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Monday Night Combat

Monday Night Combat

Colourful fighters attacked by hordes of robots. Pick your class and blow them up. Monday Night Combat is as easily accessible as it is deep, and takes the tower defence genre to new heights...

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At first it didn't seem like anything special. A cheesy comment, and a bleak colour palette. But it only takes me a few minutes to realise the depth that Monday Night Combat offers. I get vibes of Team Fortress 2 and Gears of War, and more importantly it has something of its own to offer, something unique. Brilliant entertainment for a Monday night, as well as any other night of the week.

Monday Night Combat is played from a third person perspective in a futuristic gladiator arena. The objective is to defend your "moneyball", a giant, gleaming bowl that on coming robots are out to destroy. Everything from the small invisible gremlin bots, to giant jackbots (that drops a fortune in cash as you kill them), will get a taste of your bullets and you can also build defence towers in predetermined spots.

There are six classes to choose from, familiar but also very balanced: assault, tank, assassin, support, gunner and sniper. Each class has two weapons, and three special attacks that are activated with B, X, and Y. Exploring these 18 attacks and abilities is a real treat and it gives Monday Night Combat an added value. To start off with you might spend most of your time as assault, especially as the game kicks off with a tutorial of said class. Your assault specials include a jetpack, a powerful charge, and a remote controlled bomb.

You can play Monday Night Combat on your own, but it is really meant to be enjoyed with friends. There are two game modes, Blitz and Crossfire, that both offer up interesting and quick ways to wage war. The first one is a co-operative mode that can be played with up to three friends in locally with splitscreen or online. The objective is to survives waves of bots that grow hungrier for you moneyball by the second. Once again, familiar and very entertaining. You are force to be both quick and tactical, and there is seldom a dull match.

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Crossfire lets you be a part of a six man team that squares off with another team of six. The basic principle is the same - protect your moneyball, but you also need to advance and take out the moneyball of the other team. You can also fiddle with breach bots, bots for hire that you can buy and send towards your enemy. And while on the subject of cash, I should mention that cash can also be used to upgrade defence towers, or the abilities of your characters in different directions.

I chose to play as an assassin (the only female character) in my first online match, and I'm not alone as half my team have chosen the shuriken slinging silent killers. As an assassin I get to tinker with invisibility and a dash ability, that allows me to escape the heat, or quickly make my way into the opposing base.

When I switch to the support class Monday Night Combat is turned into an entirely different game, and I'm forced to consider defence tower maintenance, and calling in airstrikes at the right moment. If you join a well functioning team, the strategy and challenges are heaps of fun, and if you're looking for something a bit less demanding and casual you will also be able to find a suitable match.

Humour runs through the entire game. When I'm not laughing at four players who attack a mascot at half-time (he drops money), I'm giggling at the character descriptions in the "how to play" menu. The commentators remind me of American Gladiators, and the may grow a bit annoying, but they still suit the game perfectly and complete the picture of a cheesy gladiator sport of the future.

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Monday Night Combat is simply a very rich gaming experience. And I haven't even mention the "tags" you get by completing specific missions. These are tied to your gamertag, and if you kill an opponent they show up on their screen - one second of humiliation for them, an eternity of happiness for you.

This game deserves a strong eight out of ten in my book, and offers countless hours of balanced, strategic action. So join the action, pick a class and keep your eyes on the moneyball.

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08 Gamereactor UK
8 / 10
+
Strategic combat, intensive fights, lots of classes, humour.
-
Plastic visuals, could have done with more game modes.
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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