Part of the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade, Uber Entertainment’s Monday Night Combat takes elements of tower defense, class based third person action, a heaping helping of bacon and combines them into one fast paced and over the top title that brings a breath of fresh air to the Xbox Live Arcade.

While the similarities between the color schemes, pared down match types, class based combat and cartoon style graphics will draw automatic comparisons to Team Fortress 2, Monday Night Combat still manages to maintain a unique identity. It is the distant future (or not too distant, depending on where you fall on the sociopath meter) and the biggest sport on the planet is Monday Night Combat, where “Pros” (the players) compete in Crossfire (Pros vs. Pros, where six man teams escort waves of bots to destroy the other teams Moneyball) or Blitz (Pros defend their Moneyball against increasingly difficult waves of bots) modes to accumulate cash and titles. The cash players earn can be used to unlock new titles for the Pro profiles that will be visible to other Pros they kill in Crossfire matches.

The design aesthetics of Monday Night Combat are spot on for the over the top type of game it is: colors are bold and well defined, and the character design is a bit cartoonish, which offsets the violence nicely. While the violence is never Mortal Kombat-level bloody, it’s obvious when the Assassin stabs you in the back and leaps into the air with her sword that she isn’t using a Nerf sword. The variation in classes allows for as wide a variety of playing styles as possible, with each class having their own upgradeable special abilities — if you’re the type that likes to hang back and pop out to heal a wounded team-mate, then the Support class is for you. If you just have to be up front and in the center of the action, then the Assault class and his remote grenades or the Gunner class with his chain gun might be a better fit. While there is something to be said for having an itchy trigger finger, there is also definite strategy involved with the implentation of turrets to assist in defending your teams Moneyball. Knowing where to deploy bot slowing ShaveIce turrets or long range Long Shot turrets can mean the difference between winning and losing in either Crossfire or Blitz.

While solid gameplay and pretty pixels help, one of the best features of the game is one that is out of the player’s hands all together: the announcer. Periodically players will hear announcer Mickey Cantor chime in with a product endorsement or a comment on a particular kill a Pro just made, or tell audience members that they have fifteen minutes to get home after a game before mandatory curfew. From the money and bacon dropping mascot Bullseye (I’ll give you one hint how you get him to drop loot. Shoot him.), to the over the top arenas with massive Pro statues standing watch, these are all just part of the whole tongue-in-cheek motif of the game that kept me wanting to hear what the announcer might say next or what taunt my assault was going to hurl at my latest kill.

With all that this title has going for it, it is not without its flaws. Matchmaking can be painstakingly long, with the time between selecting a Quick Match session and the round actually starting being as long as 2 minutes. And this is not even taking into account instances of host migration or being booted back to the main menu if a host cannot be found. In my opinion there are also some balance issues between classes and their special abilities, specifically the Support’s Firebase seeming a bit too powerful.

All in all, Monday Night Combat is a great downloadable title and I highly recommend it to anyone growing weary of spawn camping, grenade spamming tards in Modern Warfare 2 or simply looking for a way to mix up their usual shooter. Monday Night Combat retails for 1,200 Microsoft Points and is available through the Xbox Live Arcade.