Wallcrawler Review: Midnight Fight Express

[Wallcrawler]

I consider myself a pretty avid gamer, so I was shocked when I stumbled upon this game that has been around for a couple of years. I actually only found it looking at user reviews of The Hong Kong Massacre.

If you've played games like Hotline Miami, or The Hong Kong Massacre and enjoyed them, then Midnight Fight Express is a must play, that will lead to a must own.

A top down 3-D ultra violent brawler/shooter that will allow you to feel as if you're actively participating in a scene of the latest John Wick film.

The game boasts 40 levels, with nearly each one introducing a new enemy type for you to murder in the most stylish ways that you please.

Each level can be completed in roughly 5-6 minutes, and in these bite sized, pick up and play style designs, lies one of the games greatest strengths: replay value.

Levels load lighting quick, and are rife with checkpoints as you slaughter your way from point a to point b. Should you yourself be unceremoniously decapitated, or blown to pieces, a simple press of the continue button has you instantly back into the action so you can take bloody revenge.

Each level comes with 3 specific challenges, and 10 gold teeth need to be knocked from the skulls of your opponents. Once these parameters are met, and you've stylishly murdered everyone in the mission as efficiently as possible to receive the S rank, a gameplay altering perk is unlocked, as well as various cosmetic items for your protagonist.

I found myself replaying missions over and over until I had become death incarnate. To a casual fan of this type of game, this can seem like a grind. However, if stylishly killing loads of bad guys in about a hundred different ways is something you enjoy, then it I the most enjoyable grind ever created.


As enjoyable as it is to dive back into a level you've just laid waste to, the game rewards getting through each of its 40 stages quickly, as at the end of each stage, a skill point is rewarded to enhance your slaughtering skills.

Skills ranging from finishing moves barehanded, with melee weapons, with guns, or using the environment to break your enemies in two. Grapples to pummel your foes, or execute vicious choke slams and suplexes, or simply heave them into other enemies, over railings, or from rooftops.

Counter moves that can instantly disarm enemies, enhancements to attacking while sprinting, and even upgrades to a secondary magnum that fires singular cool down based ammunition. Ranging from magnum, shock, concussive, explosive, immobilizing, even hypnotizing to turn an enemy to your side briefly.

Any of the unlocked abilities can be disabled if you find yourself not enjoying them, or pulling them off by accident.

The game also offers a fully customizable "playground", a practice area that you can test new abilities, or practice against specific enemy types.

Speaking of customization, the game is designed in such a way that it's difficulty is fully customizable. From standard fare as normal, hard, realistic, to custom where you can increase or decrease your health, and fine tune the aggressiveness of enemies, all without suffering any penalty toward unlocks.

The only restriction on unlockables is that you cannot complete challenges with the perk cheats activated. Which is fair, because some are so strong they trivialize the entire experience and would only be used for lol.

Story is nothing to write hone about but serves as an adequate vehicle to get you from one setting to the next and slaughtering the freshest batch of goons.

Cosmetics are plentiful to customize your character, with pretty great tributes to Hotline Miami with the ability to look like Jacket, complete with chicken mask, John Wick inspired character skin, Daredevil tributes with just enough variation as to not incur copyright issues, but still get across hey, thats who this is supposed to be.

The game is available across all consoles and PC, and at just 20 bucks, it was an outright steal in my opinion.

If you're into ultra violent brawler/shooter games, or like gameplay inspired by films like The Raid, or John Wick, definitely give this a shot. There's a ton of fun to be had here.