There are now dozens of indie games where a protagonist artfully dances through enemies with an explosion of violence. When done well, there’s nothing quite like it. Mastering the combat of Sifu and bouncing bullets off of frying pans in My Friend Pedro feels incredible, and that’s the exact same kind of exhilarating action Midnight Fight Express aims for.
It even has a similar vibe. A talking drone robot leading you by the nose through linear stages will remind you of Pedro the banana, while the variety of skills, parries, and finishers is what made Sifu so memorable and engaging. It’s a bit too familiar at times, and it feels almost deliberate. That wouldn’t be a bad thing if it could live up to the same lofty expectations.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t, really. It doesn’t quite the same level of frantic, stylish action available to you in My Friend Pedro, nor does it have the cinematic scenes or kinetic combat of Sifu, though it certainly tries. What it does have, however, is chaos on its side. You won’t often be fighting one on one with a big brawler – you’ll be tackling an entire room of enemies, taking them out while throwing crates, using your skills, and wildly swinging weapons through the air. It’s not quite Dynasty Warriors-levels of multi-man mayhem, but it doesn’t expect the same combat mastery that those other titles do.
You won’t have to use precise strikes and finishers on small-time foes, instead, they’ll probably be taken down with a single baton swing if your Rage is high enough. You can defend against attacks, and perfect blocks can lead to parry strikes, but if you don’t want to master the timing on inputs, you can just use the environment to your advantage to cause confusion and trip up foes before using all of your resources.
When you first start out, taking down a large crowd of enemies seems ridiculous, but new possibilities unlock quickly through your skills. Your rope gun can be enhanced to paralyze foes or drag them in for a KO punch, and you can invest skills points into your parry abilities or basic brawling skills, depending on how you like to play. Once you have access to AoE skills that will knock a large group of enemies back at once, you can expect to come up against even more foes than before.
While Sifu excels in making you a kung fu master and My Friend Pedro makes you feel badass thanks to fast-paced improvised action, Midnight Fight Express doesn’t quite capture either of these extremes. It sits somewhere in the middle, and therefore, doesn’t feel quite as memorable as that pair of examples. With a bit more style, Midnight Fight Express could’ve been a chaotic but satisfying brawler, inspired by the frenzy of Bob Odenkirk in Nobody against Sifu‘s Bruce Lee. But it just feels a bit silly, and not in the bounce-bullets-off-of-frying-pans way.
It’s chaotic, but in a four-player-Smash-with-item-on sense, it’s not a ballet of bullets or a masterpiece of mayhem, it’s just brawling. Dirty, filthy brawling. Pick up a box, smash it on some guy’s head. Pick up a gun, straight up murder a dude, why not? Hold the button for a charge attack, and then beat that fist against an opponent’s guard. Midnight Fight Express is about one guy on a mission to throw hands, and while it certainly won’t be the most memorable game to do that, it has a mean right hook.
Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.
