern beat-em-up game. I loved unlocking the skill tree, customizing my appearance, and breaking my high scores as I unraveled the mystery of why the protagonist, “Babyface”, is wreaking havoc on the City of Tomorrow. While some of the 40 levels frustrated me, I still want to go back to earn more unlockables and eventually get the elusive “S” rating.
Midnight Fight Express is now available for purchase on PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, Xbox and PC Game Pass, and Steam. It is coming to the Nintendo Switch in Q3 of 2022.
STORY: PLOT TWISTS GALORE
Midnight Fight ExpressThe story follows Babyface as he battles through the City of Tomorrow with his only friend, Droney. The game starts when you are awakened by Droney in your apartment. Droney lets you know that you are a sleeper cop and on a mission to save the city of tomorrow by taking out “the boss”. However, the boss seems to have the whole town under his control, and everyone and their mother are out to kill you. As Babyface and Droney make their way through the plethora of enemy types, learn more about your past and why the boss is trying to take over the city of tomorrow.
DIALOGUE
Since there is one more story to follow, each level has a fair amount of dialogue. The dialogue only appears in text boxes and they appear for each new battle encounter. While the goons’ dialogue is pretty cheesy most of the time, most of the interactions are fairly entertaining. However, reading a text box before and after each fight breaks the flow of the fight too much. Because the story is interesting, you don’t want to click through the dialogue as quickly as possible, but you also don’t want to wait a minute or two before jumping into the next fight.
Reading is the least exciting part of the game
GAMEPLAY: ENGAGEMENT AND ADDICTION
The 40 levels of Midnight Fight Express offer infinite possibilities to feel like a professional MMA fighter, a master of martial arts or a skilled marksman. After each level, you earn an unlock point that you can use on one of the six skill trees. With these new skills, you can create your own fighting style and use your favorite combos, counters and finishers as you see fit. There are also 100 unique weapons scattered around the area. While it’s entertaining to knock people around with a wrench or hammer once a gun is in play, the game seems to lose its creativity. guns inside Midnight Fight Express are overpowered for both you and your opponents. They are not very fun to use and only serve as a way to build a bigger combo. When multiple enemies have weapons, you find yourself dodging endlessly until you can disarm one and turn the tide.
ENEMY TYPES
Each new level introduces at least one unique enemy type. The 69 different enemies range from pirates and ninjas to mutated rat people and zombies. While new enemies offer a nice variety of attacks to learn, some of your abilities along the way won’t work on certain enemy types. This feels very awkward and a bit disturbing that your hard earned unlock point has been rendered useless by the new enemy of this level. The game forces you to adapt to these new situations, but even the ability to disarm an enemy doesn’t work with some quirky armed attackers.
LEVEL PROGRESS
To complete a level 100% you need to get an “S” rank, collect 10 gold teeth and complete the 3 challenges of the level. The game encourages you to achieve this by offering a cosmetic for each of the level’s achievements. The only downside to this progression system is that you have to play each level multiple times. While completing the challenges and earning an “S” rank is skill-based, collecting gold teeth is based entirely on luck, and you’ll usually find 1-3 teeth per run.
Along the way you will encounter many different enemies
GRAPHICS & SOUND: SIMPLE BUT ENJOYING
While the art style of Midnight Fight Express does not go for over-the-top realism, the simple appearance of the character models and environment does not detract from the gameplay. However, the game shines with its beautifully handcrafted soundtrack. noise creamwho worked on My friend Pedro and Roboquest, composed 44 different songs to enhance the mood and excitement of each level. While the songs may not be very catchy, they were all perfectly designed for their particular skill level. Almost every song is filled with a pumping electronic beat that complements the combat beautifully.
Midnight Fight Express was rated on PC.
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