This review contains spoilers
Midnight Fight Express is an isometric beat em' up game developed by Jacob Dzwinel and published by Humble Games (of the Humble Bundle site I believe, good for game key deals); I didn't really know anything about this game until a buddy of mine (shoutout to my dude Gage, love ya dweeb) who threw the trailer at me. As a huge fan of Hotline Miami and games like this, I immediately liked what I saw and gave it a wishlist before forgetting about it for a while. I decided to pick it up around Christmas last year and went in blind, and I was pleasantly surprised.
The Plot is a simple one, you play as a dude named Babyface who is woken up by a strange talking drone up in a random apartment with no idea of what's going on; only the urging from the drone to trust him and take down the city's criminal organizations as they're enacting a plan that could doom the fate of humanity. Truth is that's really it, there are some twists and turns here and there but it mostly just feels like an excuse for the gameplay, but basically fight your way through waves of dudes to take down the Boss-On-High's criminal lieutenants while in-media-resing inside of an interrogation room as you recount your story for two detectives, Agent Smithman and Agent McCloon (which both come off as parodies of Agent Smith from the Matrix and John McClane even if it's in name only). I guess that's one thing I will mention is that it's definitely parody and homage based; you'll see references to stuff like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (as a Big Smoke parody named Large Soda), Modern Warfare 2 (a whole airport terrorism scene and even fighting a bunch of expies of Makarov in an elevator) to even a level dedicated to referencing Fight Club, Hotline Miami and I believe Sons of Anarchy? For the most part these are fine, though I feel like in the back of my mind it's a little jarring if you're actually trying to take the plot seriously, but for the most part I wouldn't take it seriously as the game doesn't really either, it's just going from set piece to set piece beating people up. Speaking of, the gameplay.
The gameplay is pretty solid, repetitive sure in the beginning but definitely solid. If I could describe the gameplay (and game overall), I'd say it's a combination of Hotline Miami, Sifu and the atmosphere of My Friend Pedro. You go from place to place, picking up weapons, throwing them, doing combos, dodging and trying to manage your crowd while coming off as cool as possible. For me, it definitely worked enough to make me invest my time going into the challenge mode to replay all of these (though to my detriment as some of them tend to get really frustrating, like a level where you can't get hit by pepper spray once even though sometimes the stun animation doesn't even render and it's in enclosed spaces). Sometimes there would be glitches too where I'd beat all the enemies and then it wouldn't spawn in but I think that was because during the end I was god-modeing it to get the challenges done, I also think a restart checkpoint system would be advantageous to this effect just in case but for the most part it works well. Doing these challenges get you rewards like new props and enemies to fight in practice mode, cosmetics to create your own character (which you can do basically as soon as you get out of the tutorial I believe?), certain cheats for repeated runs, etc. Again to me the ease of challenges at the beginning give a lot of incentive to go through them, though keep in mind some of the later ones tend to be really frustrating and mind numbing. Keep in mind you get new abilities as you advance, like a 3D printer gun which regenerates ammo over time and can be great for parrying or removing certain enemies from play or a rope gun which can drag enemies to you amongst other abilities (though you get it a bit later in the game) and helps give a bit of combat variation. If I were to name a least favorite level it would be The Graveyard, mostly because the zombies tend to grapple you if you get close and either instantly kill you or nearly kill you, really breaking up the flow of combat but otherwise are for the most part decent if not challenging, especially the levels where you take control of a vehicle and shoot from it, of which there are three in a total of 41 levels (which includes the tutorial). I guess to finish it off, the gameplay is good, and when it REALLY connects you feel like a f u c king god, or the human equivalent of that being John Wick or something; if you're in the mood for a good beat em up with variation it's a definite recommend.
The graphics are rather minimalist as it understandably focuses on gameplay flow but it fits with the overall atmosphere, the environmental art design looks good and all the objects you can use to fight look like they fit in. No voice acting as far as I'm aware and the soundtrack is by a guy named Noisecream and by god did they do a fantastic job at the soundtrack that is immersive as hell in your murder spree, continuing the sort of synthwave (best I can explain) vibe that Hotline Miami, My Friend Pedro and The Hong Kong Massacre did to great effect.
And that's basically what I could compare this game to, the love child of all of those games and it's a pretty solid title that'll take up your time if you're REALLY invested in it as I was these past couple of days (minus a few headaches). If you're into beating the s h i t out of people and don't care if the story takes a bit of a backseat I can definitely recommend for the full price it's asking, also get the soundtrack too it slaps.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The Plot is a simple one, you play as a dude named Babyface who is woken up by a strange talking drone up in a random apartment with no idea of what's going on; only the urging from the drone to trust him and take down the city's criminal organizations as they're enacting a plan that could doom the fate of humanity. Truth is that's really it, there are some twists and turns here and there but it mostly just feels like an excuse for the gameplay, but basically fight your way through waves of dudes to take down the Boss-On-High's criminal lieutenants while in-media-resing inside of an interrogation room as you recount your story for two detectives, Agent Smithman and Agent McCloon (which both come off as parodies of Agent Smith from the Matrix and John McClane even if it's in name only). I guess that's one thing I will mention is that it's definitely parody and homage based; you'll see references to stuff like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (as a Big Smoke parody named Large Soda), Modern Warfare 2 (a whole airport terrorism scene and even fighting a bunch of expies of Makarov in an elevator) to even a level dedicated to referencing Fight Club, Hotline Miami and I believe Sons of Anarchy? For the most part these are fine, though I feel like in the back of my mind it's a little jarring if you're actually trying to take the plot seriously, but for the most part I wouldn't take it seriously as the game doesn't really either, it's just going from set piece to set piece beating people up. Speaking of, the gameplay.
The gameplay is pretty solid, repetitive sure in the beginning but definitely solid. If I could describe the gameplay (and game overall), I'd say it's a combination of Hotline Miami, Sifu and the atmosphere of My Friend Pedro. You go from place to place, picking up weapons, throwing them, doing combos, dodging and trying to manage your crowd while coming off as cool as possible. For me, it definitely worked enough to make me invest my time going into the challenge mode to replay all of these (though to my detriment as some of them tend to get really frustrating, like a level where you can't get hit by pepper spray once even though sometimes the stun animation doesn't even render and it's in enclosed spaces). Sometimes there would be glitches too where I'd beat all the enemies and then it wouldn't spawn in but I think that was because during the end I was god-modeing it to get the challenges done, I also think a restart checkpoint system would be advantageous to this effect just in case but for the most part it works well. Doing these challenges get you rewards like new props and enemies to fight in practice mode, cosmetics to create your own character (which you can do basically as soon as you get out of the tutorial I believe?), certain cheats for repeated runs, etc. Again to me the ease of challenges at the beginning give a lot of incentive to go through them, though keep in mind some of the later ones tend to be really frustrating and mind numbing. Keep in mind you get new abilities as you advance, like a 3D printer gun which regenerates ammo over time and can be great for parrying or removing certain enemies from play or a rope gun which can drag enemies to you amongst other abilities (though you get it a bit later in the game) and helps give a bit of combat variation. If I were to name a least favorite level it would be The Graveyard, mostly because the zombies tend to grapple you if you get close and either instantly kill you or nearly kill you, really breaking up the flow of combat but otherwise are for the most part decent if not challenging, especially the levels where you take control of a vehicle and shoot from it, of which there are three in a total of 41 levels (which includes the tutorial). I guess to finish it off, the gameplay is good, and when it REALLY connects you feel like a f u c king god, or the human equivalent of that being John Wick or something; if you're in the mood for a good beat em up with variation it's a definite recommend.
The graphics are rather minimalist as it understandably focuses on gameplay flow but it fits with the overall atmosphere, the environmental art design looks good and all the objects you can use to fight look like they fit in. No voice acting as far as I'm aware and the soundtrack is by a guy named Noisecream and by god did they do a fantastic job at the soundtrack that is immersive as hell in your murder spree, continuing the sort of synthwave (best I can explain) vibe that Hotline Miami, My Friend Pedro and The Hong Kong Massacre did to great effect.
And that's basically what I could compare this game to, the love child of all of those games and it's a pretty solid title that'll take up your time if you're REALLY invested in it as I was these past couple of days (minus a few headaches). If you're into beating the s h i t out of people and don't care if the story takes a bit of a backseat I can definitely recommend for the full price it's asking, also get the soundtrack too it slaps.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/