This is Monday Night Combat! What is Monday Night Combat? It’s a class-based third person shooter game for XBLA, the 4th title in the summer of arcade. Monday Night Combat is a futuristic reality TV show which pits you against other gamers in ‘Crossfire’ matches, or alongside them in ‘Blitz’ mode. In both of these game modes your objective is to defend your money ball from being destroyed.
Blitz is the co-op version of the game where up to 4 players can play together. This mode is similar to tower defense, where your focus is to build and upgrade turrets along with fighting yourself, to prevent the waves of enemies from attacking your money ball. There are 5 different difficulty modes in Blitz; Exhibition - 10 rounds at a light intensity, Season - 20 rounds at a moderate intensity, Playoff - 30 rounds at a heavy intensity & Scramble - 10 rounds at a crazy intensity. The final difficulty level is called Sudden Death Blitz, which features unlimited rounds at an insane intensity, with your job being to simply defend the money ball for as long as you possibly can. This mode is extremely challenging, so it certainly does pay off to practice at the weaker end first.
Crossfire is the DoTA-style competitive side of the game. 6v6 Reds vs Blues with two things in mind, killing the enemy and destroying their money ball! That’s right the money ball comes back into the competitive side of things also, no traditional deathmatch modes in this game which is refreshing. There are not many maps for Crossfire, and most of them feel and look fairly similar, however sometimes you do not need to have a ton of maps to enjoy a game or game mode. Your objective is to escort your regularly spawning AI controlled bots towards the enemy money ball, drop it’s shields, and destroy it. The first team to do so wins, simple? Crossfire is definitely where the game’s legs are going to be, even though the co-op mode is fun, after you’ve completed all the levels on there isn't really that much re-playability other than trying to beat your previous best score. Whereas this mode will throw you against opponents online every time who’ll be using different tactics, so every match will be slightly different! My only worry is with the game being largely online focused, will the community stay strong and keep the game going or will it die? Only time will tell.
The game has 6 base classes with the option to do a "custom" class after you’ve earned enough cash. The six classes are; Assault, Tank, Support, Assassin, Gunner & Sniper. Assault is your standard class with equal stats in offense, defense & specialties. This class has an assault rifle & grenade launcher. Tank is the bullet absorbing class with equally low offense and specialties and very high defense. This class has a jet gun & rail gun which are both fairly slow and heavy. Support is the medic/close range class in the game, he has good defense and specialties but a low offense. Weapon wise he has a healing gun and a shotgun. Assassin is the deadly up-close but weakest class in the game, able to cloak, speed around and damage people very well with its high offense, it has medium specialties and very very low defense; you do not want to be getting in a direct head to head battle playing as the Assassin! Assassin’s main weapon is a dagger (upgradable to a samurai sword) along with a shuriken launcher. Gunner (my personal favorite) is the rapid ranged damage class of the game, with extremely high offense anything can be easy pickings with this guy but with only medium defense and very poor specialties he can be an easy target too. He uses a minigun and a mortar launcher, which is very effective against turrets and groups of enemies. Finally the Sniper is the 6th class in the game, similar to the Assassin it holds high offense, medium specialties and very low defense, but unlike the Assassin the Sniper deals with attacking from a long range. His weapons are a Sniper Rifle but also an SMG to give that added boost when it comes to mid-close range fighting.
As mentioned before there is also a custom class section where you pick one of your 6 classes then choose from various endorsements. These are like perks which give you added speed, larger clips or better firepower. The ‘sponsor’ system allows you to choose from 10 sponsors, the first you choose is your gold sponsor the second your silver and the last your bronze; gold sponsor being the most effective with a 3 rating, silver 2 and bronze 1. Using these custom classes you can really make a standard class adapt to your style of gameplay, giving everyone the ability to enjoy playing the game how they want to. Not only that but by completing certain challenges you can unlock 350 different titles to sit next to your name, much like those seen in Modern Warfare 2.
Gameplay wise MNC feels extremely solid. There are some control setup issues you may encounter, such as where for example Y is normally switch weapons in other shooters, but on MNC it is LB. However it simply requires a bit of adjusting to. Also the sensitivity is much greater going left and right than it is going up and down, there appears to be no way to alter the turning axis separately, but again you will get used to it. Another small but personally annoying issue is that the health bar is near the centre of the screen, although not too obtrusive it could have been better off being in the corner somewhere out of the way, however this is just a personal quibble. The game also does seem to drop performance once in a while when things get hectic on screen, frame rate drops can hurt the experience for a few seconds, but it’s never too much of a major issue.
MNC mixes the experience of third person shooting & DoTA style gameplay very well. With all of your standard shooting mechanics, plus the ability to rank up your players abilities and weapons using in-game money earned via kills, make Monday Night combat one of the best arcade games out this year. If the online community sticks with it, then MNC is potentially the most worthwhile 1200MSP of the Summer of Arcade games this year. An all around fantastic title.
Monday Night Combat Gets An Official Game-Pad - 9.0/10
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Best thign i have downloaded in years
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