Downloadable games on Xbox Live Arcade are changing and evolving at an alarmingly fast pace. What started almost 5 years ago with small remakes of arcade classics has rapidly morphed into high quality, triple A titles that rival many boxed copies of games. One genre that seems to be doing particularly well with this is multiplayer shooters. Developers no longer constricted by the confines of creating a single player component have applied creativity to create compelling online only experiences. Monday Night Combat is just such a game.
Developed by Uber Entertainment, Monday Night Combat is 3rd person shooter that’s a bit of a cross between a tower defense game, a shooter like Counter-Strike, and a splash of Smash T.V. with its over the top game show appeal. There’s two modes to play - Crossfire is the competitive 6 on 6 mode; Blitz is the cooperative 4 player mode. All of these matches take place in a futuristic game show like environment where cash is key. Do something good and you earn cash to buy strategic points on the map or upgrade your character’s skills.
Crossfire is a mode with a lot of legs to it, it’s a deep action/strategy oriented mode where players are trying to explode the other team’s money ball. To do this players must first bring down the ball’s shields - lowering it into the field of play - and then they need to destroy it as quick as possible unleashing a stream of golden goodness - coins that is - golden coins. What makes this unique, and not just some sort of reverse capture the flag, is there’s a lot of stuff at play here.
Along with the your team of six players, you have an army of AI robots you can spawn to help take down the money balls. So opposing players aren’t just contending with real life players, they need to worry about these robots too. The robots range from little harmless pests to big menacing Jack Bots that can do serious damage and turn the tide of battle. To help counter these robots, there are various strategic points throughout the map where players can purchase and upgrade different kinds of turrets - laser, rocket, freezing, and artillery. These turrets don’t just target the robots though, they target players providing additional defense.
Players can choose from six classes, each with their own unique abilities. The Assault class utilizes a machine gun and grenade launcher and can dash at opponents knocking them off the map with a successful hit. The Gunner class can convert himself into a heavy turret laying down suppressive fire. The Assassin can cloak, throw smoke bombs, and stab enemies in the back. In fact, most of the classes have a grapple or melee style killing making the combat in Monday Night Combat a lot more up close in personal. Sure there’s the Sniper sitting back picking off players, but a cloaked Assassin should have no problem sneaking around and finishing him off.
Along with these 4 classes are the Tank and the Support class. The Tank is a bit of a hybrid between the Gunner and the Assault class while the Support is incredibly important to a successful round. Think of him as the medic for not only players, but turrets and robots. All of this yields matches that have a constant ebb and flow, there’s a lot of push and pull, and fighting for territory. I found that strategies need to be adjusted on the fly quite often, whether that’s changing your character class mid match or utilizing different turrets based on the opposing team’s attack plan.
Ok, so that’s a lot to take in. I told you this game is incredibly deep. Lets talk co-op.
The co-op mode is a wave based survival mode where players need to protect their money ball from the AI robots. The game will spawn these robots of various sizes and players need to work together to survive. There’s six different modes in co-op, all are nearly identical, save for the difficulty and the number of waves - the last having infinite waves. As the waves progress the sheer number of robots increase, and the on the screen count of these are incredibly impressive. We’re talking hundreds of guys you need to destroy and avoid - so there’s a definite strategy to turret placement and class selection.
Blitz is incredibly intense, but a blast to play. There were many a time we were screaming at each other for help, calling out locations because the next big robot spawned in, or making teammates aware that our money ball had a swarm of robots wailing on it trying to break it down. Co-Op is fully featured as well with drop-in/drop-out support and the really nice thing - it’ll scale to the number of players. Both of these features are very welcomed in a mode like Blitz where matches can last for extended periods of time.
Sadly co-op is only playable on one map, though the map itself has different configurations depending on the wave you are on. With Crossfire sporting at least a half dozen maps this was kind of a disappointment.
Overall the game really excels at its presentation - a light hearted, almost comedic, futuristic gameshow with over the top action and a strong focus on winning big money. Outside of these modes, that money can be used to purchase Pro Tags that you’ve earned from accomplishing certain tasks in the game. There’s 370 tags associated with milestones and awesome things you’ve done. Up to three of them are then applied to a custom class giving you the bonuses associated with them. For instance I ended up creating a custom Assault class that was able to regenerate health thanks to a Pro Tag I earned in co-op for surviving a certain number of waves.
There really is a lot to talk about when it comes to Monday Night Combat, and believe it or not, I didn’t get to mention everything here. There’s still player endorsements, the Monday Night Combat Mascot, persistent stats, bacon and more to deal with. While MNC isn’t perfect, there's some issues with lag and performance, Uber Entertainment seems to be on the money ball with updates and tweaks. They’ve already announced that they can play balance on the fly without patching the game, and from playing with the developers it sounds like they are really interested in listening to community feedback. There’s an incredible amount of depth here with plenty for both co-op and competitive multiplayer fans alike.