The Digest: Are you ready for some … C-O-M-B-A-T?  Get ready for a fun time mixing first person shooter game play with a bit of tower defense and throw in some bacon! (Yes, everything is better with bacon.)

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: August 11th, 2010
PUBLISHER: Xbox Live Arcade
DEVELOPER: Uber Entertainment
PRICE: 1200 Microsoft Points
GENRE: Action & Adventure, Shooter

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:
Monday Night Combat for Xbox LIVE Arcade is a class-based, third-person shooter…and the most lethal sport of the future! It blends combat, finishing moves, gameshow-like challenges and rewards. The game features grapple moves, upgradable skills and a deep meta-game. Blitz mode pits 1 to 2 players on a split screen or up to 4 players over Xbox LIVE against waves of robot armies. In Crossfire mode, players play competitively, 6 versus 6, to destroy the enemy’s Money Ball while protecting theirs aided by robots. Enjoy an extensive Career Mode that lets players to use their money to customize classes and show off their accomplishments with hundreds of new ProTags.

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• Two Game Modes: Blitz and Crossfire
• 6 Upgradeable Character Classes
• Persistent Stats
• Endorsements
• ProTags
  

Monday Night Combat combines the many loves of most gamers:  Guns, bacon, money, juice, robots, and mascots.  The idea of the game is a world where combat is a sport and the players have one goal – Defend the money ball.  In both game modes the object is to defend your money ball from the onslaught of incoming robots.  And to defend your money ball you are equipped with a heavy arsenal of weapons and special moves.  Also to aid you are turrets, juice, hazards, and the lovable mascot Bullseye.

When you first start up the game you are introduced to the gameplay with a simple to follow tutorial.  Your basic look this way, shoot this guy, and press this button.  Easy but effective at teaching the game basics.

The Blitz gameplay mode is either you or 3 friends over Xbox Live defending the money ball in rounds of robots attacking you.  You get about 30 seconds to setup your turrets before the robots start their attack towards your money ball.  Once the horn goes off the green lights show the direction the robots will be coming from.  One of the few drawbacks of this mode is the rounds are consistent on what type of robot will come so you can easily predict what level of robots were coming at you.

The variety of robots were done well.  You have everything from the weak slims to the giant and strong JackBots.  The robots are divided into two groups, one group called breach bots that will follow a set path to the money ball and the other are eliminator bots that will attack the player first, then attack turrets, and if nothing else is left they will attack the money ball.  Some of the robots even have unique abilities like stealth and long range missiles.

The defenses in the game add some strategy to protecting your money ball.  There are a four types of turrets: RockIt – High Cost, High Armor, and High Damage : Lazer Blazer – Low Cost, Low Armor, and Low Damage : SaveIce – Moderate Cost, High Armor, and Slow Auro : LongShot – Moderate Cost, Long Range, Low Armor, High Damage.  I really enjoyed how the turrets played in the strategy of defending your money ball.  I always found the best strategy is to build the turrets up front first and then work your way back to your money ball.  And a good combination of turrets was key to success.  Another form of defense are the hazards: The ejector and the annihilator.  These are both pretty self explanatory in what their functions do.  The ejectors I found pretty useless but the annihilator was very useful if you are overran and low on health.

The character classes offer something for everyone, and each character can carry two weapons and has four unique skills so most players can find their favorite and fine tune it with a custom class.  In Monday Night Combat you don’t earn EXP, you earn cold hard cash.  And as you get cash you can buy custom classes.  I found this to be one of my least favorite options in the game.  When you choose a custom class the only thing you can customize is your endorsements.  Endorsements are like little perks that help improve your character if you have ever played Modern Warfare you will be right at home using the Endorsements.  Maybe I just didn’t find the right combination of Endorsements to use with my character class to help me out but the Endorsements just didn’t seem to help me out much.

The online versus mode is called Crossfire.  In this mode its six on six with each team trying to destroy the other teams money ball.  The object is to guide your robots to the other teams money ball and bring down the defenses.  Once the defenses on the money ball are down then anyone and anything can cause damage to the money ball.  I found the matches went into overtime over half the time I played.  And I think the reason is that most people were either having more fun killing other players or they were trying to get multiplayer achievements.  I cannot count how many times an assassin did a grapple move on me while my robots walked right by and started destroying their money ball.  I figure as more people play and as time goes by more people will realize the true objective of the game.  But overall the online experience was fun and had little issues.

The visuals overall for this game are pretty stellar for an Arcade game.  But all the credit goes to the Unreal Engine that drives the game.  Sometimes there is a bit of frame rate issues when there are over 10 robots on the screen and lots of turrets firing at one time.  The arenas are all well done but there is not much variety.  I hope that they will eventually add some through an update but for an initial arcade release they get the job done.

The extras in this game are what really stands out for me.  One of the fun extras of this game is juice.  Yes that’s right, juice.  When you kill certain robots they drop juice boxes and when your juice meter fills up you click RB + LB and you are on the juice.  When you are on the juice your character moves faster regenerates his health and causes twice the damage.  You can also get juice from one of my other favorites in the game the mascot named Bullseye.  When Bullseye makes an appearance he prances around and you are encouraged by the announcer to shoot him.   What is even better is when you shoot him he gives you stuff.  He drops money, juice, and sometimes just sometimes even bacon… Wait. What? You just said bacon.  That is right, this game has bacon.  Why?  Well because bacon makes everything better.  I have only seen the bacon once and when you have bacon it does make everything better.  You are almost unstoppable while you are under bacon’s influence and if you can get on the juice while you have bacon I would say nothing could hurt you for those short few sweet seconds.

Conclusion: Monday Night Combat takes the first person shooter genre and makes it a whole lot of fun.  If you are tired of the same old Halo or Modern Warfare shooters than grab your juice and your bacon and let’s grab some cash and defend the money ball.

Single Player: 4/5 | Multi-Player: 4/5

Special thanks to Uber Entertainment for providing us with a copy of this game for review.