Midnight Fight Express Review

Midnight Fight Express is a brutal isometric beat ‘em up by sole developer, Jacob Dzwinel, and published by Humble Games. You play as an amnesiac former criminal, Babyface, during a massive crime wave. With a drone promising to help recover your past, you only have until sunrise to stop every gang in the city from tearing it apart — one fight at a time. The story is only as deep as you want it to go, even featuring an option to just disable all dialogue entirely. It’s interesting, but not entirely the focus of the game.

The game can also be surprisingly goofy sometimes. One moment you’ll be escaping the cops and the next you'll be having a pillow fight and nerf war with some developers to celebrate completing their game. And then you’ll be accidentally shooting those same devs with real bullets while also fighting off a SWAT team as they are overwhelmed by some guy covered in pillows. I am not making this up, that is just a summary of a level. It also has a bunch of references to other games, media, and memes too like Community, Popeye, and Fight Club.

Overall, the game is pretty short. A good player can beat it in 2–3 hours, however, for an average Joe it should take around 7–8 hours. I have no problem with this length, due to how much love and attention to detail there is here, and the fact it was made by one person. You’re already getting your money’s worth just by going through the levels, which are varied in objective and challenge. You'll rarely be dealing with the same problem for more than a stage or two.

Not for the faint of heart.

From a graphical perspective, it does the job. Nothing really outstanding but it does what needs to be done. The real focus here is the animation, which is wonderful, with each motion-captured move flowing into the next very smoothly. It’s quick, brutal, and stylish all in one package and I love it. You’ll even see bones break with some moves. It's all visceral and polish, which perfectly describes how fighting goes in Midnight Fight Express.

The game's combat system is a combination of Sifu and the Batman: Arkham series. Tap your attack button to do quick combos, hold it down for a heavy attack that breaks guards. Some attacks can be blocked and countered, while others require you to dodge out of the way, usually away from weapon attacks. You’ll also unlock an emergency magnum where each shot has a different effect, and a rope gun to control enemies with later on. All the while, you'll be spending skill points to expand your move set with various new attacks, finishers, grapples, and counters.

There are over a hundred enemy types you'll encounter throughout your rampage across the city from gang members and corrupt cops, to zombies and pirates. Tougher enemies will need to have their defences broken first before you can do real damage to them. Many of them will be armed with crowbars, bats, pistols, SMGs, and more — so even a lowly Bozo can put you down if you aren’t paying attention.

There are melee weapons and guns you can pick up to even the odds, but they’ll break and run out of ammo so you’ll constantly need to be on the move. You will be facing overwhelming odds at every level and they will not give you mercy even with low aggression, often attacking at the same rather than politely letting you complete your finisher animation, so don't be afraid to fight dirty. I do recommend using a controller. It does not feel good on mouse and keyboard and the game was explicitly made with gamepads in mind.

Photo Mode is a button away.

There are also a few vehicle levels to break up all the fighting, and they don’t feel underbaked. They’re just as frantic as all the brawls you get into, described more like shoot ‘em ups where you have to dodge enemy patterns while shooting back. You’ll also need to jump to other vehicles when your current is on fire.

This game gets tough very quickly. Even on the recommended difficulty, I was getting my arse kicked by the third or fourth level. Bog-standard mooks can drain your health in seconds, and bosses in even less time, and Midnight Fight Express doesn't have any health pickups. If you lose a section of your health bar, you are not getting it back until you complete the level or die and respawn from the last checkpoint. Getting all the challenges and completing all 40 levels with an S Rank will require you to understand the mechanics well enough that you can get through them without even getting a scratch. Thankfully, most levels aren’t that long so replaying them to get the best score isn’t that much of a chore. However, if you find things still too tough, there are various options that allow you to tailor the difficulty of the game in any way you wish, such as your character's health, enemy aggression, and whether you even regenerate health at all. Please play with these settings if getting destroyed a few seconds after respawning doesn't sound like fun.

Moving on, something that isn't difficult to enjoy in Midnight Fight Express is the amazing music, all done by composer Noisecream. Each track is adrenaline-pumping, getting you hyped for the next big fight. There wasn’t a track I didn't like, just make sure to turn down the volume a little. It gets loud.

Look, I promise it makes sense when you get to this level.

I do have a few gripes. I do wish that some skills came with your unupgraded moveset, like grab and counter. I would’ve liked to move the camera outside of Photo Mode, but it never really got me killed. Also getting golden teeth from enemies seems to be random, so replaying levels to get all the collectibles might get annoying if you're only short a few molars. I also did encounter a glitch in the Playground training area. Turns out if you kill too many people, the game eventually can't handle it and softlocks. I also suffered a crash for seemingly no reason.

Overall, Midnight Fight Express is an excellent short brawl through the mean streets of the criminal underworld. Its story is there, and can be interesting, but can easily be ignored. The game is difficult, but you’ll enjoy all the challenges it will throw at you. It’s brutal, yet fun to play through as you beat everyone in your way into bloody pulp until the sun rises at the end.