Review by: Jeff McAllister

The Summer of Arcade is in full swing and with it comes Uber Entertainment’s first foray into gaming—Monday Night Combat. The concept is that of a futuristic sporting event where two teams – the blue, known as Icemen and the orange, called the Hot Shots - face off against one another with the end game consisting of reaching the other team’s “moneyball”. This is exactly as it sounds – a ball full of money, and dealing enough damage to it so that it explodes into a cascade of coins –while at the same time, defending your own ball of cash.

The premise may appear straight forward at first, but there is a surprising amount of depth in the gameplay. There are two modes – Blitz and Crossfire – the latter being the more popular online 6 vs. 6 team gameplay. In Crossfire, teams need to pop the aforementioned moneyball, but to get there they need to escort their Breach Bots to the enemy base so that they can destroy the shields that are protecting it.

While players can go to town on each other, the main focus is the bots as they make a slow march along predetermined highlighted paths through the arena. There are several types of bots, all of which have their own abilities, and while some are much weaker than others they all have the same objective – destroy the moneyball shield. Both teams can set up defensive turrets - ranging from the weaker armored laser turrets, powerful rocket turrets, longshot sniper turrets, and ice turrets that slow enemy bots as they pass - at specified node points in their half of the arena to help stem the flow of bots from entering the “end zone”.

While the turrets add a Tower Defense-ish element to the game, there are also other events around the few arenas that player can implement for some damage dealing trickery. Ejector pads damage enemies in a large circular radius and The Annihilator – a super weapon that rains down death from above - can be activated when the timer is recharged, provided that you have enough cash in your wallet to activate them. Money is what makes the world go round and in Monday Night Combat it’s no different. To activate jump pads, you’ll need to lay down some cash – the same with upgrading towers and your characters skills.

The characters themselves, while comparisons to Team Fortress 2 in visual style, abilities and in category classes can be made, all have their own pluses and minuses in their weapons and skills and each play a role of their own in the overall scheme of the game. The Tank and Gunner are the heavy hitters, who can each take the most damage and can turn into a turret themselves. The Assault class is the all around everyman who can charge enemies with a sprint and hover with a jet pack. The Support class has a shotgun as well as a heal beam that can be used on towers and other players, while the Sniper picks off enemies from a distance and can deploy a trap that can freeze players. The Assassin – the most annoying and weakest of all the classes – can turn invisible, sprint and one hit enemies from behind. Players can also pick up juice boxes that add to their juice meter. Once full, players have a limited time of additional power and speed.

While it can be argued that the classes are unbalanced and certain characters are more advantageous, like most class based titles, it’s all in how you play the game. Each class can be a decimator of another class, but it’s up to the player to choose wisely on which class is needed out on the field and not all playing as the same type. Once you make enough money from rounds played and earn sponsors, you can unlock custom classes that allow you to add three Endorsements to each character that are essentially power ups to your characters such as faster health recovery and faster reload. Once you finally do earn enough money to unlock your first class, it adds a new element to the gameplay as you can make your characters different than every other player on the field and play to your strengths.