Midnight Fight Express has been pinging on my radar for a long damn time now, and with good reason. 3D beat ‘em up? Check. Plenty of moves, skills and abilities to sink your teeth into? Double check. Moves motion captured by the guy who created the Tekken IRL video series? You better believe that’s a check. Midnight Fight Express boasted all the features that’d get me excited, and now that it’s finally available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X & S, and Switch, it’s living up to the hype.
As a former underworld legend by the name of Babyface, you’re brought back into the fold by the arrival of a mysterious drone, on a night where the criminals of the city have decided to take over. With your new drone friend in tow, you’ll cut a bloody path through the city, taking out the leaders and ultimately putting a stop to whatever’s going on. As plots go, it won’t exactly win any awards, but it’s not the reason why you’d play Midnight Fight Express anyway — it’s because the gameplay is so good.
At the start of the game, you only have access to basic attacks, blocks and finishers if you time your blocks right, but as things progress and you earn skill points, you’ll unlock a plethora of new moves that’ll have you kicking ass with the toughest outlaws in the city. The best part is that they don’t require complicated button inputs either. The majority of the coolest moves in this game can be done with just a few button presses too, so you don’t have to put in lots of hard work to feel like a badass.
With your new moves, you’re encouraged to return to previous levels to complete challenges, improve upon your score and obtain gold teeth, all of which lets you unlock even more items and perks. An earlier level might feel impossible to obtain an S rank in when you first play it, but get some new skills under your belt and suddenly you’re throwing everyone around like you’ve just entered the Royal Rumble at number 30.
Stripping Midnight Fight Express down to its base layers, it’s hard not to see similarities to Devolver’s My Friend Pedro, as they both feel like they’re trying to accomplish the same things: addictive gameplay and the ability to look effortlessly cool. Hell, the similar UI, scoring system and the brief replays after every level had me thinking that the two games were developed by the same person, but nope.
Both games offer shorter levels with plenty of room for optimisation when it comes to speedruns and high score leaderboards, and the brief nature of each mission creates a gameplay loop that’s so captivatingly moreish. While My Friend Pedro aimed to create the most stylish 2D shooter ever made by giving you all the tools to look cool without any complicated inputs, Midnight Fight Express wants to take those same tenets and apply them to a 3D brawler, and the results are absolutely wonderful.
Granted, I’m only about a quarter of the way through Midnight Fight Express’ 40 levels at this point, so there’s every chance that the wheels fall off between now and the end credits. For now though, Midnight Fight Express is an utterly joyous brawler and a perfect game for beat ‘em up fans. If you’ve got a subscription to Game Pass, give this a try, and if you don’t, buy it anyway. It’s great.
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