Monday Night Combat

Monday Night Combat is a recently released game for the Xbox Live component of the Xbox 360. It's part of the games of summer, none of which interested me more than this. It's a 3rd person shooter that plays a bit like a tower defense with a Defense of the Ancients feel. If you aren't sure what those are I would recommend you Google it or try it out. Nothing beats first hand experience. There are a total of six classes that you can play as and regretfully only 2 modes to play in, but I cannot seem to get enough of it.

In Blitz you are pretty much playing a tower defense game where endless waves of robots come towards your base and you have to set up defenses to stop them from coming in. The waves of course get more difficult and the robots vary as the stages go on. As you destroy robot after robot you will accumulate money to upgrade your turrents or upgrade yourself. Each class has a variance of 4 skills to upgrade, 3 active and 1 passive, that can give you just the edge you need. Let's just say to focus on towers in Blitz mode and less on the skills, since some of them really don't help. The other mode is Crossfire where you take your skills against another team to take out their base, or money ball in this game. As you play you'll need to upgrade your turrents to defend against the steady waves of robots pouring into your base. Of course, you'll be sending your on robots to theirs and you have to push up with them, hopefully clearly a path. It's a pretty steady offense/defense stances, but it's easy enough to get the hang of it after a few games. While there have been a few connection issues with the game, it hasn't deterred me from playing a lot.

The classes you can play as vary from the Support class who can upgrade turrents and heal players and torrents to the Gunner class who can pretty much become his own torrent. Each one plays pretty differently and when played in unison with a varied team can easily take out opponents. Teamwork is a very big thing in this game, which makes me wonder why it's on Xbox Live. There seems to be a lot of the Assassin class going around partially invisible trying to kill you from behind, but are pretty easy to spot and counter. Once the newness calms down I'm hoping there will be some more variances. Just too many Assassins running at you swinging a sword looking cool only to get a shotgun to the face. Either way each class has their strengths and weaknesses so moving as a team is important. As you play you will accumulate experience points which don't really do much and money which can be used to open custom class slots and get pro tags. In the custom class your able to set your own perks which can boost your class a little, but doesn't make you superman. That would be when you get your Jet meter full. After so many kills or damage your Jet meter fills and you become pretty freakin' invincible for a while. Not actually invincible, but your difficult to kill and deal out massive damage. Either way check the game out and play a few. Hopefully they will be adding more modes too.