Uninteresting S#!% #9

By jakob187 August 13, 2010 7 Comments

IN THIS BLOG: 

• Monday Night Combat
• Starcraft II

 
Howdy folks.  I'm feeling pretty old today, as I'm about seven hours away from my 10-year high school reunion.  At the ripe young age of 28, there are a lot of things that have made me feel old over the years:  KoRn's "Blind" and Marilyn Manson's "Rock is Dead" playing on network TV commercials, knowing that I remember the day The Shawshank Redemption was released in theatres, and of course, there's that fact that folks that I went to high school with are husbands, wives, fathers and mothers, etc.  It's an odd feeling to know that you are actually an adult.  Well, I'm as much of an adult as I care to be anyways.  lol  Nonetheless, looking forward to tonight.  With that said, VIDJA GAMES!!!
 

Red Rovering...

Coming out of left field like a pee-wee player with a bad bladder, Monday Night Combat is something that Xbox Live needs on its service - a team-oriented game that will allow those who aren't playing Team Fortress 2 on PC something to sink their teeth into.  Unfortunately, both the fact that it's team-oriented and on Xbox Live play against it, as Xbox Live is little more than a cesspool infested with little kids and immature adults that rarely care about anything more than themselves and their own achievements/accomplishments/etc.  It's this solid fact that breaks the game in some ways, and it's a goddamn shame.  When the game is on and your team is making headway, Monday Night Combat is a fucking blast!  Inversely, it can be the most infuriating thing ever as you yell into your microphone over and over again "BUILD SOME FUCKING TURRETS, YOU NUMBNUT FUCKSTAINS" to be greeted with laughter and "I'm not wasting my money on that stupid shit".  It becomes blatantly obvious in many matches that most people either don't understand the concept of the game or just flat-out don't care.  I'm assuming that will all change within the coming weeks, as the dumbasses should be weeded out by then. 
 

Don't get me wrong:  Monday Night Combat is pretty much a TF2 clone (with a bit of DotA mixed in), all the way down to a heal gun that fires a steady stream of health and its art style.  You might as well replace the game's classes with TF2's classes.  At the same time, all the controls feel intuitive and rarely hamper your performance.  Your face buttons are used to activate your special abilities, and each class focuses heavily on very different skill sets in order to balance a team out for offensive and defensive strategies.  For instance, Gunners (which is my class of choice at this point) carry around a big ass gatling gun and use skills like Slam, which causes you to belly-flop onto the ground for an AoE stun effect plus some damage.  He can also use Deploy, which turns him into a stationary turret with more health regen and (I want to say but not sure) higher accuracy, or he can use a Grapple move that can increase in power.  On the other spectrum, the Assassin is far more nimble and features abilities such as a Dash, a Smoke Bomb for disappearing quickly, and a Cloak that increases in power and capability.  During a match, you'll gain money for just about anything, and that money is used to upgrade your character's skills, but you can also build turrets at your Moneyball (the team objective point) for defensive measures, and call out additional robots to go attack the other team's Moneyball. 
 
In the end, there are a few small things here and there which feel like they need tweaking, such as spawn-camping capabilities at main bases which turn matches into stalemates far too easily (I'm looking at you, Steel Peel Arena) and general class tweaks (how does a Sniper's SMG have better range than an Assault's AR?).  The Engineer...err...Support class definitely seems to have an upper-hand on quite a few of the maps, and very few people seem to be playing the Tank class at the moment.  Really, the only game-breaking thing is simply the fact that it's a team-based game that demands teamwork from an audience like Xbox Live.  Funny enough, I had more luck finding competent players in the Xbox Live Blitz mode (which is very much a tower-defense-style game).  With that said, Monday Night Combat definitely like it's worth the $15 price tag, as both the Blitz and Crossfire modes feel like more than enough to keep you coming back for more...so long as Uber gives the game the support it deserves. 
 

ZEEEEEEEEEERG!!!

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