Why Monday Night Combat on Steam is worth a second look

We play video games to have fun and escape for a few hours into a more appealing virtual world. That may appear an overly simplistic explanation when you look at the variety of experiences that are offered through the medium, but it remains true for most gamers. Monday Night Combat is a game created by industry veterans and is focused on providing a multiplayer experience that captures a sense of fun and absurdity, but doesn’t sacrifice the depth modern multiplayer gamers need.

Monday Night Combat was a critically acclaimed game on the Xbox Live Arcade, and both looks and feels better on the PC with a new $15 release on Steam. There are plenty of reasons this game is so well regarded, and the low price tag and ability to jump in and start shooting are only two of them.

Let’s all sit down and watch the slaughter

The game’s tone takes the advertising-drenched and oft-strained excitement you see with televised NFL games and brings it into the realm of blood sport. Two teams compete across five arenas to destroy each other’s “Money Ball” and to kill any opposing player that gets in the way. The game features six character classes, plus the ability to create custom classes and pick your own perks once you gain enough money.

Each class comes with four skills that must be leveled up in-game by spending money, but you’ll also need that money to buy turrets to defend your base and bots to attack the opposing side and distract your opponents. Think of it as a fast-paced, third-person shooter take on the popular Defense of the Ancients formula. It’s also deeply silly.

Monday Night Combat

“We’re big believers in ‘find the fun first’ method of game development, which means ‘get the game playable as soon as possible with the most minimal art assets.’ For the first year of development, the game was in white box mode,” Chandana Ekanayake, executive producer and art director of Monday Night Combat, told PC Gamer. This meant the art and design were simply placeholder, single-color textures. “Keeping the art simple allows us to iterate on the gameplay fast, experiment with different ideas, and throw away mechanics that don’t work.”

This effort paid off. Uber Entertainment is a small team made up of individuals who worked on Morrowind, Dungeon Siege 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, and more. It might have been a change to move to a higher-concept game with a smaller scope, but this is clearly a labor of love.

The mouse and keyboard difference

The move from Xbox Live to the PC also meant that the game had to be rebalanced to deal with mouse and keyboard. That may seem like a simple change, but the mechanics of the game had to be altered, sometimes heavily, for the characters to remain balanced.

“The first thing I did was drop the clip size of the sniper rifle by 60 percent (from 10 to 4). Why? Because now I’m forcing the sniper to be more accurate,” John Comes, the game’s creative director, wrote on Penny Arcade. “On console I allowed for a little ‘slop’ and gave some extra ammo. But on PC the shots have to count or the player will find themselves vulnerable again while reloading. This may even get lower; since there is no kickback on our sniper rifle there’s even been talk of making it a bolt-action rifle.”

The entire post is worth reading; it shows just how much needed to be changed or tweaked to account for the more precise form of control.

The official forums can help you get started in what can be a very competitive game, or you can jump in the Blitz mode, which allows you to work with up to three other players to fight off waves of attacking bots. A stand-alone dedicated server client is coming soon, which should help communities grow online. The game is $15 on Steam, and four packs can be purchased for $45 if you have some friends and want to save some money. Our comments are a wonderful place to organize the purchasing of keys in bulk… just saying.

After a few hours of play recently, a friend of mine noted that he couldn’t tear himself away, but didn’t quite know why. This is a game that simply clicks once you get the hang of things, and there are many worse ways to spending your gaming hours.