Midnight Fight Express (Xbox One)
Midnight Fight Express is a beat ’em up game with 41 levels to conquer, and while that may make it sound like this is a fairly beefy experience, the battles move at such a blistering pace with pumping background music and flowing combat that levels whizz right past you. Taking only a few minutes each, the wealth of stages does have a few momentum problems mostly because you go back to the stage select and upgrade screen after every one of them, but when you’re in the levels you’ll certainly be kept busy without the speed of the action feeling overwhelming.
Midnight Fight Express stars a character named Babyface whose appearance is yours to customize but his history is pretty set in stone. Starting with him being interrogated after most of a single night’s events, the main character is being grilled about his part in fighting back against a city-wide uprising supposedly organized by one of its most beloved philanthropists. Babyface himself was an activated agent who spent his time doing dirty work for the guy up top, but when a drone turns up at his apartment, it disables the conditioning just in time for Babyface to be turned against the criminals trying to turn the city into their playground. Your companion Droney does most of the talking and has a fun energy to them as they deliver amusing commentary on what you’re up against and help explain the unfolding events that otherwise are only shouted at you by your former associates offended that you now stand against them, but they do sometimes get in the way of the game’s breakneck pace with many cleared rooms receiving at least a comment from Droney and occasionally a full cutscene where control is taken away from you. They’re often short enough they don’t slow things down too much and there are options to skip them if you so wish, but it is a bit of a surprise the game has so much writing in it considering how much it thrives when you’re tearing your way through a level full of goons.
Babyface’s fighting style starts off with a punch combo, a charged punch for breaking blocks, a guard, and a grab that is often not worth the trouble since if a foe is weak enough to grab, they’re often weak enough to take out. Your basic moves do land at a good spot where you can mash the basic attack in a lot of situations for quick damage, but there are enemies and situations that will encourage you to be more flexible and creative. Areas and enemies both will have items and weapons you can utilize in a scuffle, some good for a quick throw, others like pipes and sledgehammers allowing you to swing them around for a bit before they break, and guns require a bit of aiming and have limited ammo so they are often briefly used but powerful when you have them. Even before you start unlocking new abilities the weapon system gives you good reason to break away from button mashing as it can often deter foes or take them out faster, but one reason you are kicked back to the level select screen after every stage is because clearing a level earns you a skill point you’ll want to spend on some new ability. The parry is an immediate improvement over the guard and when paired with the dodge your defensive options become versatile and start sliding into the fast-paced fighting style on show more naturally. You can’t parry every attack nor can you always interrupt your actions to pull one off mid-combo so it doesn’t invalidate the danger, and as you start unlocking new finishing movies that speed up takedowns as well as new battle options like a weapon with slowly regenerating bullets that can stun or even hypnotize enemies into fighting alongside you, you do get a range of abilities that expand your options while being nifty enough in appearance or function you’ll want to deviate from the norm just to see them unfold.
Most every enemy in Midnight Fight Express is some sort of human and the game only dips mildly into science fiction ideas to spice things up. Some mutated men in the sewers and some advanced tech can diversify the enemies you face, although considering this is also a game where one level has you foiling a plane hijacking by fighting aboard it and another has you shoot down a helicopter while on a jet ski, it’s certainly not afraid to be absurd for the sake of an awesome moment or a new unique danger. Things do start off with city streets with the aptly named bozos who are more there to get beaten up than put up a fight, but later levels will bring in foes like the armored SWAT teams, burly sailors who won’t flinch when attacked, and bikers who aren’t afraid to blow up their ride if it means smashing into you. Mostly they will be some variation on a typical person but they’ll pack more bulk, more smarts, or preferences for some weapons that likely are only first encountered when they wield them. Whether it be a nail gun, fish, stun rods, or the cardboard boxes laying all about, you can count on consistent progression in tools that helps it avoid feeling like you’re in the same fights but with new coats of paint. There are a few ideas that don’t work so well, pepper spray and other stuns really slowing down the kinetic action when they’re used against you, but bosses and bigger foes will pack neat tricks or special weapons like a flamethrower that help make their fights feel special even when they sometimes go down surprisingly quickly. Death isn’t a rarity once the game starts whipping out the tougher foes, but a revive usually puts you right near the battle you died in so the game’s pace is preserved pretty well even after a death.
A few driving sections pop up every now and then where you hop aboard some vehicle and need to gun down anyone attacking it so you can safely make it to your destination, and even in regular levels you can get special hazards to keep you on your toes like a man at the shipyard using a crane in an effort to flatten you with cargo. Playing straight through will definitely take you through a good range of battle types with a good amount of variety on show and the quick levels actually make it easy to replay even if you’re normally not one to revisit stages. When in a level you can earn gold teeth from knocking out foes to go towards unlockables, but besides the tutorial stage every level has a set of challenges you can only attempt after you’ve beaten it once. The three challenges will often be things like killing enemies in certain ways, avoiding certain options, clearing level sections quickly, or utilizing a level-specific gimmick like tricking a sniper into accidentally shooting his allies. Many feel achievable because of how tight the levels are and the option to skip dialogue makes such attempts to clear challenges even speedier, and thankfully you won’t feel too compelled to revisit levels you might have issue with because all of the unlockables only relate to Babyface’s appearance.
Even if you never touch the challenges or go for earning the highest ranking for performing well in each level, you’ll still get quite a few different cosmetics for Babyface over the course of the game and you can customize him to be the city-saving hero you want him to be. S ranks in stages do start becoming easier once you have most of the abilities and a familiarity with battle flow and priority targets, and since you can check where certain unlockables can be earned, you can always just do the challenges you’re interested in or go for high rankings without having to make discouraging time investments.
THE VERDICT: While the fluid combat system can sometimes lead to you tearing your way through a lot of foes without a sweat, Midnight Fight Express doesn’t just lean on impressive motion capture fight animations to make its fights satisfying. Your abilities growing stage by stage as almost every level throws in a new enemy type that is at least slightly different keeps things fresh, and that’s before you factor in the range of weapons scattered around and special features like the chase levels. Midnight Fight Express’s challenges are a strong fit for accessible replayability thanks to levels that are lightning quick when you’ve already read all the amusing if overly present chatter, and while popping you back to level select so often does feel like it interrupts the flow a fair bit, when you’re in the level you can enjoy the thrill of a well-rounded combat system that keeps trying new means to make its levels feel novel.
And so, I give Midnight Fight Express for Xbox One…
A GOOD rating. There are functionally 40 levels in Midnight Fight Express since one is a tutorial you won’t be replaying, but the funny thing is one suggestion to really keep the game high octane would be to trim down the level count but not remove any stages. While there is a broad range of settings, many do feel they link closely enough that a stage could afford to continue on instead of pulling you out to level up and head to the next stage. Midnight Fight Express does make good use of its quickly completed levels for those looking to get more out of it than an exciting single player brawling adventure, the challenges great for a short session of productive play since you can attempt them quickly, separately, and retrying to get back to where a challenge in a stage appears is barely a problem. Some cooperative multiplayer could give it an even greater lasting appeal, but this solo experience does feel balanced well to not slow you down too often. This means bosses are maybe a bit easier to take down than one might expect, but it also means rarely does something like the pepper spray crop up that leads to a few seconds where all you can do is reel before the electrifying combat kicks off once more. It’s little surprise the game directly features a small homage to Hot Line Miami considering that game is also about quick action, but with Babyface’s passive healing between fights, Midnight Fight Express is certainly more accommodating to players who might not wish to strategize too much to survive. It still incentives shaking up your fighting style thanks to the enjoyability of such actions and how they can often fill gaps in your options or speed up a kill, but there are also skills like the grab that feel like they needed more oomph to justify their use.
Midnight Fight Express is a bit of a whirlwind of exciting action that works best when you’re tearing forward despite its many little moments of trying to pull you out for things like skill point spending, but with every new level you enter you can expect something new, something packed with adrenaline, and often even a stage you wouldn’t mind replaying if you do want to enhance your wardrobe by completing challenges that don’t feel out of reach. Quick satisfying action is the name of the game in this beat ’em up, and while some brawlers benefit from needing to play more carefully or weathering endurance tests, Midnight Fight Express is there when you just want to let loose and fight your way through a wide range of foes and locations.