With last year's Xbox Live "Summer of Arcade" special we were treated with the tower-defense title Monday Night Combat from Uber Entertainment. It brought with it a witty and sometimes dark sense of humor, gorgeous visuals, and a surprisingly great online experience.
Monday Night Combat features single and co-operative play, but the real enjoyment will come from its impressive online component called Crossfire. Crossfire pits two teams against each other, red and blue, or as MNC calls them ,the Hotshots and the Icemen, and both are aiming to take down each other's Moneyball tower. Money plays a huge role in Monday Night Combat as the game is based around a hardcore sporting event involving lots of sponsors and lots of bacon; yes, I said bacon! Money is constantly being dropped on the battlefield as players rack up kills and destroy enemy sentry bots. Players then use their collected moolah in order to buy new skill upgrades which range from the obligatory extra health all the way to being able to carry twin mini-guns.
Throughout the arenas are nubs where money can also be spent to build one of four different types of sentry turrets. Kills from turrets that a player built also count towards his Kill/Death ratio and also earns him/her money.
That's the basic gist of Monday Night Combat; if I go into it anymore then this would be a review.
What surprised me most about MNC even to this day is how well crafted the game was. There isn't an overwhelming amount of options in the game, but there is just enough to give it a sense of tactical depth. You hop into a game, pick your choice of six character classes, and then you're on your way. You can enjoy the game perfectly fine like this, however Monday Night Combat also presents the opportunity to delve deeper into each class, learn the ins and outs of them, and even allows people to create their own class setups. What MNC does well is not forcing players to have to create their own classes to perform well, but rather gives the option as an added bonus, if you will. Custom classes in Monday Night Combat isn't as mandatory as it is in say, Call of Duty.
Those who have played Valve's Team Fortress 2 will undoubtedly feel at home with MNC's sense of humor and art design. There's a comic book art syle to the game, with a little Pixar homage in there as well. That, coupled with the sarcastic humor of the arena's commentator, provides a perfectly blended recipe.Monday Night Combat is a wonderfully unique title, and the fact that it's a 1200 MS Point Xbox Live Arcade (and now Steam) game makes it even more of a surprisingly awesome experience. Even now, roughly eight months after its initial release Monday Night Combat still holds up well, and that can't be said about many XBLA games. There is still a vast number of people playing at any given time, and with my recent attendance in the game I have not noticed any significant waiting while looking for an online skirmish.
MNC's simplistic pick-up-and-play nature makes it an enjoyable title for anybody, and if you're in the mood to shake things up a bit with your online experience, definitely buy season tickets to this slobberknocker.
The recent Spunky Cola Special free add-on which added a bunch of new modes and arenas doesn't hurt the game either. Just sayin'.
