pwnophobia
08-13-2010, 10:50 AM
Title: Monday Night Combat
Platform: XBLA
Platform Reviewed: XBLA
Developer: Uber Entertainment (http://uberent.com/)
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios (http://microsoft.com/ganes)
MSRP: 1200 MSP ($15)
Writer: Adam 'pwnophobia' Cogswell
Monday Night Combat Review
Pro Tip: Never Pet a Burning Dog
Just about all of us have played one of the following games or game types: Team Fortress 2, Defense of the Ancients, Tower Defense or some type of "Horde" mode. Once you've played one of those types you may have said to yourself: "How cool would it be if we could throw everything together in one big mess and see what happens?!" I think you know where I am going with this and, yes, that is exactly what Monday Night Combat is. Making its debut on the Xbox Live Arcade, Monday Night Combat is a very nice, rather small, downloadable title that helps brings friends together and controllers through television sets.
Before all else, it needs to be said that Monday Night Combat is a multiplayer centric game. While there is a single player mode (Blitz, i.e. horde mode) everything about the game screams "tactics" and "play with friends". Up to the release of Monday Night Combat you may have noticed that I was a bit on the fence about how the game was going to play. The reason being that I didn't have any friends that owned the game to play with. While trying to play with the public and by myself I kept nit-picking on the game; matches never seemed to flow in my favor or Blitz games never felt quite right. I'm happy to report that after you grab at least two friends the games mechanics wholly change because you can call out enemies or turret locations and have people LISTEN. Suddenly you start to laugh and smile, you'll find that you're sitting up-right and that your hands spend less time in the bag of chips than it does on the controller.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/MNC_1.jpg
Complete with six semi-customizable classes, Assault, Sniper, Assassin, Gunner, Support and Tank, you'll want to spend some time with each of them to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Each of the classes has a primary and secondary weapon, and all have three skills that can be upgraded by spending your hard earned cash. After you've played with them and found the one that suits your play style you'll want to unlock the customize class option, which gives you 8 perks to choose from to equip only 3 on your character. The game stutters a bit here because even after you've "customized" your class, you barely see the added effect. I suppose this helps to keep things balanced, it stops players from stacking their Assassin to be stupid fast and deadly, but leaves a bit to be desired. While games such as DOTA thrive on allowing you to pick different items for your character which changes the way you play each game, Monday Night Combat doesn't have any sort of itemization or in depth customization to change the flow of the game. You can easily get away with never customizing your class, and in all honesty it feels a bit tacked on... like the developers wanted to do something with it but didn't take the time to expand.
Monday Night Combat only has two modes: Blitz and Crossfire. Blitz is your typical Horde mode wherein you pick how many waves you want, then setup turrets at pre-defined locations and kill. The whole goal of Blitz is to survive the waves and protect your money ball. If you decide to go at it alone you'll have a totally different experience than if you were to bring friends because for every person you add to your team you add another set of bots to each wave. For example on Wave 10 a large "boss" bot comes out and walks toward the money ball. If it was just you, you'd only have one of these bots, two people: two bots, and so on up until you've reached the maximum of four players. Depending on the number of friends you have in will dictate where the bots are coming from and how many are in each wave. However, there is only one Blitz map and four locations that any bots can come from. This is a problem because there are not many combinations of strategies you can run with pre-defined turret locations. Sure there are four different types of turrets to play with, but what can you do on wave 50 on insanity difficulty when you can't route the bots around the map? With that being said, having only one map doesn't take away from the fun because chances are you're going to move on quickly to the next game mode: Crossfire.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/MNC_2.jpg
Once you're done collecting money and levels in Blitz you may want to take your team for some hot Crossfire (PvP) action. Fire up the lobby and wait a (literal) minute then away you go. Accompanied by waves of robots and stationary turrets, you're tasked with pushing to the opposite side of the map and destroying the opposing teams money ball. This is another area where heavy team play comes in handy because without a good group of guys who will listen to orders you'll be stuck in a stalemate for the duration of the match. While you can't tell the robots where to go, you can help destroy the opposing teams turrets and army to advanced your side of the map, but you cannot build turrets passed the half way mark. A good mix of classes to support each other helps move the game before it reaches overtime, where you've got two minutes to lay waste to the money ball before the opposing team grabs yours. I've had a lot of fun with this mode and tend to stick to only two classes, which I usually pick based on what my team picks. Money isn't super easy to come by, but it's not hard to get either which forces you to make a few team decisions. Do I spend my money on my character to upgrade skills? Do I purchase or upgrade turrets? Ultimately, your job is to figure out what's best for the team.
Whether you're playing through either Blitz or Crossfire, you earn money and levels. The levels are arbitrary but the money is used to unlock Street Fighter IV style emblems that appear on the opposing players screen when you kill them. There isn't much more to be said about earning money, you'll grab an amount at the end of the match and either save it or rub your achievements in your opponents face. If you want to quickly unlock all of the customization options you'll probably find yourself completing 10 waves of Blitz by yourself because the way money is handed out is based on how much you contributed in the match.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/MNC_3.jpg
There are a few small gripes about Monday Night Combat that I can't pass by. You've read a few throughout the body but the largest is a huge frame rate reduction when there are too many things going on at once. Have you ever been playing on a low-end PC when suddenly the game tosses a hundred guys on the screen and your machine bogs? That is the exact same thing that happens here. It seems as though MNC hasn't been thoroughly optimized, so you'll have to work through it and wait for the game to catch up. I mentioned the shoddy customization options, which leads me to believe that the group of people playing Monday Night Combat will drop off as soon as another game hits. While this plagues most XBLA titles, Monday Night Combat's lack of items, modes, maps, and extra customization lead to nearly the same game experience every time. You'll need to be imaginative to keep the game fresh.
With all that being said, Monday Night Combat is a very fun and interesting title, bringing a breath of fresh air to the arcade. If you like to team-play and have a bunch of people on your friends list to play with, you should go pick this up and have something to do until the next big multiplayer game hits. What Monday Night Combat does well is mold all of the previous game types you've played while adding in its own quirky flare. If Uber wants this title to continue to succeed they'll need to introduce maps and more customization options but as it stands it can hold against the likes of Battlefield 1943.
Score: 4 out of 5
http://evavhost.com/public/4.gif
The Good Team coordination, strategy and makeup lead to fun and entertaining games. Entertaining characters and personalities. Cell shaded art design is very pleasing to the eye.
The Bad Character customization needs more levels of customization. Blitz needs to incorporate some of the Crossfire maps, one can get old quickly.
The Ugly Frame rate loss when the game demands too much from the Xbox.
Platform: XBLA
Platform Reviewed: XBLA
Developer: Uber Entertainment (http://uberent.com/)
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios (http://microsoft.com/ganes)
MSRP: 1200 MSP ($15)
Writer: Adam 'pwnophobia' Cogswell
Monday Night Combat Review
Pro Tip: Never Pet a Burning Dog
Just about all of us have played one of the following games or game types: Team Fortress 2, Defense of the Ancients, Tower Defense or some type of "Horde" mode. Once you've played one of those types you may have said to yourself: "How cool would it be if we could throw everything together in one big mess and see what happens?!" I think you know where I am going with this and, yes, that is exactly what Monday Night Combat is. Making its debut on the Xbox Live Arcade, Monday Night Combat is a very nice, rather small, downloadable title that helps brings friends together and controllers through television sets.
Before all else, it needs to be said that Monday Night Combat is a multiplayer centric game. While there is a single player mode (Blitz, i.e. horde mode) everything about the game screams "tactics" and "play with friends". Up to the release of Monday Night Combat you may have noticed that I was a bit on the fence about how the game was going to play. The reason being that I didn't have any friends that owned the game to play with. While trying to play with the public and by myself I kept nit-picking on the game; matches never seemed to flow in my favor or Blitz games never felt quite right. I'm happy to report that after you grab at least two friends the games mechanics wholly change because you can call out enemies or turret locations and have people LISTEN. Suddenly you start to laugh and smile, you'll find that you're sitting up-right and that your hands spend less time in the bag of chips than it does on the controller.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/MNC_1.jpg
Complete with six semi-customizable classes, Assault, Sniper, Assassin, Gunner, Support and Tank, you'll want to spend some time with each of them to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Each of the classes has a primary and secondary weapon, and all have three skills that can be upgraded by spending your hard earned cash. After you've played with them and found the one that suits your play style you'll want to unlock the customize class option, which gives you 8 perks to choose from to equip only 3 on your character. The game stutters a bit here because even after you've "customized" your class, you barely see the added effect. I suppose this helps to keep things balanced, it stops players from stacking their Assassin to be stupid fast and deadly, but leaves a bit to be desired. While games such as DOTA thrive on allowing you to pick different items for your character which changes the way you play each game, Monday Night Combat doesn't have any sort of itemization or in depth customization to change the flow of the game. You can easily get away with never customizing your class, and in all honesty it feels a bit tacked on... like the developers wanted to do something with it but didn't take the time to expand.
Monday Night Combat only has two modes: Blitz and Crossfire. Blitz is your typical Horde mode wherein you pick how many waves you want, then setup turrets at pre-defined locations and kill. The whole goal of Blitz is to survive the waves and protect your money ball. If you decide to go at it alone you'll have a totally different experience than if you were to bring friends because for every person you add to your team you add another set of bots to each wave. For example on Wave 10 a large "boss" bot comes out and walks toward the money ball. If it was just you, you'd only have one of these bots, two people: two bots, and so on up until you've reached the maximum of four players. Depending on the number of friends you have in will dictate where the bots are coming from and how many are in each wave. However, there is only one Blitz map and four locations that any bots can come from. This is a problem because there are not many combinations of strategies you can run with pre-defined turret locations. Sure there are four different types of turrets to play with, but what can you do on wave 50 on insanity difficulty when you can't route the bots around the map? With that being said, having only one map doesn't take away from the fun because chances are you're going to move on quickly to the next game mode: Crossfire.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/MNC_2.jpg
Once you're done collecting money and levels in Blitz you may want to take your team for some hot Crossfire (PvP) action. Fire up the lobby and wait a (literal) minute then away you go. Accompanied by waves of robots and stationary turrets, you're tasked with pushing to the opposite side of the map and destroying the opposing teams money ball. This is another area where heavy team play comes in handy because without a good group of guys who will listen to orders you'll be stuck in a stalemate for the duration of the match. While you can't tell the robots where to go, you can help destroy the opposing teams turrets and army to advanced your side of the map, but you cannot build turrets passed the half way mark. A good mix of classes to support each other helps move the game before it reaches overtime, where you've got two minutes to lay waste to the money ball before the opposing team grabs yours. I've had a lot of fun with this mode and tend to stick to only two classes, which I usually pick based on what my team picks. Money isn't super easy to come by, but it's not hard to get either which forces you to make a few team decisions. Do I spend my money on my character to upgrade skills? Do I purchase or upgrade turrets? Ultimately, your job is to figure out what's best for the team.
Whether you're playing through either Blitz or Crossfire, you earn money and levels. The levels are arbitrary but the money is used to unlock Street Fighter IV style emblems that appear on the opposing players screen when you kill them. There isn't much more to be said about earning money, you'll grab an amount at the end of the match and either save it or rub your achievements in your opponents face. If you want to quickly unlock all of the customization options you'll probably find yourself completing 10 waves of Blitz by yourself because the way money is handed out is based on how much you contributed in the match.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/MNC_3.jpg
There are a few small gripes about Monday Night Combat that I can't pass by. You've read a few throughout the body but the largest is a huge frame rate reduction when there are too many things going on at once. Have you ever been playing on a low-end PC when suddenly the game tosses a hundred guys on the screen and your machine bogs? That is the exact same thing that happens here. It seems as though MNC hasn't been thoroughly optimized, so you'll have to work through it and wait for the game to catch up. I mentioned the shoddy customization options, which leads me to believe that the group of people playing Monday Night Combat will drop off as soon as another game hits. While this plagues most XBLA titles, Monday Night Combat's lack of items, modes, maps, and extra customization lead to nearly the same game experience every time. You'll need to be imaginative to keep the game fresh.
With all that being said, Monday Night Combat is a very fun and interesting title, bringing a breath of fresh air to the arcade. If you like to team-play and have a bunch of people on your friends list to play with, you should go pick this up and have something to do until the next big multiplayer game hits. What Monday Night Combat does well is mold all of the previous game types you've played while adding in its own quirky flare. If Uber wants this title to continue to succeed they'll need to introduce maps and more customization options but as it stands it can hold against the likes of Battlefield 1943.
Score: 4 out of 5
http://evavhost.com/public/4.gif
The Good Team coordination, strategy and makeup lead to fun and entertaining games. Entertaining characters and personalities. Cell shaded art design is very pleasing to the eye.
The Bad Character customization needs more levels of customization. Blitz needs to incorporate some of the Crossfire maps, one can get old quickly.
The Ugly Frame rate loss when the game demands too much from the Xbox.