What better way to celebrate the summer than with a nice summer inspired beverage and a little class based third person shooter meets tower defense?
In this installment of Six Pack Game Reviews I’m taking a look at a one of the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade titles, Monday Night Combat from Uber Entertainment. Accompanying MNC is a summer libation by the name of Shipyard Summer Ale. Both so far have been refreshing and exhilarating.
Monday Night Combat
Although this is my first experience with the “retail” version on MNC, I did get to play it at PAX east earlier this year. I enjoyed it very much then and I am enjoying it even more now. There is a surprising amount of depth to the game play. The in-game upgrades via cash earned for kills during the round, keeps you constantly buying new abilities or upgrades to turrets that can be built in predetermined locations on the maps. There are six classes making mixing and matching the various upgrades and sponsors (think Call of Duty perks) almost endless. Each character class has very specific moves that are mapped to the controllers face buttons and compliment their roles on the battlefield. There ia a persistent leveling system that is based on you’re overall money earned and can be cashed in to buy custom class slots. These slots let you select a class and 3 sponsors. MNC offers online and offline modes. There is Crossfire which is a 6v6 online mode where you are attacking the enemy money ball while defending your own. And, there is also Blitz mode that comes in both online and offline versions. Blitz is like tower defense meets horde mode from Gears of War. Blitz will have me coming back for again and again!
The graphics and presentation are very clean and have a Team Fortress 2 meets American Gladiators feel. The futuristic game show esthetic is well done and makes a nice platform for selling the game play. In the sound department, I enjoy the little one-liners from the various class types and the announcer adds a nice touch to the game shows overall persona.
I have to say this is the best class based shooter on the Xbox 360 in a while. Although it’s an arcade title, I think it just as good and in many cases better than a Team Fortress 2 or Shadowrun.
The demo can be downloaded here for 1200 Microsoft Points (about $15)
Game rating: 
Shipyard Summer Ale
I’ve never had a Shipyard product before but they do produce quite a few favors of delicious beer.
Shipyard’s Summer Ale is a crystal clear bright gold color and very crisp. There’s a buttery almost wheaty taste that lingers. It’s 5% alcohol does the job but is does not overpower the clean ale taste. For a bottled beer it has a micro brew taste and feel that I appreciate.
Like MNC, it took me a few rounds of the summer ale to understand it’s true potential. It was after about 5 rounds that I got into a groove with my Shipyard and custom assault class. That last round was pure nirvana.
Price: $7.99
Six Pack Rating:
Although the summer is coming to an end soon, I recommend Shipyard’s Summer Ale. Especially if you are enjoying some Monday Night Combat with friends.
I would call myself a moderate car nut. That said, a few years ago I would only swear by Sony’s Gran Tourismo series but in that time something happened. Actually, something didn’t happen. As we all know now, Polyphony took way too long to release GT5 which in turn gave Turn10 and Microsoft the chance to take over the racing simulator genre. There have literally been 3 Forza games between GT4 and GT5, each improving on the last.
