Class based shooters are a dime a dozen these days. You get some characters who specialize in offense, defense, and support (which usually means they can heal). It doesn't help that the shooter market is saturated with competitors. But Uber Entertainment manages to stick out from the crowd by throwing in something almost everyone has played at some point or another: tower defense games.
Monday Night Combat takes place in a mysterious future where the blood sport of the same name is the most popular past time in the world. Two teams, compromised of clones with weird and fantastic DNA (the Assassin for example, somehow has the DNA of John Wilkes Booth), compete in two different games with live ammunition: Blitz and Crossfire.
Blitz is your typical Gears of War horde mode except instead of simple survival, you must also protect your moneyball, which is exactly as it sounds. Robots stream out of their spawn points in an attempt to tear your precious moneyball to pieces. The hook is that in addition to playing as one of six unique classes, you can also build one of four different turrets with money earns from destroying these bots and upgrade them further when needed. It's every bit as fun as any other horde mode, with the strategic fun of tower defense game play added in to balance out the sheer number of bots that will eventually try to overwhelm you.
Crossfire takes the Blitz formula but pits another team along with their bots in an attempt to take down your moneyball while you do the same. In addition to playing this shooter well, building turrets in important locations and keeping your defensive line is just as important as knowing how to aim correctly with the right thumbstick. Actually, if no one on a given team pays attention to the tower defense portion of the game's strategy, keeping enemies out of your base is significantly harder. Crossfire is easily the heart of this multiplayer only game, and this is also where the class dynamics and match ups really come to life.
The classes are the silent but deadly Assassin, the showboating Assault, the blue collar Tank, the Hawaiian stereotype Gunner, the Italian stereotype Support, and the Sniper who basically embodies everyone with a mic on Xbox Live (“Well at least someone's doing their job!”).
He'll cry hax like most people too.
Each class, in addition to having specific weapons, defense, and speed, also have three special skills they can use which need to recharge after each use. Midgame, you must choose between building and upgrading turrets or upgrading your character's skills. With upgrades not carrying over if you decide to switch to another class during a game and unlimited ammo, you're encouraged to learn the nuances of a given class in order to better help your team win.
I for example, enjoy playing the Assassin, but playing as this nimble killer requires a different mindset to be successful. Instead of opening fire with no thought like you would in Modern Warfare 2, I always have to approach from behind for the Assassin's signature one hit kill assassination. If I can't, the Assassin's superior mobility allows me to escape most situations to try again, which is usually a better idea than trying to finish the job like I might in other games.
Another job well done!
The thing I love most about Monday Night Combat is the balance. All the classes are genuinely useful in some way, and all of their skills and weapons serve a purpose. Think about games like Halo or Modern Warfare 2. There are weapons people never use because they're simply outclassed in all areas by another weapon. If you've played MW2, then you know most of the people who want to win use the ACR assault rifle and almost never touch the F2000 rifle for reasons of accuracy. But in Monday Night Combat, every class is useful and who you play is up to general preference, whether you want to headshot newbies the classic way as a Sniper or want to support your team and hack turrets as the Support.
Of course, there's nearly no single player side to this game. If you hate the competitive aspect of gaming, the people of Xbox Live in general, or simply lack a number of open minded friends, your mileage will vary on Monday Night Combat. But trust me when I say that Monday Night Combat's polish and attention to game balance is truly remarkable for being a $15 game that was developed by a 16 man team. Where most gamers in competitive multiplayer games find things they can do that breaks the balance or the intended nature of how the game is played, MNC has many checks and balances in its design that allows it to rival the likes of other full priced retail games like Modern Warfare 2.
Pluses
+ Balanced very well. Every class has a purpose, a way to counter other classes, and vice versa.
+ The classes. Not just your normal TF2 rip offs, the classes of MNC have a personality all their own. Is it bad that I'm laughing so much at the Support's hilarious European tendencies? When you're on a streak, he'll say things like, “It's like I'mma drinking a'million espressos!”
+ It's colorful shooter. Shooters are almost synonymous with drab browns and grays now. MNC mixes it up with teams divided by color, robots, jet pack affects, and maps half colored for teams and with more than a few instances of wacky faux product placement.
Minuses
- Very little outside multiplayer. Do you get jaded easily of squeaky voiced teens hurling insults involving your mother? Or just that sinking feeling a crushing defeat? Not only that, but despite earning money to spend on protags (think MW2 callsigns) or custom class slots, there's not a whole lot to reward you besides that thrill of victory.
- The netcode. Latency is a big problem that isn't present in quite the same way as other online shooters. You can easily achieve lag bad enough where players suddenly teleport despite you shooting them for a few seconds. It gets worse as you try grappling while playing as the Assassin. Host migration rarely ever works either. Nine times out of ten, when the host rage quits, you'll be dropped back into the main menu even is the host migration says that it worked.
- Variety? Not really. How you approach replayability is a lot like Left 4 Dead. There are few maps and only two game types, but the experience is never the same. In L4D, this is because of the director and your team mates (as well as opponents in versus mode). In MNC, it's mostly because of your opponents and which classes they personally prefer. But if you've stabbed by one assassin, you've been stabbed by them all.
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