Game Title: Monday Night Combat

Release Date: August 11, 2010

Genre: 3rd Person Shooter

Developer: Uber Entertainment

Available Platforms: Xbox 360

Players: 1-12

MSRP: 1200 MS Points ($15)

ESRB Rating: Teen

Website: http://www.uberent.com/



You might think after seeing the trailer for Monday Night Combat that it’s just a shallow, repetitive shooter with nothing new to offer. To be fair it is a shooter and it’s not even as deep as most, but it is way more fun than anything to come down from Arcade for quite a while. At its heart it is an arena combat game, in the tradition of Unreal Tournament and Quake but much more bright and festive in nature and with a bit of retro “Smash TV” attitude thrown in for good measure.

The basic premise is that of a futuristic game show, Monday Night Combat, in which players are either pitted against waves of rampaging bots or other live players and their bots. The player vs. bot matches, called Blitz, are fairly straightforward: protect your moneyball, aka your base, at all costs against the hordes of evil and varied machines. Player vs. player matches, called Crossfire, add a twist. Two teams of players each try to protect their moneyball versus human and bot assault, while at the same time assaulting and destroying their opponent’s moneyball.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfw3aml0Sss

There are six player classes to choose from so and the game has some incentives built in to persuade players to form a balanced group. Whether you like to go in through the front door, guns blazing, or sneak invisibly in the back and assassinate the enemy from behind, the game has a class for you. Add to that the ability to customize classes to a certain extent after you’ve earned enough cash and you will almost certainly have no trouble finding your niche.

Both types are great fun and can be played solo or with your pals on Xbox Live. I particularly like the fact that different character types are required to be able to spawn different bot types in Crossfire. This prevents a team, generally speaking, from creating a squad of six tanks and just trying to march down your throat. The game’s mysterious obsession with bacon is also a big plus for me, as is the sage advice it doles out during loading screens, such as, “Never pet a burning dog”. Now that’s good advice.

My only real issues with this title are the lobby system and idle timer. Once a game ends, it automatically re-ups you into the same type and begins the game start timer. This means that if you want to choose a new game that you have to back out to the main menu and re-invite your group.

The idle timer is really only an issue for the Sniper character, but it’s still a minor annoyance. After a couple of minutes, if a player hasn’t changed their position, the game boots them from the match entirely. In general I’m in favor of anti-camping measures, but that’s sort of the point for snipers. Still, I’d call these issues fairly minor in the grand scheme, and certainly not reasons to pass this one by.

This one was an easy purchase decision for me, and I’m a notorious tightwad when it comes to shelling out real money on Arcade titles. Check out the trial and see for yourself. This one rates high for me, 4 out of 5 moneyballs I would say.

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