I can honestly say I went into Monday Night Combat with no expectations. So it had a 50/50 chance of being good or bad from the start. I can’t say I hated the game, but I definitely can’t say I loved it. Monday Night Combat (MNC) is a team based third person arena shooter. There are really only two objectives to the game, protecting your Money Ball and destroying your opponents Money Ball. The catch is that you cannot directly destroy your opponents Money Ball. As you play, bots will be spawned for each team. Only the bots can damage the Money Ball. Your job as the player is to get your bots to your enemies Money Ball in the best condition possible, while destroying your opponent’s bots so they don’t make it to your Money Ball. I thought this was an interesting angle for gameplay. Someone can run around the entire game killing other players, rack up the highest kill count, but then lose because they didn’t focus on getting their bots to the Money Ball.
When you first start the game you are immediately thrown into tutorial mode, even before you get to the main options screen. They do a good job of explaining how the game is played, how the weapons and special abilities work, as well as how upgrades and bots work. Basically, by the time you get to the main screen you have a good understanding of how to play. From the main menu you can choose the game type to play, check out class profiles to learn more about each class, or setup custom classes. Custom classes aren’t all that custom if you ask me. Basically you get to pick one of the premade classes and attach a few upgrades to boost your stats in categories such as accuracy, rate of fire, skill regen, etc.
There are six classes to choose from. Each class has 3 special abilities/attacks. You can upgrade these abilities to three different levels with money you get while playing the game. Each upgrade is more expensive than the last. The assault class is the most balanced and will be the easiest to play for most players. Assault has the Assault Rifle and Grenade Launcher. Tanks are heavily armored and in my opinion high powered, even though their stats say otherwise. They are a bit slow, but if you can aim the rail gun well you won’t need to be fast as it is very long range. The Tank also carries the Jet Gun which is basically a high powered torch to be used close range.
The Support class can heal turrets, bots, as well as humans. They can use that same gun to steal health from bots and opponents. You can drop a turret, lay a target for bombs to fall, and hack enemy turrets. Support also carries a very powerful shotgun that can kill most opponents in one shot if you are close range. Assassins can cloak, but if you are within about 10 feet of someone they can see you just fine. The Assassin has a Dagger and Shuriken Launcher, but they aren’t that powerful. Your best bet is to try to use your cloak to get behind your enemy and grapple. This usually results in a one hit kill. Gunners are supposed to be the high powered offensive machine of the game… It really doesn’t work out that way since they are very slow and don’t really have effective long range weapons. I rarely got killed by them, and killed a lot of them. They have a Minigun and Mortar Launcher.
As a fan of the sniper class in any game, I can officially say that the Sniper class in this game does not hit the mark (Get it? Hit the MARK?). Headshots are not one hit kills, which pretty much kills the sniper class for me. I shot plenty of people in the face and watched them not die. Yes, they had low health, but I just shot them in the face. THE FACE! On the other side of that I was never one shot headshot myself. They can lay traps to hold enemies and place flak grenades for short periods of time. Along with the Sniper rifle they also have a SMG.
There are two game types to choose from. Blitz is the single player or co-op mode where waves of bots will come and try to destroy your Money Ball. Naturally as the game progresses, the waves will become more difficult. You can setup and upgrade turrets to help you fight off the bots, and if you make it to the wave limit, you win. One of the blitz modes has no wave limit so you pretty much fight for as long as you can until you get overwhelmed. Crossfire is the other game type that puts you against another team of XBox Live players and their bots. There are several arenas to play in, all symmetrical, so if you get lost… you probably shouldn’t be playing this type of game.
A lot of this game deals with collecting money. As mentioned earlier money allows you to upgrade your class, it allows you to upgrade turrets, and it also allows you to unlock custom classes. You get money from killing players, bots, and beating up the mascot when he comes out. That part is fun actually. Now for the parts that weren’t really fun…
My first big gripe is the fact that the hit detection could have been much better. There were times where I shot someone with the shotgun point blank, and they didn’t lose health. Other times I shot someone with the sniper rifle dead in the face and they lost no health. I also didn’t like the fact that classes only make a difference from a distance. What I mean by that is if you are face to face with just about any class, no matter what class you are, you have a 50/50 chance of taking that other person out. No matter how heavily armored they are, how strong they are, or how fast they are compared to you, you have a good chance of getting a grapple and taking them out. Personally, I don’t think that an Assault taking a Tank head on should have a chance of surviving on the simple fact that the Tank is more heavily armored and has stronger weapons for both close and long range. But this wasn’t the case. I found myself easily taking out Tanks at close range. Lastly, I found that pretty much by mid game I was ready for that round to be over.
Overall, I just found that the game just wasn’t that fun to play. It got old very fast. I think another game mode or two would have helped keep the game fresh for a bit longer. I really don’t see myself playing this game anymore unless I have a bunch of friends that want to play it. I found it a tough game to play effectively without friends. There wasn’t a lot of communication between players in a game that is built similar to Team Fortress, in that you need to communicate to win. That mixed with the poor hit detection and lack of class advantage in close range combat made this an overall poor gaming experience for me. Personally, I have to say I think this may be the worst of the Summer of Arcade 2010. No, it’s not a bad game. But at the same time, it’s not necessarily a good one either. I would recommend saving your money for either Shank coming out on the 24th or Scott Pilgram vs. The World coming out next week for XBLA.
