Midnight Fight Express (2022)

Would I pay full price for this game? Absolutely not. But it was free, I was waiting for something else to download, and I was like "I probably won't even like it, so I'll just play it for like 5 minutes" and then I played it for an hour because it's fun and goofy and each level is 2-10 minutes long and introduces new enemies (i.e. new 80's movie references) every 30 seconds. It's absurd and funnier than it deserves to be, with a fittingly over the top story and a really very subtle Portal reference (and a really very not subtle Call of Duty reference).

My main quibble with the gameplay is that it feels like there were better options for how to pull off some the special moves and I could never do a lot of them consistently, which makes the combat get a little repetitive, but the 3D-printed gun and the rope gun help to negate that a bit.

Started playing this just because it was reviewed pretty well and it was leaving Game Pass in the middle of the month. I found myself playing it a little bit longer every night. The story isn't gonna win any awards, but the dark humor is right up my alley. The way the unlockable skins and moves and everything work had me coming back for more.

Is it a little clunky? At times. A little unbalanced from level to level (and especially between enemy types)? A LOT. But damn, it's fun.

Last night, I added it to my wishlist. Tonight, the last night it's on Game Pass, I experienced playing through a game developer pillow fight that turns into a SWAT raid, shortly followed by a level where I was backed up by people dressed up as characters from Bojack Horseman.

Purchased.

It's a crime this doesn't have co-op. Please let there be a sequel.

There are a lot of cool concepts, ideas and mechanics packed into this game. In many respects, MFE feels a lot like a more involved, stylised version of My Friend Pedro except with a focus on hand-to-hand combat and a drone instead of a banana. The gameplay loop is very simple, as is the case with most beat/shoot ‘em ups: you get a ton of (usually short) levels that you have to make your way through using not only your hands but everything you can get them on: melee weapons, guns, random objects, enemies, etc. One of the best things in MFE is how it expertly uses its environment as an active part of combat, and there are always a ton of tools at your disposal at any given time (I particularly love how you can take advantage of enemies to kill other enemies, be it via gang wars or just letting them accidentally drop each other). This is added on top of quite a varied move set and a ton of skill upgrades that keep changing your experience and giving it some freshness, and even if this particular aspect is far from perfectly tuned, there is way more diversity in gameplay options than I had initially thought.

All of the above gets weaved into an incredible art and sound design - with the game featuring a really awesome-looking cyberpunk aesthetic that seeps into everything from visuals, story and soundtrack - and a nice humorous tone, typical of a game that knows how cool it can be without ever taking itself too seriously. The fact that all of this was conceived of by two people is nothing short of impressive, and when everything clicks and flows as intended, few games are able to convey such a feel-good power fantasy where you go about John Wicking the shit out of everyone who stands in your way.

The problem is what this game doesn’t do right, which at times becomes beyond annoying and almost puzzling, even for an indie title. The biggest offender is by far its incomprehensible difficulty spikes. For how good some levels feel to play, a few others are almost insultingly bad (levels 23 and 35 are particularly egregious in this regard). No vehicle section feels great. Not one. They are riddled one-hit deaths stemming from moments you can’t even anticipate (e.g. cars showing up in front of you giving you no time to evade them before thew blow you up, too many things being thrown your way at the same time, etc). In a game that will likely take you about 5 hours to beat, the fair amount of levels where difficulty is so poorly designed is enough to put a damper on your fun. The John Wick power fantasy I mentioned before feels a lot less like a power fantasy and a lot more like an exercise in frustration when these moments show up. It wasn’t enough to make me quit the game, but a couple of those sections were so irritating that I came pretty close.

There are other things MFE struggles with. The game tries to do too much at once, which whilst speaks of a creative mind, it also highlights a lack of direction in deciding what is important and what is filler. This often makes the gameplay mechanics feel like they're getting in the way of themselves, and even with the choice of unassigning skills as you progress, the whole system still seems fairly flawed. It also doesn’t help that a couple of abilities straight up don't seem to work (I could never get the rope electrocution to trigger, for example), or that the static isometric camera can be a bit annoying at times, depending on where you are on the screen. Having this much stuff going on also affects the kinetic experience, and from start to finish I got stuck with the impression that controls could’ve felt a bit better. The skills and upgrades are definitely a nice addition, but ultimately you get them all before you finish the game, so the notion of a specific build doesn't make sense here, which of course impacts replayability. Due to this I also feel the game goes on for longer than it needed to, and perhaps an experience shorter than 40 levels (even though some of those are quite short) would've made a lot more sense to address both these issues (different builds and replay value). Especially because the story, which is as silly as it comes, definitely didn’t need that many sections.

Overall I’d say Midnight Fight Express is definitely worth a playthrough, especially for brawler fans. Creatively and artistically, there is absolutely enough in here to be enjoyed despite its obvious shortcomings, and this is still a very laudable first effort from such a small team. I just hope the less impressive aspects of the game are taken into consideration in upcoming titles, as I think these devs might have a solid future ahead of them. 7/10

This has vibes of Hotline Miami meets a side scroller beat-‘em-up. It is fun with to just mash buttons until your opponents are all beaten into submission. Rolling to pick up items and tossing debris at enemies is very satisfying. It seems like it could have some deeper combat mechanics given all the unlockable skills but I haven’t managed to get many yet.

One minor gripes and a major one. The game plot is moved forward via a mysterious flying drone, which is a cool modern take on the mysterious phone caller in Hotline Miami, but the drone talks waaaay too much. It really interrupts the flow.

I had to jump through a couple of hoops to even play this game. Apparently there is a bug in loading save data, even a first time load will hang. Found some workarounds and finally managed to get past it. I know that the developer is a one-man shop so I am impressed with what he has made and understand it must be hard to squash out bugs. If it wasn’t for the good word about the game I would have given up at the title screen bug.