What else is there to do on Monday Night?

Hello world. It has definately been a while hasn't it? Well either way I'm finally back with a review for one of Microsoft's big arcade games, Monday Night Combat. The game takes heavy influence from Team Fortress 2, in that all the characters are very cartoony, based on stereotypes, and that it has a very well balanced and creative class system. The main mode of the game is called Blitz, where you and up to 3 other friends defend a giant "Moneyball" (how awesome would it be to have one of those?) from waves of robots, setting up four different kinds of turrets to help you along the way. There are four difficulty settings, but there isn't a good balance with them though, as Exhibition (10 rounds minimal resistance) is very easy while Season (20 rounds, medium difficulty), which is the next up in the difficulty chart, will kick you back to your momma until you've got a solid team working with you. But once you do, the game is immensely addicting and fun to play. Assault, Gunner, Tank, Support, Sniper and Assassin round out the classes, and they all benefit the team in unique ways, as each class has three skills unique to them. These skills can be upgraded as the Assault is a generic soldier, who has a particularly effective Dash move. The Sniper is what you would expect with a nice melee move where he turns his gun into a bomb, Gunner is a lumbering brute, Tank is built to defend with short range attacks, Assassin can cloak and has the coolest grapple move in the game, and Support can heal and also hack and deploy a turret of their own. Oh and he also has a wickedly cheesy Italian accent, so I went with him most of the time. Also, a custom class system can be unlocked, and it lets you choose three upgrades to the main class archetypes. It works well, and adds a small bit of the now standard Modern Warfare style leveling system. There is one other mode, but I didn't find it near as fun. It's called Crossfire, and two teams fight to destroy each others Moneyball with support from robots of their own. It works o.k, but the matches seemed much less organized and it wasn't as satisfying as the well put together tower defense concept behind Blitz. As I said before, the game's art style is ripped straight from Team Fortress 2, and it looks good most of the time, with cartoony visuals that stand out from most shooters. Also the robot designs are immensely generic, but there are a good variety for you to fend off. Monday Night Combat also has a mascot named Bullseye, who can take a ridiculous amount of bullets but gives out money and bacon. Yeah bacon, it essentially is a Superman button that upgrades everything. Wish my bacon could do that, cause then I could take on Superman and Captain Marvel without breaking a sweat. There is also Juice, which is essentially the same thing except you get it from killing enemies, but the trade off is that it is limited in time and power. Overall, Monday Night Combat is a satisfying buy, and you'll get a lot of value and fun out of your Monday Night sessions.
Final Score: 8.5 out of 10

-Smith