Review

“Gnarlacious,” drawls Mickey Cantor, Monday Night Combat's fittingly exaggerated commentator, as he rouses the crowd for another explosive competition. And he's right.

Noses are red, violence is blue

You'd be hard pressed to think of a better superlative. Colourful, frantic and comically OTT, Uber Entertainment's first game might borrow unashamedly from Team Fortress 2, but it does so with enough respect, innovation and individuality to raise it well above burlesque.

At first glance, that innovation and individuality is, paradoxically, neither new nor unique. The game does little more than fuse together two of gaming's most ubiquitous genres. But, in combing class-based shooter with tower defence, Uber Entertainment has crafted a novel experience that differentiates its shooter from the raft of others in this saturated market.

Set in the near future, Monday Night Combat brings together the four pillars of the American dream: television, sports, armed combat and cash in a ratings-winning entertainment format, where, fighting in purpose-built arenas, cloned soldiers defend a Money Ball from wave after wave of robots to win money, fame and endorsements.

"Over my dead bo..."

For every robot destroyed players receive instant currency to upgrade class-based abilities or build and augment defence turrets - four standard TD types of laser, rocket, long range and decelerator.

Deep and intricate gameplay

With just two game modes, six solider classes and eight robot types - not to mention the swollen caricature visuals and pervading frat-boy humour - you'd be forgiven for equating MNC's budget price with a budget experience. But these superficial shortcomings belie unexpectedly deep and intricate gameplay.

'I said giddy up, dammit!'

Blitz mode, for example, can be played in single-player, two-player splitscreen, or with up to four players over Xbox Live. Nothing unusual there, but playing through with each soldier class brings true variety to gameplay.

This might be the subtle shift between the hit-and-run and defensive styles of the Assault and Gunner classes. Or it might be the game-changing switch to the Support class - an engineer/medic hybrid - where pure tower defence is your only hope. Alternatively, try camping with the Sniper and his incredibly powerful but agonisingly slow-firing rifle, or speed around cloaked as the Assassin, with her super-fast melee daggers and stun-inducing smoke bombs.

Even in single-player mode, this genuine variation provides a five-fold increase to replay value. And in co-operative, with vastly increased robot numbers, individual play styles and class combinations need to be carefully considered to beat the tougher competitions or last a respectable time amid the infinite waves of Sudden Death.

Attack of the Gnomes

There's real variety in enemy bots, too - and a whole heap of charm. Black Jacks are the archetypal TD creep fiend: single-minded and relentless; Gremlins live up to their name as fast, scurrying nuisances; and Bouncers bound innocently towards you like adorable puppy dogs before bowling you over to waste valuable time. But the real stars of MNC are Jackbots, robotic behemoths who can inflict and sustain heavy damage. Arriving up to eight at a time, they can obliterate defences in an instant, and require focussed effort and firepower to bring down.

Multiplayer treats

If man vs machine isn't your thing, MNC offers a competitive mode called Crossfire, in which up to 12 players are split into two opposing teams. The objective is to defend your Money Ball and destroy your opposition's. Dominance is the name of the game as you act as corvette to friendly bots along the creep paths towards your enemy's Money Ball.

No surrender

A great alternative to Blitz, Crossfire's multiple creep paths and full complement of balanced soldier classes ensure an egalitarianism unrivalled by other online shooters, where pawning and individualism lead only to failure. Collective consideration of the combined shooting and creeping dynamics is imperative to achieve victory. Once understood, battles can up to an hour at a time, ebbing and flowing with advances in territorial possession.

This won't be to everyone's taste, however. Crossfire's game lengths and tactical nuances taste like a Heston Blumenthal dish: a triumph for the taste buds of gaming gastronomes, but unpalatable for the hoi polloi used to the fast food conclusions in their regular competitive twitch diet.

Race off

Verdict

Monday Night Combat may be a little light on modes and come as close to plagiarism as any game could be guilty of, but to complain is pure churlishness. By yanking tower defence players from the comfort of their exalted position and placing them in the line of fire, Uber Entertainment has not only created a compelling new sub-genre and likely series with MNC, but has firmly placed itself on the radar as a developer to watch out for. ®

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