Review: Monday Night Combat

One of the most original and creative games has been beset with the tragedy of having ridiculously few maps.

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8.7

The Good

Fun and challenging to strategically manage funds in the midst of an intense battle * Crossfire is an exciting game of myraid defensive and offensive possibilities * 6 diverse character classes lend depth to gameplay * Each class can call in a specific bot * Unlockable Call of Duty: Modern Warfare-style tags and custom classes

The Bad

Tutorial could be more helpful * Appeal is limited by the very few arenas offered

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What makes Monday Night Combat so endearing is how it feels immediately recognizable yet surprisingly fresh as it sails towards uncharted waters almost instantaneously thereafter. Those who have played Valve’s popular Team Fortress 2 before may find Monday Night Combat strikingly familiar with the later offering near carbon copies of the former’s widely exaggerated cartoonish character models, distinctive color-saturated arenas and heavily specialized character classes. It’s precisely this reason why I had no qualms about picking up Monday Night Combat almost instantly after its release. For the same reason, I suspect that anyone who picks up this game might go into the experience with expectations of a Team Fortress 2-style gameplay. You wouldn’t be wrong. Monday Night Combat is an impressive class and team-based online multiplayer shooter offered as a small and affordable Xbox Live Arcade download.

With Team Fortress 2 functioning as a heavy influence on Monday Night Combat, it's almost certain that this game will be fun. But that is only part of the equation. Within minutes into Monday Night Combat, there’s an inescapable feeling that you’ve been invited to a far more complex experience than what Team Fortress 2 could possibly offer. Conceptually, Monday Night Combat is a bigger and better game than Team Fortress 2. This is owed to the fact that the class and team-based online multiplayer mayhem is only a wrapper around the core Monday Night Combat experience: tower defense. In a stroke of ingenuity, upstart development house Uber Entertainment has effectively married Team Fortress 2 with the tried-and-tested tower defense formula. The result is one of the most original, creative and enjoyable games you would ever play. In terms of multiplayer-only shooters, Monday Night Combat has set the new standard.

It’s unfortunate that Monday Night Combat doesn’t really provide a good first impression. With only a pair of available multiplayer modes, the game may seem like a considerably thin package at first glance. The lack of the ubiquitous deathmatch and team deathmatch, or even capture the flag and point control offers much worry initially but the fact is that these modes would detract from an otherwise focused experience which Uber Entertainment is trying to deliver with Blitz and Crossfire.

Blitz is a co-op mode which can be played with up to 3 other players via Xbox Live, system link or split-screen. For the lack of a better world, Blitz is pure tower defense. Your only objective is to prevent what the game calls a money ball from being destroyed by waves of robotic hostiles, otherwise known as bots in the game. When the rounds start, you would be assailed by a wide variety of bots like cloaked assassins, hopping gorillas, mortar spiders and kamikaze bees. Bringing down these bots would reap you cash which can be funneled into raising turrets at designated spots, activating different environmental hazards and upgrading your soldier’s skills. There’s a guilty amount of fun and challenge to be had from strategically managing your funds in the midst of an intense battle. Do you invest in new turrets and their upgrades to bolster the overall defense of your base or conserve money for the activation of the ejection pad should the bots escape your defenses or perhaps go the selfish, albeit aggressive way of upgrading your skills so that you can be a more competent soldier on the battlefield? There’s an array of defensive and offensive options to consider and you’re constantly trying to strike a balance between both.

On the other hand, Crossfire is a competitive mode which pits 2 teams of 6 players against each other. As the meat of Monday Night Combat, Crossfire builds upon the fundamentals of Blitz, drastically expanding the scope of the game. The basic rules of Blitz remain: You’re still constantly repelling waves of bots, erecting turrets and upgrading them, activating environmental hazards and spending on expensive skill upgrades for your soldier. But with the introduction of an opposing team, you must now contend with players who will accompany their bots to assualt your team’s money ball and the opposition’s money ball. This essentially means you will not only need to defend your team’s money ball against increased levels of threats but also be compelled to tread further into enemy territory to bring down the opposing team’s money ball. This translates into a very exciting game of myriad defensive and offensive possibilities, with both teams attempting to push its offense line forward despite being embroiled in a defensive struggle.

The most intelligent twist to Crossfire yet comes in the form of heavily specialized character classes. The 6 diverse character classes lend a welcomed layer of depth to Crossfire, making teamwork as much of a winning factor as sound management of money and strategy are. In addition to 2 different weapons, each class has a smattering of skills which can be gradually upgraded. The Assualt is the necessary all-rounder while the Support combines both the Engineer and Medic from Team Fortress 2 to produce a formidable soldier who can build turrets on undesignated surfaces, call in airstrikes and heal teammates. The Assassin is blessed with excessive amounts of speed, can cloak and send dangerously ricocheting shurikens into bodies. The Sniper, on the other hand, can lay traps and with upgraded skills, shoot bullets which penetrate more than one body. The Tank and Gunner represent the heavy classes of Monday Night Combat, with both of them only being diversified by the distinctively different weapons they wield. The Tank, armed with slightly altered flamethrower and rail gun, is a close combat specialist, while the Gunner, equipped with a minigun and grenade launcher, fares better from afar. Both have the rather powerful ability to turn into a living turret which makes them as defensive as they are offensive. One thing I really like about the different character classes is how their specialties go beyond weapons and skills. With enough cash, each class can consistently call in a specific type of bot to complement the waves of normal bots which the computer inserts into the arenas.

With such a wide variety of character classes, each handling very much differently from each other, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there’s a considerable learning curve here. Fortunately, there’s a basic tutorial and pages of detailed notes about each character class in the how to play section. The tutorial, however, isn’t as helpful as it could be. Teaching you the know-how of playing as an Assualt is appreciated but it’s less useful when it doesn’t allow you to experiment with other classes in the empty arena.

Despite the general brilliance of Monday Night Combat, one major gripe I have about the game is how its appeal quickly becomes limited when you realize that there’s only one arena offered for Blitz and 3 for Crossfire. The selection of maps is less than generous and I suspect that most players save the most avid Monday Night Combat fans may put the game down after continuously exchanging bullets for a couple of weeks. However, the game does offer unlockable content in the form of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare-style tags and custom classes which allow you to tweak the attribute bonuses of your soldier.

Final comments
When you combine Team Fortress 2 and a tower defense formula, you get Monday Night Combat. In other words, it’s a class and team-based multiplayer shooter on a tower defense template. Have we seen this before? No. Well, Monday Night Combat is a new experience. And that matters quite a bit in today’s market because this is one of the rare instances where you get a game which is almost entirely, if not entirely, original. Monday Night Combat gathers the best of both worlds in creative and interesting ways and the result is one the most enjoyable games you would ever play. It’s a tragedy that its appeal is severely limited by the stingy number of maps.