Monday Night Combat
I've had this game about a day and I'm ready to claim it as my favourite game of the year so far. The arcade spectacular hit the marketplace yesterday and already it has a buzzing multiplayer scene. It's a good thing too with the game being based almost entirely around multiplayer. The game offers 3 game modes: Local Blitz, Xbox Live Blitz and Crossfire. In the Blitz mode, both Xbox Live and Local, you take on wave after wave of bots that try and destroy your money ball. Your job is to protect the money ball and kill the bots. You can build turrets in certain places around the map to help you do so. Sounds simple enough right? Wrong, the bots aren't exactly the easiest to beat when they heavily outnumber you and your turrets. As you defeat each wave more and more bots spawn with more health and more damage making it even harder to beat them. The mode is made easier only by keeping turrets alive and upgrading them which isn't easy when you have a Jackbot or a Gapshot shooting at them.
Crossfire is different, in a way. The premise is the same, protect the money ball. Except this time you have another objective; destroy the money ball. The two teams are composed of continuously spawning bots and human players. The game mode is more than difficult and is incomparable with Blitz modes difficulty. The bots don't increase in strength or number until you get to the end in which you have Jacbots spawning more than ever, so there is little worry in that. The difficulty lies in keeping your bots alive, while you destroy the enemy bots, while you stay alive, while you kill the enemy team, while you stay alive. This is the what the entire game mode is made up of and is where all the fun lies. Forget the challenge of being top dog or winning, just try and stay alive long enough for the next bots to spawn and get a foothold on the enemy base.
You'll find so many hours worth of fun in the Blitz and Crossfire modes that it's hard to believe. I haven't had this much fun with an arcade game since Portal. But, as the game says after a match, wait there's more: 3, 2, 1. The classes, oh the classes. Each as important as the last. The 6 classes offered are all crucial to winning the game. While a varied team is necessary, an equally balanced team using all classes won't necessarily win you the game. You have the choice of the Assault, the Tank, the Support, the Assassin, the Gunner and the Sniper. Each class has their strengths and their weaknesses. For example, as you would assume the Tank has higher fire power and higher armour than the Assassin but lacks the speed and agility too. The Support has more helpful powers that can win your stand as your money ball is over run with bots but can easily be picked off by a Sniper.
Now, I assume a lot of you are assuming that because there are Sniper and Assassin classes everyone picks those, right? Wrong. The game is based heavily on team work and keeping yourself and you bots alive, as I said earlier. If every person picked Assassin then, while mathematically it's possible, in practice it is not. This is easy to see when playing the game itself and players quickly pick up on the fact that you need to pick the class that will benefit the team most. If the team has an Assassin, a Tank and an Assault then a wise choice would be the support.
While things I dislike about the game are lacking there are some. Grapple kills, the most used move by Assassins and the Bouncer bots are difficult to use if you don't get the aiming right and this can be rather annoying, however it's not something that ruins the match or ruins the game. The game also has very few maps to play on. While I see this as a moot point, some might say that it takes away some variety of the game. Personally, I don't feel that this would affect the game; the game has nothing to do with focusing on the best places of the map for you, but the best place for you to be in at that time and the best bots or people to kill at that time.
Tl;Dr? A sum up.
The game offers little variety but for a game like this it doesn't need to give you variety due to it's heavy dependence on team work and balancing your team just right.
If you think that it's merely a clone of Team Fortress 2 you're sadly mistaken. The two games have their similarities (the team play, the graphics etc) but differ (the skills, the bots etc).
The game has few faults but those it does have aren't particularly game ruining and are merely annoyances.
The game is well worth 1200 MS points and offers a better multiplayer than most games on the market.
If you aren't convinced it isn't like TF2 then who gives a fuck? TF2 is amazing and supposedly sucks on the Xbox so this fills that hole.
Thank you for you time, folks.
I've had this game about a day and I'm ready to claim it as my favourite game of the year so far. The arcade spectacular hit the marketplace yesterday and already it has a buzzing multiplayer scene. It's a good thing too with the game being based almost entirely around multiplayer. The game offers 3 game modes: Local Blitz, Xbox Live Blitz and Crossfire. In the Blitz mode, both Xbox Live and Local, you take on wave after wave of bots that try and destroy your money ball. Your job is to protect the money ball and kill the bots. You can build turrets in certain places around the map to help you do so. Sounds simple enough right? Wrong, the bots aren't exactly the easiest to beat when they heavily outnumber you and your turrets. As you defeat each wave more and more bots spawn with more health and more damage making it even harder to beat them. The mode is made easier only by keeping turrets alive and upgrading them which isn't easy when you have a Jackbot or a Gapshot shooting at them.
Crossfire is different, in a way. The premise is the same, protect the money ball. Except this time you have another objective; destroy the money ball. The two teams are composed of continuously spawning bots and human players. The game mode is more than difficult and is incomparable with Blitz modes difficulty. The bots don't increase in strength or number until you get to the end in which you have Jacbots spawning more than ever, so there is little worry in that. The difficulty lies in keeping your bots alive, while you destroy the enemy bots, while you stay alive, while you kill the enemy team, while you stay alive. This is the what the entire game mode is made up of and is where all the fun lies. Forget the challenge of being top dog or winning, just try and stay alive long enough for the next bots to spawn and get a foothold on the enemy base.
You'll find so many hours worth of fun in the Blitz and Crossfire modes that it's hard to believe. I haven't had this much fun with an arcade game since Portal. But, as the game says after a match, wait there's more: 3, 2, 1. The classes, oh the classes. Each as important as the last. The 6 classes offered are all crucial to winning the game. While a varied team is necessary, an equally balanced team using all classes won't necessarily win you the game. You have the choice of the Assault, the Tank, the Support, the Assassin, the Gunner and the Sniper. Each class has their strengths and their weaknesses. For example, as you would assume the Tank has higher fire power and higher armour than the Assassin but lacks the speed and agility too. The Support has more helpful powers that can win your stand as your money ball is over run with bots but can easily be picked off by a Sniper.
Now, I assume a lot of you are assuming that because there are Sniper and Assassin classes everyone picks those, right? Wrong. The game is based heavily on team work and keeping yourself and you bots alive, as I said earlier. If every person picked Assassin then, while mathematically it's possible, in practice it is not. This is easy to see when playing the game itself and players quickly pick up on the fact that you need to pick the class that will benefit the team most. If the team has an Assassin, a Tank and an Assault then a wise choice would be the support.
While things I dislike about the game are lacking there are some. Grapple kills, the most used move by Assassins and the Bouncer bots are difficult to use if you don't get the aiming right and this can be rather annoying, however it's not something that ruins the match or ruins the game. The game also has very few maps to play on. While I see this as a moot point, some might say that it takes away some variety of the game. Personally, I don't feel that this would affect the game; the game has nothing to do with focusing on the best places of the map for you, but the best place for you to be in at that time and the best bots or people to kill at that time.
Tl;Dr? A sum up.
The game offers little variety but for a game like this it doesn't need to give you variety due to it's heavy dependence on team work and balancing your team just right.
If you think that it's merely a clone of Team Fortress 2 you're sadly mistaken. The two games have their similarities (the team play, the graphics etc) but differ (the skills, the bots etc).
The game has few faults but those it does have aren't particularly game ruining and are merely annoyances.
The game is well worth 1200 MS points and offers a better multiplayer than most games on the market.
If you aren't convinced it isn't like TF2 then who gives a fuck? TF2 is amazing and supposedly sucks on the Xbox so this fills that hole.
Thank you for you time, folks.
