MONDAY....NIGHT....COMBAAAAATTTT!!!

I have been waiting for Monday Night Combat to finally be released since I first caught wind of the game at PAX East. The mere description of the game as "Team Fortress 2 meets Defense of the Ancients" was enough to sell me. Defense of the Ancients (DOTA), is a Warcraft 3 mod that ranks in my Top Ten all time games. Well until League of Legends came out, but my point still stands.

Basically DOTA has two teams of 5 battling to see who can destroy the others HQ first. You're aided by a constant stream of minions, some ranged, some melee and a series of towers along three possible paths. Each side attempts to "push" their way through the towers into the other's base. Monday Night Combat's Crossfire mode is *exactly* like this, except that anyone on the team can spend cash to build and upgrade towers. You can also spend cash and get a slightly stronger wave of minions to spawn on that side.

The big difference is of course, that Monday Night Combat is a third person shooter. The cash you earn by killing enemies can be spent to upgrade one of 4 skills, 3 actives and one passive. The classes are all fairly interesting, though as of now, the Gunner is pretty Over-powered with Support right behind him.

The Gunner is like a Team Fortress 2 Heavy, complete with a minigun that has to keep spinning for full potential. Support is a Medic/Engineer hybrid that can lay down unique turrets called "firebases" which lay down a WORLD OF PAIN. Support can heal turrets, minions or teammates, the only class which can do so...oh, and he can call in an air strike. It's more like a direct bomb drop then a carpet bomb.

Assault is the token average character. Yes, I did do that on purpose.

Sniper is a sniper with a point'n'shoot style instead of worrying about wind like in CoD. Aim, and the bullet goes there. Headshots can one shot everything except a tank.

The Tank is a dude in an ugly egg shaped suit. With a blowtorch like weapon that's barely better then using a melee attack (especially since melee attacks do CRAZY damage.) The Tank can take damage, but he has issues dishing it out.

The Assassin can stealth and pull off one hit backstab kills. Fairly standard, but also a bit gimped as she can not handle enemy turrets at all and struggles against larger minions, such as the Jackbot or Brute.

I only played for a little over an hour today but it was a blast. Going to take awhile to get used to it and find which class/skills work for me. For those that care, the achievements are very easy.