When the words "like Smash T.V." are uttered when describing a game, my ears perk up and my spidey senses tingle. Inspiration from Midway's classic top down shooter is a good place to start for any game, but mix in a fun art style, plenty of strategy, and a progression system and Uber Entertainment may have a winner on its hands with Monday Night Combat.
We went hands on at PAX East with the game's team based Crossfire mode and got the skinny on the game's four player co-op Blitz mode.
It was pretty easy to judge which games at PAX East were the most popular, their lines were long or their crowd was loud. Monday Night Combat had both. Twelve players faced off in epic combat in Crossfire. The goal of Crossfire is to escort groups of AI bots into an opponents base to take down the shields of the money ball. Once the money balls is exposed it's time to blow it up and then....big money, big prizes!
The whole time this is going on you need to fend off the opposing team which consists of players of six different classes: Assault, Tank, Sniper, Support, Gunner and Assassin. Each class has their own special abilities which you can earn points while playing and upgrade. I chose a sniper class and was told to immediately upgrade my shot power - this allowed me to hit more than one target with a single shot. These abilities can be passive or they are mapped to one of the face buttons on the Xbox controller.
You'll find melee attacks playing a bit part in all of the classes.
Just when you think you've heard everything you have to worry about for your assault on an enemy money ball, escorting your bots, and watching out for the opposing team - the game throws defensive emplacements at you. Players can build turrets and other structures to assist in the defense of their money ball.
Despite being unable to communicate our team seemed to work together naturally as we had a nice mix of Tanks, Assault and Snipers. As I said I was a sniper and mostly hung back, but soon one of the Uber guys told me that my "juice" was full. You see, it's the future and in the future juicing is legal. After knocking out a few kills I earned enough juice to unleash 10 seconds of juice mode. I quickly switched to my uzi's and found my way behind enemy lines thanks to the vertical nature of the map we were on.
Juice engaged
Oh yes, I mowed down all the opponent bots and at least 3 of their team mates. All the while their bodies were spewing gold coins to collect. I was hooked.
It's actions like this that can actually earn you Pro Tags, which are like badges of honor. Except there's no way you can pin all of these to your chest - there's 400 of them. While these don't give you bonuses, they may help earn you endorsements from advertisers which DO give you in game bonus effects.
There's plenty of style in MNC's art. Event the 8-Bit versions.
So that's the Cross Fire mode which is more of your traditional team based game. But Monday Night Combat does sport a four player co-op mode called Blitz. Like Crossfire you'll have enemy bots trying to take down your money ball, but this time there's no opposing team.
You'll be tasked with defending ever increasing waves of enemy bots all the while earning money and prizes. The same gameshow style elements are present in this mode, and there's also plenty of unlockables to earn.
Uber isn't saying how many maps the game ships with, but there will be a variety on display in terms of venues. While each one will be in a stadium like atmosphere, we'll see water levels, city levels, and more traditional sport like levels. All of these will be playable in both the game's modes.
There's a lot Monday Night Combat plans to offer, all packed into a downloadable XBLA game set to come out this year. If they can deliver on what's promised, this title could easily pass for a full retail game. At $20 or less, it's going to seem like a steal.