System:  Xbox 360, via Xbox Live Arcade (part of this year's Summer of Arcade lineup)

Developer:  Uber Entertainment (This is literally their first game as a group)

ESRB:  T for Teen

Friends, I have to tell you something.  Every "Summer of Arcade" finds a soft spot with me.  This year, the hype I had on for Monday Night Combat was pretty hefty, and I will apologize.  I'm sorry for pushing this game so much before it came out.  It won't happen again.

Well, what the hell are you sitting there and reading this for?!  Go play Monday Night Combat right now!  Go!

Review over.

You're still here?  Oh, I see, I get it, I can't get away that easy, I understand.  Here's a more proper review for you, the video game connoisseur, the "hoity-toity" geek that you are.  (Or maybe you made the game and you like reading reviews to mull or laugh over amongst yourselves.)  This is a fan's pleasant review of Monday Night Combat.  I'm Gordon Allen, HI-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!

Monday Night Combat (MNC for short) is a third-person shooter, with a twist.  That twist is the playing field is a massive Tower Defense Game, used as a spectator sport.  You play as one of six classes (Assault, Sniper, Gunner, Tank, Assassin and Sniper) and build towers on nubs, trying to protect your Moneyball from the opposition.  There's 2 game modes, each with their own tactics, and those modes are Blitz and Crossfire.

For the uninitiated MNC player, Blitz is a great place to test your skills and maybe invent some personal strategy.  As single-player, or multiplayer split-screen, or multiplayer Xbox Live, or a combination of the latter two, the player or players defend their Moneyball from waves of enemy robots of different types.  Destroyed robots drop coins, which can be used to purchase skill upgrades.  Each class has a passive skill, and 3 button skills, each linked to the X, Y, and B buttons on the Xbox 360 controller.  The only game mode that ever makes Blitz a really stressful, but action-packed, experience is Sudden Death Blitz. In it, enemy waves only stop coming in when the Moneyball is destroyed, which ends the game immediately.  Every Blitz mode with the exception of Sudden Death can be beaten by completing all of the waves.  Yes, you can die, but you'll respawn after a short period of time.

Crossfire mode is the bulk of the game, and is the more competitive online-only portion of MNC.  Instead of one team protecting one ball from one stream of bots, the game has two teams of players protecting one Moneyball each, against 2 streams of robots each!  Players are free to attack the robots or opposing players.  The Moneyball shield can only drop from the attack of robots, but once that shield is down, the gloves are off and players are free to attack that ball to win the game.  That's right, there's no deathmatch here.  Purely objective based.  There's no I in team, but there can be an M and an E.

Besides upgrading skills that are particular to each class, there's two other major factors in the game that the player must be aware of.  The first is Juice.  As you mow down enemies, you earn Juice.  When you die, you lose a lot of Juice as a cost for dying (right now, you actually lose all of your Juice).  If you fill your Juice Bar, you can use it by pressing both bumper buttons, and it immediately fills your health bar and puts your character into a Beast Mode.  Shades of Tron light up your character's suit, and speed and damage are greatly increased.  The other factor is after so many waves of enemies, the MNC Mascot appears to randomly spawn coins and juice onto the arena floor.  Shooting the Mascot earns easy money, and claiming those pick-ups might be important, but be aware that everyone will dash for that Mascot, so don't get too greedy.

Speaking of the Mascot, MNC makes fun of itself in an interesting way.  There is a commentary guy named Mickey Canter (Hiyoooooooooooo!) and he spits out jokes, one-liners and otherwise trivial gags that explain the setting MNC takes place in.  MNC contestants are merely clones designed for fighting, but are pumped with illegal performance enhancing drugs.  The Mascot is a super-fan who "wins" the chance to be the Mascot through a contest, but must die after he has fulfilled his awesome adventure of tossing out coins, juice and sometimes rare bacon!  Bacon goes great with everything, and the player who picks it up becomes awesome at everything***.

Where MNC kind of borrows from other well-known shooting games, you can earn ProTags for online use and create your own custom classes.  To get ProTags and Custom Classes, you have to use your career earnings coin to buy them.  ProTags are merely for show, and are earned by achieving certain goals in the game, or over your career with certain classes.  Meanwhile, Custom Class is really the bulk of what you'll be trying to do with your well earned coin.  To make a custom class, you first pick the position you wish to customize, then a Gold, Silver and Bronze endorsement.  Endorsements help things like movement speed, fire rate, reload speed, skill recharge rate and health regeneration, among other things.  Certain combinations of endorsements open up opponents who use the regular classes to a world of hurt.  For example, a Sniper using Gold Rate of Fire can speed-snipe and quick-scope enemies with insanely fast quickness.

While the action is fast-paced and on relatively small to medium maps, the gameplay is always a different experience, every time you play.  The tactics range from bot support to full court press spawn camp, to base defense or just killing bots and pros all the time and waiting for Overtime.  It's most definitely a hardcore team game, no question about it.  I'm willing to say that MNC is more professional than most FPS games that turn into regular "Professional Gaming" titles.

With that in mind, Uber Entertainment, the 16 person team that brought us MNC on Xbox Live Arcade, have a unique way to update the title.  Besides title updates that fix bugs (which I'm sure they're still doing, as there are a few bugs here and there), Uber can send the Xbox Live server a text file with tweaks to the system, like wait time in the lobby, and other things to balance the game.  This is a great idea, since I can think of a few ways that the game is a bit broken right now. (Support is sooooooooooo good!)

Monday Night Combat isn't a perfect game, but it really is a great game, no question about it.  At $15 US, or 1200 MSP, it's really a steal of a deal, and that other $40 that you use to spend on games can go to other things, like some bacon.  Mmmm, bacon.  I give MNC a Buy rating, in fact, it's a SUPER BUY!  Monday Night Combat for Xbox 360 makes iPhone apps look like a pathetic joke.  It begs the question: Was 1200 MSP actually too cheap for this game?

- Gordon Allen, "Ponza" of the Ponza Report

***: (Secret Tip: When you pick up Bacon, you gain access to Level 3 Gold Endorsements in every category.)