What's Good About Midnight Fight Express
The first new game of the fall season and I’m already looking at it as a contender for game of the year. Okay, I guess I should actually say something of substance other than “PLAY IT” at the top of my lungs, so here goes. Midnight Fight Express is going into the same Folder as 2019’s Katana Zero in that everything about it is committed to being the absolute best version of itself that it possibly can be. There’s gonna be some things about it that I need to get through, but trust me, it’s worth it.
The entire game is framed from an interrogation cell. The city you are in is going to hell due to an organised crime wave and you, player character Babyface, have no memory of anything before the previous night. You tell your story about how you get solicited to kill a major crime figure known only as “The Boss”...by a drone. Named Droney. From there follows recapping a night of increasing absurdity that can only really be described as “What if Chad Stahleski directed Hotline Miami”. As far as setups for narratives go, I’m a sucker for the recap format, be it in the form of interrogation like it was here (or the way it was told by Varric in Dragon Age 2) or in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time where it was framed in the context of a Bedtime story. Overall, it does its job very well and goes to some interesting places over the course of its runtime.
The main thing I want to call out for Midnight Fight Express is the Game’s animation. Mainly in that, I heard that the game’s developer, Jacob Dwinzel, insisted that the majority of it be based on motion capture. It’s an interesting approach because it looks like a combination of that mixed with some hand-done animation for cleanup purposes and it enhances the game for the better. The hits feel chunky, the amount of hit stop mixed in makes them hurt even more than I thought possible, and everything from the takedowns to the counters all looks and feels smooth as butter. These combined with the game's otherwise minimalist aesthetic make for one of the most visually striking games of the year, at least in my eyes. This is helped by the fact that the game lets you save gifs of your performances. Yep, you read that right, this game is gifable and I love it. But onto the actual meat and potatoes.
Midnight Fight Express is, from a mechanics standpoint, a 3D, arena-based beat-'em-up. You control Babyface through a variety of up to 40 levels of ass-kicking goodness. While that sounds like a lot with contemporaries in the genre like Streets of Rage 4 having 12 levels and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge having 16, this is not an issue. It’s a lot of levels in the same way a game like Wolfenstein 3D or the original Project Warlock had a bunch of levels. There are a lot of them, but you can finish them in about 3 to 5 minutes. Which I am perfectly okay with because of the structure of the main game on top of this. The game actively times and scores you based on combo variety, weapon usage, how quickly you get through a level, and whether or not you take damage ranging from D all the way to S rank. If you’re a score attack aficionado like I am on certain days, you’ll love it, but it’s not the only way to play it. You can simply go through it and be impressed with the gameplay, which is fine because all of the stuff here is awesome from my time with it so far.
Your standard arsenal consists of martial arts moves that you remember from the tutorial at the start that Droney puts you through and adds up. From there you add the use of weapons, the mechanic of throwing anything that isn’t nailed down, the aforementioned counters and takedowns, and even using guns and throwing weapons. These are mixed in with all of the stuff I just mentioned in a manner that would make John Wick proud. And you’ll need to tap into your inner John Wick because this game throws everything it’s got at you. Starting with basic crooks, Midnight Fight Express starts throwing a lot of stuff at you from thick boy grapplers, ground-pounding heavies, gun-toting jerks, rat cultists, and even robots because of…reasons? I’m good with all of this because it provides a good challenge that requires you to stay on your feet at all times. And this is before getting into how the game’s skill trees interact with all of these interlocking systems and how they focus on four unique fighting styles. And lastly, there’s the game’s soundtrack, which is a straight-up collection of bangers that are evocative of the club scene in the first John Wick film, which might have been what they were going for.
I highly recommend Midnight Fight Express. It’s one of the best games I’ve played all year and if this is how the fall rush is starting, we’re in for a treat.
