Midnight Fight Express PS4 review – one-man army

metro.co.uk:

Scrolling beat ‘em-ups like Streets Of Rage are back in fashion but indie game Midnight Fight Express is more than just a retro throwback.

Midnight Fight Express has a very peculiar set of credits, not in the way it’s presented but because it’s the work of essentially just three people. The developer is listed simply as Jacob Dzwinel, with the implication that he did almost everything in the game, except for the story by Destiny 2: The Witch Queen writer Fernando Jay Huerto.

Games made by just a single person aren’t all that rare in indie gaming (Thomas Happ’s Axiom Verge is perhaps the most famous example) but the other main creative involved is a stuntman, one Eric Jacobus who worked on both God Of War and The Last Of Us Part 2. Triple-A games might require an increasingly untenable number of people to make them but modern indie games use such streamlined tools that it’s relatively easy to do everything yourself.

However, the great danger when only one person is calling the shots is that you become self-indulgent and the lack of anyone to tell you no becomes a problem rather than a benefit. You can see a lot of that in Midnight Fight Express, especially in how inconsistent it can be at times, but while it has its problems it’s also an impressive achievement for so few people and a mostly successful attempt at creating a modern day version of a scrolling beat ‘em-up.

Despite the plot being typical arcade style nonsense – you’re an amnesiac ex-gang member who’s been recruited by a drone to stop a gang from taking over the city – there is a peculiar amount of time spent on text-only dialogue, none of which is any good. This is mostly so the game can indulge in cringeworthy references to movies and other games, which does