Super Monday Night Logistics
When you first load up Super Monday Night Combat, as someone who played the original Monday Night Combat, you will notice the drastic changes they made to the game. As someone who played the original Monday Night Combat and someone who has been a fan of MOBAs' since DOTA I can say that Super Monday Night Combat is an actual MOBA. Monday Night Combat while entertaining did not have the long lasting appeal that actual MOBA games offer. Other than the strategies you developed before the game through your team composition the game lacked the complexity to develop interesting tactics and ultimately they hadn't figure out what the right balance for the bots should be in the first game making the logistics of the bot lanes warped.
In SMNC that has changed by making the game more of a MOBA. Whether you are jungling, farming, ganking, etc the basic aspects that define this MOBA genre all more fleshed out in SMNC with a far greater range of equity in leveling among each of the varying tactics they have given you to employ in this sequel. Not to say that SMNC is balanced because the game does have it's imbalances which I won't get into in this review but they seem to be proactively trying to fix in each patch. But I will say their 'fixes' have also created new imbalances but that's the nature of these games with their incredibly tight economies of scale.
As for economies of scale, the decision to stick to a two bot lane map design seems to be a good decision because it funnels more players into fewer lanes forcing more team incounters making solo farming much more risky than in other MOBAs' where you have three bot lanes. To offset this two bot lane map design the ganking classes seem to have been buffed in SMNC as opposed to MNC which is a welcomed change even though I never play those classes because it effects my play-style forcing me to develop my own tactics to offset that buff.
Two of my favorite games of all time are Team Fortress Classic and DOTA which developed my love for video games in a certain way because I played them both around a specific stage in my adolescence which developed my tastes towards these sorts of games. The early aughts were a time when I spent the most time playing video games, and this game is a weird amalgamation of both my favorite games. My only legit criticisms of this game would be ones that they could easily change in a patch such as allowing teams to play ranked against people who enter matchmaking by themselves to reduce wait times in matchmaking but those sorts of criticisms are peripheral and are likely to be outdated as they proactively change the game through patches. In conclusion like TFC and DOTA, SMNC requires good team play and the more time you invest the better the game gets, which are is not true for most shooters currently on the market in my opinion. This lasting appeal accompanied by the fact that this game is free to play makes it the most recommendable game release so this year....that is until DOTA 2 is released. WHERE IS MY BETA CODE GABE!
Good Luck Have Bacon.
