By : Cryst
If you follow us on Twitter, you would know that our online play has been dominated by one game as of late, and that game is…
Monday Night Combat
Just watch this and you’ll see why…
Not bad right!?!
Monday Night Combat is the sport of the future where cloned combatants try to destroy the enemies “Moneyball” while fighting off rival clones and armies of robots trying to destroy theirs, all in front of a live audience!
So that’s the premise, the actual gameplay however is class-based 3rd person combat. Why didn’t I say shooter? Because it is much more than that!
As a genre, Monday Night Combat falls in between Tower Defence and 3rd person shooter [think : Toy Soldiers meets Battlefield Heroes], the two game modes (yes, only 2 unfortunately) fall into the PvP and PvE categories:
“Crossfire” is 6v6 PvP, where players try to destroy the other teams Moneyball, by weakening it’s shields with their armies of robot minions, only when the shields are down can the players attack the ball directly. Obviously the other team is doing the same…
“Blitz” is PvE, where the player(s) must defend the Moneyball against waves of robots bent on it’s destruction… [think : horde meets tower defence]
Both modes are playable online, splitscreen, or alone. But let’s focus on the PvP…
The cartoony, but intense, action takes place on symmetrical maps which offer multiply routes and player triggerable hazards. What’s nice is that despite being an arcade title, you can still tell that a lot of time has been taken into building and balancing the battlefields, so there is no one size fits all approach to matches!
Being a TV show, there is of course money up for grabs! The money takes the place of experience points (which is earned ingame and as life time earnings), and is earned by killing; doing damage; assisting; and generally playing the game. But what do you do with all your riches? one of 3 things :
- Build Defences and send specialist robots after the enemy
- Upgrade your skills, or
- Customize a class.
The tower defence aspect of Monday Night Combat is fueled by the funds you pour into it. Want an impenetrable defence? Then you have to spend the money building and upgrading the 4 different types of turrets available.
Unlike other titles, like BFBC2, life time experiance gained does not affect the gameplay (atleast not as much) , instead money you earn during a match is spent on upgrades for that match. So EVERYONE starts out the same flavour of vanilla. It’s what you do during the battle, and what that battle calls for, that determines how fast you upgrade, and in what direction your upgrades take you!
There is however an opportunity to use your “life time earnings”, and that’s by spending the money to unlock customizable classes. What this allows you to do, is to upgrade certain aspects of your classes abilities ie. Their reload speed; accuracy; clip size; or speed. It’s not as in-depth as a “build-system” but it does add a certain amount of longevity.
The greatest part of Monday Night Combat is the class system. Too many class-based and build based shooters lack “believablility” when it comes to their classes, with all their classes eventually blending into one. But that’s not the case with Monday Night Combat…
Instead, each class plays completely differently, (kinda like in an RPG) with some being long range specialist, and some being melee; some being sneaky, and others being aggro accumulating juggernauts! Rest assured though, that there is no one class that trumps all! Instead there is a sort of Rock-Paper-Scissors system, with each class having it’s natural prey and predator.
It’s difficult to fault Monday Night Combat, it’s fun; has significant replay value; is well worth the money; and is surprisingly polished for an arcade title (but that seems to be the norm now days). My one gripe however is the matchmaking…
Because it is a little new (it was released on the 11th of August during the Summer of XBL) there aren’t always people to play with, so solo Blitz becomes your best bet. And then there’s the imbalanced team picking. Sometimes (when you actually find a match) they will pair the best players in the lobby together AND give them the numerical advantage! I’m pretty sure that both of these issues will be addressed with time, so I’m not going to let them bug me too much.
Monday Night Combat is definitely worth the 1200 MS points price tag, and is definitely worth downloading! Go give it a shot! But if you can’t find any one to play with, feel free to invite me to a game!
Have fun…
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