While at PAX East I had the chance to not only play Monday Night Combat, but compete in a tournament for it. This was during Uber Entertainments first public showing of MNC. Most of the staff at Uber comes from Gas Powered Games, and previously worked on a DOTA-Esque arena game called Demigod. If you pay attention to the the Uber Entertainment website, Monday Night Combat, or any of their promotional material you’ll find a recurring theme: bacon. If bacon makes you better at everything, then the people at Uber must be eating it by the truck load.

Hit the link to read the full review, and to find out just how Uber managed to fit bacon into their new game.

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I had my hands on MNC moments after its release and spent the entire day playing it. While many people compare it to Team Fortress 2 or Defense of the Ancients, those comparisons are like saying Modern Warfare 2 copied  Doom. While the general concept of a “shooter” is similar to the game at hand, there are more differences than similarities. MNC pulls from multiple styles of games such as Tower Defense, Arena and Tactical Shooters and DOTA.

In crossfire mode, you play the part of one of 6 classes who have the main goal of protecting their money ball while assaulting enemies. While this may sound simple at first, it quickly escalates because to take out the money ball, you must first escort your team’s bots to the enemy base. Now think of doing this while not only dealing with the other team assaulting you, their turrets shooting at you, them spawning their own class specific bots, and more. But you have to avoid being hit by enemy triggered traps and hazards. While it sounds chaotic on paper, it plays out beautifully.

In Blitz Mode’s most basic form you must defend your money ball from escalating waves of bots, all while upgrading your turrets and your character. The bots start directly in front of the base and in the later levels come from all sides. Now while this sounds like your standard survival mode found in many FPS’s these days, with its 5 different modes it stays fresh and becomes a game of figuring out how to take a team of four people and make sure they are properly equipped for any situation.

Outside of actual gameplay there are protags to unlock which just add a nice aesthetic when you get that kill on an enemy and they see your name. Its a sign that says “This is what Im good at.” There are also custom classes to unlock which allow you to choose your own personal endorsements so that you can create the right clone for the right job.

During game play in both Blitz and Crossfire mode, when you kill bots, enemies, or are shooting the mascot, endorsements, money and power-ups will drop out of them. Money is used for turrets, upgrading skills, and spawning your class specific bots, it also adds to your cumulative total use to unlock custom classes. Endorsements give you that little kick that you may not have due to not having the speed or juice endorsements. Finally the rarest (Estimated drop rate of 1:10,000) power up is bacon. Bacon gives you level 3 endorsements for every endorsement in the game. It literally makes you better at everything.

Audio-wise, the game feels like a sport complete with an announcer giving the play-by-play on the action and a full swelling musical build-up throughout every match. Every character sounds unique and the music is completely fitting for the game.

If there are any problems with the game it comes from connectivity issues. As of right now, if the host leaves a game and another isn’t found, you are completely kicked out of the lobby and separated from your party. There are also a few minor bugs throughout, however the devs have personally told me, and the members of their forum that they are tracking all bugs that they are informed of and plan to fix as many as possible in a future update.

Seeing as this is Uber Entertainment’s first outing, it is more than stellar work, and if the biggest complaint about the game is that “rejoining the party is tedious when we’re separated” then they’ve done something right. I suggest that everyone reading at the very least gives the demo a try. I think if you play it, you’ll pick it up immediately. And if you’re playing and get flattened by a gunner named ZeroHourHero… well, I apologize, but I’m just doing my job.