Reviews VideoGame / MondayNightCombat

VideoGame Feels like you're robbing the developers

YES. Monday Night Combat is brilliant, an insane mix of Team Fortress 2, Defence of the Ancients and gladitorial combat, you have a great selection of classes, good upgrades to choose from, and a nice aesthetic. Each team must defend their moneyball, which is constantly under attack from the other team's AI-controlled combat droids. You can build turrets to protect your moneyball, you can activate arena hazards, you can ignore everything else and go after the players or just focus on stopping all the bots. The hyped-up over-the-top sports programme presentation adds a lot of character to the game, with the commentator's great voiceover, the commercialised upgrades and the mascot who runs onto the arena every so often whom you can shoot for coins and bonuses.

You always feel like you're doing something. In other games you can be left to run around alone for a few minutes, or you find yourself waiting for something to happen. Not in Monday Night Combat. There's so much going on at any one time that you're always able to jump straight into the action. It's impossible to play this game without a smile on your face, because if you don't smile while playing you've either got no time for well-designed cartoony shooters or you've got no pulse because you're dead.

For 1200 Microsoft Points, I really cannot recommend this enough. Far above any other shooters available on the XBLA, miles better than Blacklight Tango Down and a hell of a lot more original too. 1200 MS points. Roughly £8. Buy it now and help keep this game alive for a long, long time.

(Also on Steam)

VideoGame Mmm, bacon

I'd like to start by saying that Monday Night Combat is not a TF 2 ripoff. Infact, MNC is one of the most original shooters in some time. The basic gameplay is that two teams have to protect their moneyball from bots through building turrets and copious amounts of shooting. The first mode, Blitz is a one-team tower defense type game, where crossfire pits two teams against each other trying to escort their bots to the other team's moneyball. This is done well and the various classes are designed in a way both emphasizes teamwork and lets players shine on their own. MNC never feels like it sacrifices strategy for action, while still having lots of shooting. For fifteen bucks, it's a steal and everyone with an Xbox should have a copy.