Midnight Ultra is an FPS whose most immediate defining feature is its surreal, low color count artstyle that makes it look like a living poster for a Spaghetti Western, for lack of better comparison. We will have the option to change this theme to one of many others, including one that uses the CGA color palette, or even turning off any kind of filter entirely. Choose wisely, since you can not change it again while in-game, so you are stuck with any eye-searing theme you choose. As cool as the art style is, it looks better without it, and has the added benefit that you can actually see during specific locations that have poor shading, which makes navigation difficult.
Starting off, you are given a selection of guns and melee weapons. You can only choose one of each, and they will be all you have for the entirety of the game. That is an incredibly bizarre design decision, which does ultimately harm the title since you will approach and handle every situation the same way. No tactically switching between shotgun or rifle to deal with your enemies here, just aim and shoot until everything is dead. With an emphasis on aim, because it is incredibly stingy with the ammo it gives. Whatever you do, do not pick a traditional melee weapon, pick the pentagram.
Melee weapons are not only useless due to their range and damage, but also the fact that your enemies do not enter a stun/flinch state when taking damage. What that essentially means is that an enemy will shoot at you nonstop with its usual accuracy until either you or it is dead. Since their attacks are not hit-scan, you can handle this with a gun considering you have a bit of distance to dodge their projectiles, but being up in their face using melee is suicidal. The stages are quite linear as well. There are a few secrets, though once you are out of ammo, the chances are that you are done for. At times you can simply run past your foes, though the devs seem to have taken that into account and magically barred off some areas until you defeat everything.
This ammo issue affects the rifle and submachine gun the most from my experience. The store page claims that Midnight Ultra was inspired by Doom, Quake, and other action games. I can not fathom where they put that inspiration. It certainly wasn’t in how the game plays as harsh as that sounds. Many of the arenas are poorly designed and too restricted for the type of gameplay they were going for. Those that are more open reveal how broken the AI is as they mindlessly run around and let you shoot them to death from a distance. Moreover, crowd control is a real chore without any explosives or other weapons to use. This is a real problem when most of your time is spent in combat.
Outside of shooting, most of what you will be doing is platforming. As it progresses, it will start making any of your missed jumps deadly as you spiral right down into an endless pit. The game has no manual or autosaving, and you will be tossed right back to the start of the level upon death. That is yet another reason to forgo the cool, yet blinding default theme. It does look really impressive and works a good portion of the time since the levels are linear enough to nearly always know where to go, but will be a detriment.
Another thing Midnight Ultra gets right is the excellent music. It has a dark, guttural tone that reminded me of Saya no Uta, which is a very high compliment. The foreboding tunes work so well with their original atheistic theme, making it that much more of a shame that the better course of action is to turn off all filters. It’s weird and incomprehensible story was one more aspect that perfectly blended in with their original vision. Say what you will about this title, but they definitely had quite the interesting artistic and atmospheric composition set up for it.
There is a single boss fight at the end of the game. I wouldn’t call it good, but it was without a doubt a high point of the game as you double jumped and strafed around a fast, charging enemy in a wide-open arena. After you finish it, you will unlock a new chapter called Devil’s Path that takes place after the original story. It was patched in for free during this month (April 2019). The game was released in 2017. That not only makes me feel bad since this is clearly not a throwaway, low effort title by the devs, but even worse now that I have to mention the ammo problem in this new chapter is worse than it has ever been.
In the Devil’s path, we find ourselves in a deserted, snowy village full of yetis. They move fast and will likely hit you before you can kill them, but much like the rest of the foes, cause very little damage. Once more, your only problem will be finding ammo, and with more enemies than ever, it gets really bad here. Another new enemy is an eagle that will peck on your head until you kill it. It is a step in the right direction in terms of openness and enemy placement. There is a good amount of content all told, especially for the price. Despite that, Midnight Ultra is not a title that I can recommend in good conscious. The flaws simply far outweigh its interesting visuals.
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