INTRO:
Although the first Monday Night Combat may not have a premise that is original – it has already been done by the likes of Unreal Tournament – its story was used as an excuse for a proven blend of gameplay. The blend, which includes tower defense and team-based third-person shooting, is hardly anything new, but it was still uncommon in video games at the time.
Its sequel continues its gameplay fundamentals, but not its technical infrastructure. Where the original was a standalone price-tagged package with features for dedicated servers, the sequel is a 'free-to-play' service that typically shoehorns players into having accounts on proprietary servers.
This means that the game comes with some of the problems that are associated with 'free-to-play' games, which is a change that not every fan of the original may like. Most of them affect the meta-game of the sequel, but fortunately not too much of its actual in-match gameplay.
PREMISE:
As mentioned earlier, the story of the game is just an excuse for the gameplay in Super Monday Night Combat. However, if one is to pay any more attention to the story than just skimming its shallow surface, there is some hilarious zaniness to be had from the backstory, as will be elaborated later.
After having had some commercial success with the original version of the violent sport entertainment programme, the owners of Monday Night Combat (often abbreviated to MNC in real-life and in-game) had expanded the show and unimaginatively renamed it 'Super' Monday Night Combat. Its main feature is a lot more archetypes that have been added to the roster of clone fighters.
Otherwise, much of the rest of the show had been recycled, at least in terms of fundamentals.
WEAPON BALANCING:
Being a game that is made for highly competitive gameplay, SMNC has many design policies that govern the effectiveness of weapons.
Damage fall-off and effective ranges are among these. These are nothing new in the history of weapon design in video games, but a particularly significant amount of attention is given to them in SMNC; almost every update comes with minor balancing of weapons. Another consideration is whether a weapon has hitscan properties or finite speeds for its projectiles.
Every player character has a pair of weapons that he/she/it can switch back and forth. In turn, every weapon has a primary and secondary fire, with the secondary fire usually being the riskier of the two. This is of course nothing new in shooter titles.
However, of particular noteworthiness is the secondary fire of the secondary weapon of any character; it is always a grapple move, which will be elaborated later.
For purposes of gameplay convenience, all player characters have unlimited supplies of ammunition for their ranged weapons. However, all of them have to deal with limited magazine sizes. Generally, the bigger the magazines are, the longer their reloading animations.
As much as the developer may try to balance weapons, it still does reward the player that goes for weapon upgrades, which can be obtained via increasing the level of the Offensive passive skill that each player character has.
For some pros, each subsequent level of the skill merely increases the damage output of their weapons, which is hardly anything exciting. For others, such as the Gunner, each subsequent level makes his weapons more different from their original versions. This can make some weapons more powerful than they have any right to be in the eyes of some players, but arguably they are so in order to render their associated characters more competitive in the late stages of a match.
GRAPPLING:
When a character launches a grapple move, he/she/it will lunge forward, arms sweeping around to catch any unfortunate character in front of him/her/it.
If the grapple connects, the character will perform an outrageous close combat move with animations that lasts for three or so seconds. Both aggressor and victim are vulnerable to attacks from enemies in this state (with the exception of other grapples), so the grapple may well fail before it manages to inflict damage. Any status effects also run their course during these animations, such that they may affect the outcome.
Every character has a set of grappling animations, all of which inflict the same overall damage. These different animations are not merely cosmetic, however. Hitboxes actually shift as the animations play out; lag and latency differences may also either foil or aid other players that are attempting to injure either the aggressor or victim. Different grappling moves also inflict damage at different points during its animations. Unfortunately, the player does not have control over the animation sets used.
JUMPING, AIR-CONTROL & DIVING:
Being a third-person shooter too, SMNC gives its player characters the ability to jump and dive-roll. However, to prevent players from exploiting this in cheesy ways, the game imposes certain restrictions.
The first is that player characters are not able to move about in the air after they have jumped or are falling through the air; this act is called air-strafing in games that do allow it. Therefore, being tossed or pulled into the air often renders player characters all but helpless in determining where they land.
However, there are several in-game means to grant the player control over the trajectory of a player character that is hurtling or falling through the air; said control is called "air-control" in-game. Some character archetypes even have skills that grant complete air-control.
Next, certain player characters with dedicated melee weapons have the ability to dive-roll in lieu of the ability to reload magazines. When these characters dive roll, their hitboxes are reoriented wildly, making them more difficult to hit; the player is likely to see other players abusing the dive-roll whenever they are trying to have their characters run away.
CHARACTER STATISTICS:
Every player character has a handful of statistics that the player has to keep in mind. Health and armor are the most important of these. Obviously, having a player character lose all health causes death, after which the player has to wait for the character to be resurrected back at the base of his/her team.
Player characters can regain health by themselves. The delay and speed at which they do so differ from game mode to game mode.
Typically, the edges of the screen are obscured with red textures as the player character takes more and more damage. This is not desirable. Fortunately, this effect can be disabled in the current build of the game.
Armor is not something that a player character wears. Rather, armor visually resembles the shields that have been seen in most other sci-fi shooter titles. However, gameplay-wise, they function like the armor in old-school sci-fi shooters, i.e. it is additional ablative 'health' that reduces the damage that is done on a player character's actual health.
However, armor is not easy to come by. They are generally obtained from picking up shield trinkets that drop from certain NPCs, but for readily available armor, the player has to look for the armor-granting skills of certain pros (more on these later).
Every player character also has an energy bar of sorts, called "Juice". The bar builds up as the player character engages in combat, including inflicting damage on the enemy and taking damage in turn. Juice can also be built up by collecting juice pick-ups that are sometimes dropped by slain robots and the mascot Bullseye (more on him later).
When the character has completely filled up his/her/its juice meter, the player can invoke the state of "Juicing", which is practically a "super" mode. The character's durability increases tremendously and he/she/it heals a lot faster too. Their damage output and speed also increase, as do the cooldown rate of their skills and their reloading speed. In addition, certain Products (more on these later) only activate when the player character is "Juicing".
With the exception of outright invulnerability, "Juicing" grants many buffs that can easily turn the tide of battle when invoked at the right time.
PLAYER CHARACTERS - OVERVIEW:
The stars of Super Monday Night Combat are of course the clone fighters, called "pros" if one is to use MNC terminology.
Their colourful personalities would be the first thing that the player observes about them, which is to the benefit of the game. Each of them may be quite a stereotype, but it would be difficult to argue that they are tiresome ones, as each character has personality designs that mix tropes together in unlikely ways.
For example, Artemis the mutant archer would have been a typical stereotyped French character if not for her penchant for culinary cannibalism.
The entire original cast returns, though not without some new tricks. Some other new ones join the group, increasing the roster size to the point that they have been grouped under categories that generally reflect their roles in matches.
These categories are Strikers, Commandos, Sharpshooters, Defenders and Enforcers. Strikers are generally intended for front-line work, but can perform flanking maneuvers too. Commandos are meant for flanking and sneak attacks, and are too weak for just about anything else. Sharpshooters are fragile snipers. Defenders are especially effective against waves of bots and often have gear that can set up a strongpoint that team-mates can return to. Finally, Enforcers are break-through fighters that usually work best at the front-lines, especially against other pros.
Players in the same team are able to roughly gauge the locations of each other's player characters across the map by looking at their general directions. The player characters' silhouettes, and their animations, can be seen through walls and floors. Their names and health and armor bars float above their heads, which make figuring out team-mates' locations easier. If team-mates can spot enemy pros, the latter will be highlighted in similar manners.
STRIKERS:
The main similarity that different Strikers have is that they have skills and gear for getting around quickly, especially between the lane and jungle floors (more on these later). Another similarity is that they have weapons and skills that inflict area-of-effect damage.
The game does inform the player about this, but the player needs to have knowledge of terms that are often associated with the shooter genre, such as "burst" (which is a newer term for area-of-effect damage).
The Assault was the poster boy of the original MNC show, and still is the poster boy for the sequel. This is perhaps appropriate, as he is the jack-of-all-trades archetype that has many capabilities that suit just about any playstyle.
Of course, he can still be accused of being generic in design, though it would be difficult to deny that his archetype is not a design that has been proven effective in many other video games, including the original MNC.
However, of – and still of – particular contention is the Assault's ability to Fly, which allows him to hover laterally across the horizontal plane of height that he is on when he invoked it. This has been modified many times over in SMNC for purposes of gameplay balance. Currently, it has settled on the catch that it is best used for moving around and not airborne attacks.
Karl is a particularly dapper (but dysfunctional) robot, which in itself would already be quite an attraction to players. His (he identifies himself as a male) weapons may seem similar to the Assault's, but noteworthy differences include a charged, explosive projectile for Karl's primary gun (which may remind players of a certain famous cyborg boy of Japanese origin) and particularly bouncy grenades for Karl's own built-in grenade launcher.
Megabeth is perhaps the most aesthetically outrageous Striker, for reasons that would become clear to anyone who sees her in action for several seconds for the first time. She is the only character in the game thus far to use the classic rocket launcher weapon archetype.
If there is a complaint about the otherwise fun Megabeth, it is that her Derby Disku skill has effectiveness that depends greatly on luck. On paper, it is a weapon that has high projectile speed and unlimited rebounds off walls and any other object; it also happens to impart debuffs on any enemy that it hits. However, the player has no control over the rebounds; the disc may either bounce off many enemies to spectacular effect, or it just bounces off somewhere where it becomes useless.
COMMANDOS:
Commandos are designed for stealthy and opportunistic attacks as well as distractions. Therefore, depending on the player's skill, Commandos may either be dead weight in a team, or an outright game-winner. Unfortunately, such a design policy also makes Commandos highly contentious characters.
One of the main issues with Commandos lies in their meta-game considerations.
To play as Commandos effectively, the player has to learn how to. Unfortunately, the player cannot do so very well by playing them first-hand, at least not without already knowing the twists and turns within maps.
More importantly, it would be difficult to watch experienced players play as Commandos in-game, because if they happen to be good, they would not be within sight of the player most of the time. They would also be difficult to track, not without being distracted from what the player should be doing.
Therefore, the player has to watch videos of people playing Commandos on the Internet or be a spectator of an in-game match, both of which require the player to have a modicum of commitment towards the game outside of just playing it for fun.
The other significant issue with Commandos is how their designs particularly reward players that have a penchant at being opportunistic. Such players will often ruin the other team if their own team can put up enough of a distraction.
The most reliable way to counter a skilled Commando player is with another Commando player. Unfortunately, this also brings up another issue; unless they make a silent agreement to collude, these players will be so busy hunting and preventing each other from stalking the other team that they will seem absent most of the time to their own teams.
With the above having been said, the individual Commandos are described next.
The Assassin was the only female fighter in the original MNC, and was the poster girl in most promotional material. She is still a poster girl in the sequel, though she now competes with the other female pros for the limelight (not that she is canonically trying to).
Unsuspecting players may be confused by the effects of the Assassin's cloak ability. Unlike the cloak abilities that have been seen in many other games with sci-fi settings, it does not render its user completely invisible. Instead, the Assassin turns translucent.
On the other hand, the cloak does come with benefits. The Assassin becomes temporarily undetectable by enemy bots (more on these later). Her silhouette will also not appear when she is spotted by player characters on the other team.
Captain Spark is a character that would amuse people who remember cheesy superhero fiction, specifically that which concern superheroes with a hefty number of gadgets. Appropriately, his skills and gear reflect his profession.
Captain Shark's most contentious design is his ability to pass through walls. Once activated, this skill allows him to zip through most obstacles and reappear some distance away. Players with extensive knowledge of map layouts can particularly exploit this ability, more so than the abilities of other Commandos. Consequently, this ability of his has been rebalanced many times over.
Wascot is thus far the third Commando at this time of writing, and is the epitome of fandom gone terribly wrong. As his appearance suggests, all of his skills and gear are disturbingly odd, and perhaps even off-putting. Yet, most of them would seem quite well-balanced, or at least play into the risk-versus-reward design trope.
SHARPSHOOTERS:
Sharpshooters are intended for players who have a penchant for twitch-shooting. Indeed, all Sharpshooters have the capability to inflict bonus damage via headshots.
Considering that SMNC is a game that is oriented towards gameplay that requires players to stay alive as much as possible, this bonus may seem to give twitch-prone players an unfair advantage. However, Uber Entertainment's balancing measure was to design maps such that there are few sniping lanes, and even these have many side paths that allow enemies to ambush Sharpshooters that use them.
At least one of the skills that each of them has is intended to give them a chance at escaping or fighting back when they are ambushed. These may seem to negate an otherwise necessary drawback that they have, but there should be a reminder here that with features like grappling, a player character that has been successfully ambushed can be slain rather quickly and unfairly otherwise.
The Sniper is the most prominent Sharpshooter, mainly because he was in the previous game and that he has two successive chances at performing grappling moves (thanks to one of his skills). When coupled with his ability to lay down traps that freeze victims and slow down other enemies that try to help, the Sniper can be a nasty close-combat fighter when the opportunity arises.
The Gunslinger is apparently intended for high ranged damage output, because most of her skills work at range or simply increases her potential damage per second.
Artemis has skills that are practically de-buffs. One of them is more contentious than the rest because of its cocktail of very debilitating de-buffs. Irradiate inflicts not just damage over time, but also removes armor and renders victims visible to the other team for its duration.
There is a lost opportunity to make Artemis convincingly different from the other Sharpshooters. Her bow fires projectiles that do not follow projectile trajectories as real arrows would, but instead they are hit-scan. Perhaps this was intended to make Artemis easier to play, but it made her use of a bow as nothing more than just a cosmetic frill.
It is worth noting here that all Sharpshooters have a particular flaw in their default costumes (and most of their other costumes). This flaw is that there is a bright object or texture near their heads that contrasts greatly with the rest of their model. This ironically makes it easier for experienced players that are playing Sharpshooters to zone in on the heads of opposing Sharpshooters.
However, certain costumes circumvent this, as will be described later.
DEFENDERS:
The Defenders have the roles of healers and lane-holders, which is not a common mix. All of them can deploy mini-turrets that hold down lanes quite well against bots and perform area denial against pros.
The Support is the most iconic of them, mainly because he was in the previous game. Thus, his designs have already been proven to be reliable and fair. He still has his aptly named "Heal/Hurt" gun, which still generates energy cords that latch onto individual allies to heal them and give them additional armor afterwards. Its secondary fire has it latching onto enemies to drain health from them, only to be given to the Support.
A noteworthy change in the gun from the original design is that the "hurt" firing mode now has a magazine to limit its power. In other words, unlike the original MNC, the Support cannot continue injuring a target indefinitely. It can no longer repair base turrets either.
In addition, he can no longer improve the damage output of turrets other than his own. This change is poked fun at via one of his taunts, which will be described later. However, he gains a small but noticeable speed boost when he uses the revamped version of his original skill. This can be used for quick get-aways.
Combat Girl is another Defender. The most notable thing about her is that she resembles the Pit Girl a lot, and may well be a clone of the same person.
The Combat Girl's Combat Healer is similar to the Support's Heal/Hurt Gun, but it is a lot less potent and short-ranged. However, it can latch onto multiple in targets, making her more efficient at escorting groups of bots that are on their way to attack base turrets. However, consequently, she is a lot less useful at healing team-mates.
Unlike the other defenders, Combat Girl can drop more than one mini-turret – she can drop up to four in fact. In addition, they can latch onto solid surfaces, including vertical walls and ceilings. However, this additional versatility comes at the price of her Combat Kitties being a lot weaker and noisier than the other mini-turrets. Even if the player can hide them behind blind corners, their tendency to meow and purr randomly can give their presence away.
The Combat Girl's most contentious design is that for her signature Combat Laser. When she invokes the laser, she performs a charging animation and fires off a thick laser beam from somewhere. This laser beam is powerful enough to knock out most bots and severely injure most other pros, if not killing them outright. It also happens to be perfectly hit-scan. So far, its most significant drawback is that when it is invoked, the player loses control over the aiming of her Combat Laser, which will fire down where the player was pointing.
Leo is the latest Defender to be added to the roster at this time of writing. Consequently, he has been re-balanced a few times, with most of the changes affecting his most prominent weapon.
Leo's laser beam emitter (which is amusingly named "Mona Laser") happens to have area-effect properties. This is a rare combo in games with sci-fi settings. It has since been rebalanced several times, such as having severe damage fall-off.
Still, most players are likely to use the weapon anyway, if only because it can be charged by making regular attacks. The player can release the charge at any time to perform a map-wide heal on Leo's team, including himself. The amount healed is proportional to the amount of charge that has been built up, but a maximized charge heals tremendously more than otherwise.
Last but not least, his rocket turret is a peculiar mini-turret, because it has an aura that grants armor and has a rather long range.
ENFORCERS:
Enforcers are intended to soak a lot of damage coming from the opposition. They also tend to have high damage output, and the methods which they use to bring this damage output to bear make them different from each other.
Oddly enough, there are more Enforcers than any other category of pros. However, this should not be construed as lack of imagination on Uber Entertainment's part. In fact, the different Enforcers have more interesting differences within their own category than the pros in other categories.
The Gunner returns from the original game, and he remains an oddball stereotype of a Samoan. He retains his characteristically enormous amount of health and his heavy weapons, both of which have been maligned by people who consider him overpowered. However, he also retains his embarrassingly slow speed, and remains the slowest character in the roster.
The Gunner's most entertaining skill is his Ground Slam. If it is performed while he is on the ground, he slams the ground with his heavy weapon, which is nothing excitingly new. If he performs it while in the air instead, such as from the height of his jump, he slams down with his sprawled-out body.
This can be seen as a cosmetic difference because there does not appear to be any difference in the damage dealt. However, it has a few nuances, all of which are not immediately told to the fresh player.
If performed in mid-air, or mid-fall, Ground Slam has the Gunner coming down tremendously faster than if he is free-falling or using his jump-jets. He also does not appear to take fall damage like he would if he fell from high places. If the Gunner's mid-air Slam hits enemy pros, they are knocked down flat onto the ground, causing them to spend precious seconds doing the animation to get up. In addition, the Gunner gets bonus cash from this maneuver, which the game amusingly calls "Pancake".
The Tank is another returning pro, and he is still as bad-tempered as ever. He still has a powered suit of armor that grants him high durability, strength and jet-packs. Speaking of jet-packs, his signature weapon is still the Jet-Gun, which is a very short-ranged plasma emitter that he uses with great gusto.
The Jet-Gun has a secondary mode of use that has the Tank spinning and hitting anything in a wide and long arc. It does seem useful, but it has a caveat that is not told to the player in certain terms. Its damage output depends on the amount of fuel left in the gun's chamber.
To compensate for the Jet-Gun's lack of reach and his lack of mobility (though he is still quicker than the Gunner), he has a rail-gun. As to be expected of a weapon of the rail-gun archetype, it is very accurate and thus is of contention among followers of the game, some of whom may object to the Tank being given such a long-ranged weapon.
Cheston may seem too gaudy at first, being an anthropomorphic gorilla with a Mafioso presentation. However, he has a pleasantly dapper and slightly melodramatic personality, which can be amusing. That is, if one can overlook the many, sometimes-cheesy references to classic films and video games in his designs. Among these references, the most prominent is Cheston's Tommy Gun, which can be quite reliable if the player can deal with its recoil issues.
The player is not likely to appreciate the secondary fire of the Tommy Gun though. It launches a banana peel that causes enemy pros that step on them to slip and waste a brief but precious amount of time getting up. However, the banana peel is easy to spot (though it appears to be indestructible). Cheston can only have a few of them in the map at any one time too, and he can only fire a peel once in a while.
Playing to his bestial stereotype, Cheston can drop down on all fours to go a ludicrous romp, during which shockwaves emanate from where his hands and feet hit the ground.
There was a bug that allowed players to exploit his Rampage ability in mid-jump for a speed boost as well. This has been discovered by the developer, but instead of removing this exploit, it has attached the drawback of greater cooldown drain when it is used in such a manner. This is a wise decision as it converts this exploit into a nuance.
The Veteran, who is not to be confused with returning MNC pros, is an intimidating and slightly disturbing person. He has some very interesting weapons, the more prominent one being his energy gauntlet. It fires large and powerful energy projectiles that home in on the nearest target that the Veteran is generally aiming at. However, it is balanced by small magazine sizes.
On the other hand, the Veteran's forte is close combat. For this purpose, he has jet-packs that are similar to those used by the Tank or Gunner. More importantly, it can be easy for enemies to forget that he has these, considering that his massive girth obscures them from view.
His most useful tool for close-combat fighting is his Ka-Claw skill. His energy gauntlet surges forward, attempting to grab the first enemy that it comes across and pulling it back to the Veteran. This can be used to isolate opposing pros from their side of the map, preferably for beatdowns from the Veteran himself and other team-mates. However, the effectiveness of the pull also depends on the mass of the target. Typically, other Enforcers will not be pulled as far, whereas Commandos and Defenders can be particularly susceptible.
His Freight Train skill functions a lot like the Tank's or Assault's Charge, but he is rewarded with a free grappling move if the charge connects with an enemy pro. Another skill of his is practically another grappling move, albeit one that is intended to kick foes very far away.
This means that experienced players can pull off three grappling moves in succession, if their cooldowns have been completed beforehand. This combo of moves can usually kill most pros. Therefore, there is some contention among followers of the game about the balancing of the Veteran. On the other hand, his apologists can make a strong argument that pulling off all three moves successfully is very difficult.
Robo_Hobo is the newest pro to be added to the game at this time of writing. As such, it has a lot of balance issues that have yet to be worked out. It may also have slightly offensive presentation issues, as its name and the writing for its background suggest.
His primary weapon is the cause for some contention. Its primary fire sends out soundwaves that go through character models, only stopping when they reach their maximum range or hit a part of the environment. It is very much in need of a damage fall-off nerf. The secondary fire of its primary weapon is just as contentious. It allows Robo_Hobo to detonate its soundwaves, potentially allowing it to damage enemies twice – once via the passing of the waves, and the second from their explosions.
Of course, it has been argued that the soundwaves are slow and visually distinct enough to be seen from far away that it does not need any nerfing. In comparison, its secondary weapon, which is of the shotgun archetype, is more balanced, if rather unimaginative.
Robo_Hobo's Sound Blast skill can be considered to be of the wave-with-knockback archetype. However, its nuance is that if it is used while Robo_Hobo is in mid-air, it is knocked back in the direction opposite to where it is looking at. This can be used for some cheesy rocket-jumping, which is something that other Enforcers cannot do.
Another thing that Robo_Hobo can do but the other Enforcers cannot is to deploy a massive speaker that exudes an aura that slows down any enemies that get into it. It can be destroyed by enemies, but this can take a while, especially if it is deployed next to the Defenders' mini-turrets.
BOTS:
Each match has players fighting alongside or against robots, of which lane bots are a category.
Lane bots, as their name suggests, travel along lanes that are marked with team-coloured chevrons. They will not deviate from the lanes, unless forced off them with knockback attacks. Even so, they will attempt to retrace their steps back to the closest lane, if they survived (which is unlikely).
Slimbots are the weakest lane bots. They are led by the Shady Bots, which are introduced in SMNC with the intention of filling the gap in the diversity of strength among lane bots. To be specific, it is somewhere in between Slim Bots and Fuji Bots in terms of power.
Speaking of Fuji Bots, these appear only several minutes into a match in Super Crossfire and Turbocross. They are floating chunks of metal with built-in plasma cannons and are mainly intended to soak damage from opposing turrets.
The game will spawn lane bots automatically and periodically, but players can buy small waves of them whenever the opportunity comes up, via icons that float close to their bases. These purchased waves also come with the bonus of Scrambler robots.
Scramblers were in the previous game, and they return all the deadlier because they now exclusively chase pros whenever they see them. This means that they are now better able to bring their special ability to bear, which is to latch energy cords onto nearby enemy pros and prevent them from using skills and regenerating health.
Next, there are the hunter bots. Most of them are bots that were in the previous game, but in SMNC, their roles have changed. They are no longer lane bots, but instead, they act as anti-pro bots, moving towards the nearest enemy pros to hurt them.
Hunter bots are generally not spawned automatically, but have to be purchased via bot spawners that are often located near the middle line of the map. This line happens to be the border shared (and fought over) by the territories of both teams, so hunter bots can be especially handy when they intervene in fights.
The most straightforward hunter bots are Black Jacks, which return from the previous game. They still have ranged weapons that they will fire as they attempt to get closer to enemy pros.
Then, there are the Bouncers. These are gorilla-like robots that have grappling moves that can be frustrating to deal with. They also happen to be very tough.
Next, there are so-called "Jungle Bots". Before describing these, a certain floor in any map has to be described first. This floor does not contain any lanes, but it is where certain NPCs spawn.
Jungle Bots appear in the Jungle level of any map, hence the name of their category. They attempt to hunt down any member of either team that ventured into it. They are coloured black in order to differentiate them from the other bots.
Jungle Bots include black-coloured versions of the Black Jack and the Bouncers, which are not that much different from the ones that have been described earlier. However, there are the Gremlins, which are robots that have animations that are very similar to the Assassin's.
(As a side note, SMNC does not have the feature of "Eliminator" robots, which in the previous game are bots that specific pros can spawn when they purchase waves of additional bots.)
Buzzers return from the previous game, but they are no longer actual robots. In fact, they seem smaller and a lot faster than they once were.
Their new roles in the sequel are as area-denial weapons. They can be purchased at certain locations in certain maps. When summoned, swarms of them fly along pathways that are lined with team-coloured diodes, inflicting serious damage on anything that is affiliated with the opposing team and that happens to be on the pathways.
(The Gapshot artillery robot is not in SMNC.)
The Jackbots also return from the original MNC, almost unchanged. They are still devastatingly tough and powerful robots that quickly wreck anything in their way that is not a pro. If left unchecked by pros or other Jackbots, opposing Jackbots can quickly clear lanes.
However, Jackbots are more vulnerable to pros than ever. Although they still have powerful ground slams, they are now vulnerable to grapples from any pro (and not just the Assassin and Sniper in the original MNC). This means that a team can concentrate their grapples on unprotected Jackbots to quickly destroy it.
The other team can escort their Jackbots to prevent them from being grappled too much. However, if these Jackbots were spawned automatically, which happens fifteen minutes into a match, both teams tend to spawn Jackbots at the same time. Therefore, the two teams have to make decisions on which Jackbot to protect, as they cannot protect all of them.
The exception to this scenario is that Jackbots can be purchased back at a team's base. This is not to be done lightly as it is a substantial purchase, but just having a Jackbot when the enemy does not have one can be a tremendous advantage. On the other hand, if a team can purchase a Jackbot far earlier than the other team, chances are that they are already winning anyway.
This is due to the in-match economic system that rewards performance, which will be described shortly.
CASH & PERFORMANCE:
Anything that a player does for his/her team or against the other team grants in-game cash rewards. This money is to be spent within a match, because the player does not get to keep it. Indeed, the player's score, which is tallied at the end of a match, would be higher if he/she has utilized the money that his/her character has accumulated.
Anyway, gaining money is also the only way to gain levels for the player character; higher character levels require more money to be reached. Every character level grants one point to be spent on skills, as well as certain other benefits depending on the match types, which will be mentioned later.
There are many ways to gain money. The main ways are to kill the robots of the other team and their pros, whenever the opportunity arises. The methods that the player uses to do that also grant rewards of their own. For example, the Gunner gets more money from killing an enemy pro with the "Pancake" animation of his Ground Slam skill than he would from the regular one.
Any money that a player has gained is for him/her to use alone. However, his/her team can see his/her amount of money by bringing up the score screen at any moment during a match. For efficient use of his/her money, the player may want to consult team-mates before making significant purchases, such as the purchase of Jackbots and the Annihilator power-up, which are among the most expensive options.
VENDORS:
Throughout any map, there are wall-mounted terminals and holographic icons that the player can interact with to purchase power-ups, tactical options and bot waves. Their prices vary, with the more powerful and versatile options being generally more expensive.
Some of the holographic icons are used to spawn waves of bots. These icons generally show which types of bots that the player would spawn. The player may be able to accrue enough cash to buy many waves, but once any icon has been used, it goes into cooldown, which can last minutes, depending on the power of the bots. This balancing measure, and the distances between bot-spawning icons prevent players from suddenly swamping the other team with too many bots.
Next, there are the vendor terminals. These sell power-ups for the player character. There are power-ups that accelerate health regeneration or completely fill the player character's juice meter. These can be used as many times as the player needs at any given moment.
Using the abovementioned icons and terminals is not exactly an instantaneous act, because it takes a brief animation to interact with them.
Next, there are icons that call in strikes on the map. The most prominent of these are the Annihilator. The Annihilator destroys every bot that belongs to the other team, in addition to inflicting heavy damage on enemy pros. It can potentially kill every member of the other team, if timed correctly.
Then, there are vendor icons that summon artillery strikes on certain spots in a map. They are only available in certain maps, but their usage will be quite important to any team's strategy. Incidentally, the artillery strikes will not harm the members and robots of the team that invoked them.
Next, there are icons that look like exclamation marks. When the player approaches them, he/she will be able to see a region that is close by being highlighted with a translucent and yellow decal. This may be difficult for the inexperienced player to figure out immediately, but experimentation will reveal that it causes an unseen force to affect the highlighted area. Any enemy that happens to be in it when this happens is launched into the air, often in a direction that causes them to drop into fall hazards. Even if the victims managed to survive the launching, they will still be damaged.
Finally, there are jump pads. These are initially locked out to every player, until he/she pays the fee to enable them for their character. This limitation is supposedly intended to prevent early ambushes from the Jungle floor by any characters other than Commandos and Strikers.
JUNGLE BONUS CHARACTERS:
Once in a while, Bullseye the SMNC mascot and his guest counterpart, the Juice Bot (which is a tribute to Penny Arcade), appears in the Jungle floor. They prance around, dropping power-ups that refill health, armor or juice, among other benefits. They drop even more if they are damaged, at least until they die (which will happen anyway).
This means that players are likely to pursue them to load up on statistics for a heavy fight later. However, the game does not inform the fresh player that they are immune to grappling moves.
Then, there is Chickey Cantor, which is purportedly a giant robot chicken and a tribute to the commentator of the original MNC. Unlike Bullseye or Juice Bot, Chickey Cantor is hostile to all players and can inflict a lot of damage if they are not careful. However, Chickey Cantor grants tremendous bonuses to the team that defeated it. Therefore, this can make for some tense fights as opposing teams attack each other while trying to slay – or avoid – the giant chicken.
MATCH TYPES:
At this time of writing, there are only a handful of match types, and only two of these use the bulk of the game's available maps.
There is a map that is exclusively made for the purpose of familiarizing a new player with the concepts of the game. However, this map was not in the game when it officially launched. It was only introduced into the game several months after, strongly suggesting that Uber Entertainment is not one to make customer-friendliness a priority.
Nevertheless, the training map has plenty of fixtures and features that can be interacted with to inform the fresh player on the basics of the game. That would be so, provided that the player has the patience to listen to the voice-overs that impart the lessons and the time to experiment with the heavily scripted characters that spawn into the map.
Next, there is training mode, which is like custom Super Crossfire (which will be described shortly), except that there are no long-term rewards for completing a training session.
Crossfire returns in SMNC in the form of Super Crossfire, which is a bit more than a name change. Most of the maps that have been seen in the previous game returns, albeit with balancing changes. The most noticeable of these are more pieces of cover to both obscure defenders from enemy fire and provide more flanking opportunities for sneaky players.
Another noticeable change is that turrets can no longer be repaired. Some of them can be upgraded, but if this is to be done, it has to be done earlier because any damage inflicted on them is permanent.
Turbocross is a mode that is meant for those that do not like having the level differences between characters determining the flow of battle too much. In this mode, all characters already have most of their statistics maxed out, with the exception of skills. As a result, matches in this mode are more dependent on twitch skills and quick wits than planning and foresight, which may please some players at the expense of others.
Turbocross also allows players to rebuild destroyed base turrets by purchasing their construction. However, when a turret is destroyed, its foundation is temporarily locked out, which can seem to be too much of a delay in this faster-paced mode.
In both Super Crossfire and Turbocross modes, each team has to defend the Moneyball, a sphere that appears to be made of coins that are clumped together to form a sphere. The Moneyball is protected by a shield, which is impenetrable to fire from pros, so players cannot snipe at the enemy's Moneyball from afar. Base turrets in Turbocross and Super Crossfire are also protected by similar shields.
To bring down these shields, the player will need to escort lane bots over to them. Once they are there, they can either shoot at them, in the case of turrets, or jump onto the Moneyball to bang away at it. The shields of the turrets or Moneyball are dropped, which render them vulnerable to damage from pros.
Destruction of the Moneyball means the loss of the team that should have been defending it.
Finally, there is Super Blitz, which is the last match type to be added to the game. It is a throwback to the Blitz mode in the previous game, where the players, which belong to the same team, must defend a Moneyball from unending waves of bots. Every subsequent wave becomes more worrisome and unmanageable than the previous, so even the most coordinated and experienced team would eventually lose.
For now, there appears to be only one map for this match mode, which has the Moneyball at the centre of a circular area. Bots spawn from the periphery of the circle and converge on the centre, thus requiring players to look around for incoming waves.
USER INTERFACE (IN-MATCH):
During a match, the player can see the user interface that is used to display pertinent information. The lower right corner of the screen contains icons and counters for things that are important to the player character, such as icons that show the cooldown of his/her skills.
By default, the character's health and armor bars are shown above the crosshairs. They are translucent, but they can still get in the player's view, especially when looking at faraway things. The player can, fortunately, opt to shift the bars elsewhere.
If the player has any competitive streak in him/her, he/she may well be regularly glancing at the top of the screen. In any game mode, the player will be able to see the portraits of the characters that his/her team-mates have chosen, as well as their health bars. This is convenient for deciding when to support each other or leaving each one to their own devices.
In competitive modes, the player gets to see the portraits of the members of the other team too, albeit without the health bars. This is mainly there to inform the player of which members of the other team is operational, which in turn helps one's team decides when to go all-out on the offense.
There are also meters that show the progress of bots along the lanes, but these have inadequate visual representations of their numerical strength. For example, a single Slimbot may well be leading a charge, thus resulting in a long team-coloured bar, which in turn may mislead inexperienced players into thinking that they have the upper hand.
META-GAME - OVERVIEW:
All of which have been described thus far concerns actual gameplay in SMNC. Its actual gameplay is (though arguably) quite well-balanced. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the meta-game elements of the game, which is affected by many issues that are typically associated with "free-to-play" titles.
Although it can be easily argued that SMNC does not have any much-maligned "pay-to-win" elements, it does have a lot of microtransaction options that grant whales (players who do microtransactions extensively) an advantage in the meta-game. This advantage could have been mitigated if the game's infrastructure sequesters players, but it does not do so, at least not effectively.
The meta-game of SMNC also happens to favour lucky players, which may not please people who despise factors of luck in games. After every match that the player has completely participated in, the player may be granted a gift. The chance of getting a gift is speculated to be dependent on the player's performance, but even if this is true, getting a gift is still ultimately a matter of luck.
Even if a player obtains a gift, its content is randomized. The player may get something that he/she does not desire, did not know that he/she wants, or something that encourages him/her to change his/her playstyle entirely. In other words, the fun that the meta-game of SMNC offers can vary tremendously from person to person.
The meta-game also happens to favour players that have played for a long time. Players gain credits from each match that they have played to completion (there is nothing gained from leaving matches prematurely). These credits can be used to purchase meta-game items that will be described shortly. Thus, long-time players are expected to have a lot more of these than new players.
If the new player wants to have an advantage in the meta-game of SMNC from the get-go, he/she can shell out real money for the game's starter packages, which contain a collection of meta-game items. Of course, this already gives such a player an advantage over other new but stingier players.
(There is also a starter package for players who promote the game via Facebook.)
The player can also purchase boosters, which increase the amount of rewards from each match that is successfully completed during the duration of the boosters. These make light of the considerable time that stingier players have spent on the game, as well as giving such players an advantage in progressing in the meta-game of SMNC over players that have spent the same amount of time in the game.
One can argue that these are part-and-parcel of "free-to-play" titles of course, but there had been other "free-to-play" titles that make certain that spendthrift players do not get any advantage in either the meta-game or actual gameplay. More importantly, there were no such elements in the original MNC.
Fortunately, what the meta-game of SMNC does well is having tools to help the player organize his/her meta-game items. The player can create as many load-outs of items as he/she likes, and different load-outs can share the same items.
ENDORSEMENTS:
Endorsements are the most prominent meta-game element in SMNC. They also happen to have the most issues, though they may not seem immediately clear.
As players play the game, he/she gains "experience points" that enter a counter that is associated with his/her account. These points in turn feed level meters. Gaining levels unlocks more slots for the player to equip what the game calls "endorsements".
Functionally, endorsements are passive buffs and de-buffs that players apply on their characters. There are several types of endorsements, each with different effects. Within each type of endorsement, there are also several ranks. Higher ranks of endorsement grant better buffs, but also come with de-buffs that prevent the player from exploiting the buffs to levels of abuse.
Theoretically, the ranking of these endorsements prevents players from building a deck of endorsements that is generally too powerful to counter. However, players with high-level accounts will always have more versatility in their deck builds, and players who have played for a long time have a lot of endorsements to work with.
Moreover, the lowest ranking endorsement has no de-buff. One can argue that the buff provided by this endorsement is very miniscule, but high-level players with many slots in their deck of endorsements can stack many of them such that their combined effect is considerable.
PRODUCTS:
Products are meta-game items with highly situational benefits. The player can only equip three of these in his/her account, regardless of level. Products would seem to be quite balanced against each other. Different products also seem to cater to different playstyles, which is a design that is reinforced by the aforementioned limitation.
Yet, Products would not have been contentious if not for the fact that not all Products are available to the player from the get-go. The new player always starts with Products that are oriented towards helping inexperienced players, but they would seem useless to players that are already skilled in SMNC's gameplay.
TAUNTS:
Taunts would have been a purely cosmetic and whimsical aspect of the game if not for the fact that a player gains additional money rewards for having taunted another player that he/she has just defeated in a match.
Before elaborating further, taunts have to be described. Taunts are a set of animations and camera-orientations that flaunt the personality of their associated characters, or for a general laugh. When the player invokes a taunt during a match, his/her character is locked into these animations and is rendered vulnerable. Any opposing player that is watching the "death-camera" that shows which character killed his/her own character has to watch the taunt too.
Therefore, it can be argued that the reward that the player gets for successfully taunting an opposing player is justified, i.e. for having pulled off such a risky stunt in-match. However, the problem here is that not all taunts have the same durations of animation and there are no differences in the amounts of the rewards for different taunts. Testing will eventually reveal which taunt is the most efficient.
Of course, one can argue that the rewards for successful taunts are not significant enough to be game-changers, and the risks are great. Yet, this balancing measure can also be argued to have rendered the inclusion of taunts in the gameplay quite pointless and wasteful.
COSTUMES:
Costumes would have been quite an amusing source of whimsy, if not for certain costumes that change colour schemes of certain characters by too much.
For example, there are polka-dot textures that replace textures that complemented the other visual designs that have the same purpose of team-identification. Such textures would not have been an issue if they are specific to certain characters, but they are not, which can make differentiating between different characters with a glance unnecessarily more difficult.
PRO-ROTATION:
Unfortunately, not all pros are available for play from the get-go. If the player wants to have a permanent opportunity to use a pro, he/she will need to shell out credits or real money to purchase the right to pick the pro in any match.
However, in an attempt to achieve a compromise between the monetization of the variety in the pros and the user-friendliness of SMNC, Uber Entertainment implemented a rotation system to give players an opportunity to play with each pro. Yet, being the typical result of a compromising measure, the system is not an ideal solution that achieves either end.
Pros that are picked for the rotation in the current week are not exactly available for everyone to play. In the lobby of each match, a player that does not already have the virtual license for a pro in the rotation must be quick to pick and then lock down that pro. This is because any other player can do that and then prevent anyone else from picking that pro, unless he/she already has the license for that pro.
This can result in frustration for some players who are not willing to purchase the license. This is not an issue to players that have played long enough to learn to use multiple pros, of course, but inexperienced players would be left out.
MATCH-MAKING:
The most disappointing aspect of the game is its match-making infrastructure and how it affected the meta-game of SMNC.
Players that opt for public matches with strangers will be placed into queues. The game's servers pick and place players randomly into any of the two teams in any match lobby that have been created.
This means that the player who goes for such matches will have to contend with complete strangers, who may or may not be willing to compromise on the matter of picking archetypes and sticking to roles in the match. This is exacerbated by the deliberate limitations in the pro rotation system.
The automated segment of the match-making service does happen to consider the levels of the players, but it does not always follow this criterion, especially when it could not find players of appropriate levels to fill out teams with. The game may well pitch low-level player characters against high-level ones, which may be hardly fair.
More importantly, the service has yet to have tools that consider the number of matches that a player has and his/her winning rate. In other words, the fresh player may well be matched against an experienced one, or a long-time player that happens to be stubbornly unskilled may be matched against a new but talented player that has done a lot of research.
Of course, one can argue that this is a common problem in 'free-to-play' games, but it is still a problem nonetheless and one that works against SMNC. If anything, SMNC would just show that the meta-game segments of 'free-to-play' games have yet to mature to provide players a truly level playing field.
Consequently, players ended up utilizing the user-controlled segment of the service, called "custom matches" in-game. This allows them to invite players into match, thus bypassing the queues. However, players will have to contend with the much lower rewards from custom matches, which is a penalty that was deliberately implemented to great contention.
Fortunately, custom Blitz matches appear to be unaffected by this limitation. Yet, this means that at this time of writing, the die-hard members of the SMNC community that remains uses custom Blitz matches to grind their account levels.
WRITING:
SMNC may have a problematic meta-game that detracts from its otherwise balanced gameplay, but it is also a game where time spent not actually playing it can seem to be time well-spent anyway. This is partly due to the game's writing, which makes reading the text in the game quite enjoyable the first time around.
The whimsical theme of rampant commercialism in the Monday Night Combat franchise is in SMNC too. It is perhaps even stronger than before, considering the meta-game elements of the game.
The most entertaining writing is found in the brief biographies of the pros and certain other characters, which can be read in the documentation of the game. Each character has a very colourful and often outrageous background, which adds to his/her personality.
GRAPHICS:
Being a game that uses the Unreal engine, the player can expect beautiful visuals from SMNC, when the typical issues of the Unreal engine do not rear their ugly heads. Fortunately, issues that are associated with Epic Games' property, such as ugly and slow texture fade-ins, do not appear to be apparent in SMNC.
In fact, the current build of the game is surprisingly technically stable. Most machines can play the game at its prettiest, and it sure is visually gratifying when it is so.
The animations of the characters, especially the pros, are the most prominent elements of the game's graphics. Each character has his/her/its own set of animations that fits well with their sci-fi gear and model silhouettes. More importantly, their animations and appearances express their personality very well.
A noteworthy example is Megabeth. Although some may argue that she is a particularly horrible stereotype of a young Japanese urbanite, all of her animations and costumes feed into this stereotype, which may well have been deliberate.
The most whimsical animations are reserved for the taunts and grappling moves. The best examples of these are those for the Veteran. They liberally showcase the silly jiggle-physics that have been applied to the Veteran's heavily muscular yet very portly model, as well as his brutal melee take-downs.
Where the environment is not used to emphasize the sci-fi themes of the game, it is used for gameplay purposes instead.
For example, vending terminals and holographic icons have very clear visual designs that are different enough for the player to recognize almost immediately. However, the former are always oriented along walls, so they are not as visible as the latter. This is to the detriment of inexperienced players, who may overlook them when they play a map for the first time.
The bots are the least impressive aspect of the game's graphical designs, but this is perhaps to be expected of rigidly robotic characters.
SOUNDS:
The voice-overs are the best sound designs in the game. They give life to the very colourful roster of SMNC.
Of course, one can point out that the returning pros also return with most of their voice-overs recycled. However, there are new ones for them. A particular example is one of the taunts for the Support. Veterans of the original MNC may realize that the Support's outburst during this taunt is directed at one of the important changes in his capabilities. However, to fresh players, it is cheesy malapropism. (The Support happens to have this habit anyway.)
However, the most prominent voice-overs are those for SMNC commentator GG Stack, who is voiced by one of the game's producers. His frustration at being undervalued and at having his marital life poked at in SMNC matches can be terrifically amusing, as is his sometimes-hostile relationship with fellow commentator Chip Valvano.
The music of SMNC is surprisingly good, or at least fittingly appropriate. Much of it complements the game's theme of faux-epic show-business. Some clips of the game's musical designs happen to be reserved for gameplay purposes, such as depicting the retrieval of power-ups or impressive player kill-streaks.
The sound effects in the game are satisfactorily sci-fi, but they are not as memorable as the other sound designs.
CONCLUSION:
SMNC is a game with splendid presentation and arguably well-balanced team-based gameplay. However, its foray into a "free-to-play" business model saddled it with many issues in its meta-game.