Monday Night Combat

Rating:T

Score: 9.0/10

Ask any avid gamer about Valve's record with games and they can tell you it's impressive to say the least. They wanted to make a first person shooter series, and made the famous Half Life. They wanted to make a puzzle game, and made the award-winning Portal. They tried their hands on team-based deathmatches, and made Team Fortress which sports a huge fanbase. Different games have tried to replicate some Valve classics, but lack the pure quality for which the Valve team is famous. This is with the exception of Team Fortress, which is rather simple in comparison. Now, a game in a similar style tries Team Fortress-like quirkiness and simplicity. Can it hold its ground against the pros? This game is available for the Xbox 360 and PC.

Monday Night Combat is set in the far future, where the name "Monday Night Combat" is associated with the game show of the same name. In this show, different classes of individuals fight against hoards of robots to protect "The Moneyball". The winner gets fame and money, the loser does not.

In regular single player, the individuals protect the moneyball alone. To help these individuals, turrets and special machines can be set up to help attack invading robots. Along with that, specialized emergency weapons are placed around the arena, and can be used for an instant but costly explosion. Costly because those weapons, like turrets and all upgrades for those turrets and yourself, cost money. You fight robots to keep your end prize and get money for defeating them, using that money to have a stronger individual and/or more machines to hold on for later, tougher rounds.

In multiplayer mode, the game switches a bit. Bots are built for both sides, and the individual must both defend their moneyball from attackers AND lead their army of bots into the enemy's base. It requires a lot of on-the-spot thinking and clever class placement to come out on top.

There are six classes, each with their own abilities, endorsers, and weapons. The Assassin is all about tackling single targets at a time, but she's very effective with her instant-kill backstab, cloaking, and running abilities. The Assault is pure offense, being able to fly around on a jetpack and keep up the assault with explosives and his assault rifle. The Gunner is slow, but carries a minigun (dual-miniguns when upgraded). The Sniper is similar to the Assassin in the way he can only take down single targets at once since he has a guaranteed kill on a headshot. Difference being one's close range and the other stays far away. The Tank has good survivability and can catch enemies on fire with his close range, high-powered "Jet Gun", but is also a touch slow. Finally, the Support can heal teammates and hack friendly turrets to give them higher functionality (longer range, higher damage, etc...). He can also, if he's really careful, hack enemy turrets to turn them against their previous allies with those great added functionalities. Each class, just like in Team Fortress, is very different and plays very differently. Having a bunch of one doesn't do anyone much good, but alternating for the situation proves very effective.

While the characters are nice and all have their own style and history, there's not nearly as much care in having the audience recognize each individually. Team Fortress has multiple taunts, clever speeches between getting kills and capturing control points/intel, and even "Meet The Team" videos. Those videos were made by the Valve employees to advertise these characters, with each showing the character’s unique style and attitude with great scripting. I still stand by the fact "What makes me a good demo-man? If I were a bad demo-man, I wouldn't be sittin' here, discussin' it with ya now would I?" as one of the greatest lines ever presented in media history.

Monday Night Combat, in comparison, has a few trailers sporting the unique styles, one taunt per character, and only a few speech options between getting kills. The decreased amount they speak and showcase their unique style, only lessens the likability of each class as an individual.

The game is delivered in a similar cartoony, quirky style, much like Team Fortress. It suits it's very informal gameplay and odd humor. Yes, the game even has a little humor! The announcer does some comic relief between briefing the field of notable changes in the arena (ex: Moneyball close to being destroyed).

Before this review gets any longer, endorsements need to be explained. Each character has three endorsers in three levels. Gold is highest, and the endorsement in that level gets the biggest stat upgrade to its relating stat. Then silver gets a moderate upgrade, then bronzes gets a small. Each endorsement deals in clip size, armor, health regeneration, or something of the like, so setting it to have good synergy with your character is a good idea. Another good idea is to set it for the situation at hand, applying upgrades as needed for your team. There's a lot of freedom available.

While it's not a Team Fortress rip-off, it certainly borrows quite a bit. It has the quirky style and similar class style of Team Fortress, but adds a tower defense-like objective, some humor, and different customization options (Team Fortress 2's different weapons vs Monday Night Combat's different endorsers). It's certainly not as complete as Team Fortress 2, and still has some balancing issues and bugs, but it's still an amazing game for those willing to adventure.