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.