Reader Reviews: Monday Night Combat

I consider myself a bit of an Xbox LIVE Arcade connoiseur, but I totally missed out on Monday Night Combat when it was initially released. Now that it’s been released on Steam, we’ve had a review sent in from Grandmaster B-Funk to get us all up to date on this overlooked gem.

And thanks to Madman entertainment, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD releases.

Monday Night Combat

Monday Night Combat was first released in august on Xbox 360 as an XBLA title, but the game has made the cross to PC gaming, and I thought I’d give the game a go. First off, I’ll admit it, I always thought this game was a Team Fortress 2 clone, while the art style is similar, and the humour is sort of the same, the game does enough to differentiate it from TF2 and not make me think about TF2 while playing it.

LOVED

Third Person Tower Defence Class Based Shooter
The main hook of the game is that it sort of combines a class based shooter with a tower defence game. Basic enemies spawn from areas and continue in a line towards your “money ball” which you must defend at all costs, although there are more intelligent robots that can stray off their paths. You can then destroy the robots for money, and either upgrade your class’s skills, or make turrets. Turrets can be placed in pre-determined spots on the map, which will aid you in your quest to protect your ball! (Pun intended) it’s this decision between upgrading your skills or getting turrets is really what changes how you play the game. You can either A) focus on upgrading your classes skills first (best defence is a good offence), B) Focus on making turrets (best defence is a good… defence..) or C) Be an amateur accountant and budget your money for both skills and turrets, and leave some money behind for retirement.

ARE YOU READY TO RUMMMMMBLEEEEEEE?!!
I loved how the whole game was styled like a testosterone fuelled American sports show. It’s really great when you are playing the announcer is yelling things at you, and in the middle of the game he would randomly plug a sponsor. Also, the characters have their own great little personalities.

Mad Skillz
The skills in the game are actually quite a blast to use, and when you use their grapple moves, the characters look great and shows the effort put into the animations of the game. And each move is very useful for the character. The heavy gunner has a ground blast move that can clear away pesky assassins, the fast paced assault has a dash move that when fully upgraded, can launch the enemy out of the map.

HATED

Bit Wobbly
The game can be fairly un-balanced at some times when playing multi-player, as if you play as one of the slower gunner or tank classes, a fully upgraded assassin can easily stab you in the back, then cloak and disappear. Actually, the assassin is my biggest gripe in the game, the fact that the stealthy one-hit kill from behind character is also the fastest in the game, means that she’s too hard to kill, before or after she has attacked someone

Forever Alone
Now I know this isn’t the game’s fault, but when you boast about having dedicated servers, could you please make sure that there are some? The search on it showed that there were not many servers, and all fairly far away. I know that’s because this doesn’t have the popularity of Team Fortress (STOP COMPARING THOSE TWO DAMN IT) but I really wanted to play a good lag-free multi-player match, but instead I got games where I would be shooting someone enough so they should die, but then I will die instantly, or a FREAKING ASSASSIN WOULD STAB ME IN THE BACK!!! Or maybe I just suck at the multi-player…

So, would I recommend this game? Yes, because it’s doing something different, and you should really try it to see if you like it, and at only $15 on steam, it has brought me more fun than a lot of full priced games this year.

By Grandmaster B-Funk


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