f13.net

Oops. (http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/17/super-monday-night-combat-accidentally-hits-steam-dev-rolls-wit/)

Take Monday Night Combat, make it more like League of Legends, and this is what you get. The unexpected launch and lack of media coverage means it has low population numbers right now, which may hurt them in the long-run. However, I found the first-person shooter aspects of it more enjoyable and quicker to get in to than LoL, though much love to LoL.

Games are very quick, community is just as assy as any DotA game is.

Pretty fun, though, and prices are reasonable (I'm looking at you, Wrath of Heroes).

I tried to get into SMNC earlier in its beta when I had heard the original MNC was more like TF2 but with a different spin on things, but then turned right around and didn't look back the minute I hopped in and discovered this was yet another MOBA. A damn shame, since I was kind of looking forward to this.

Take the worst parts of both genres, add a dash of awful UI and you have Super Monday Night Combat. Overshadowed by buzz around tribes ascend I suspect this thing will die without much of anyone noticing.

Would the premature launch maybe soften the criticism of the UI? I don't think they got the polish time they desired. Also, I didn't realize Tribes: Ascend was out.

Man, what is the F2P market going to be like in five years time? You've got unlimited, free gameplay flooding out to the Internet, but each new game can't possibly continue to generate sustainable revenue if people already invested money in upgrades and cosmetics with a previous title. If anything, I predict the more games that come out with this model, the more people will be burnt out on spending money for buffs and visuals.

I doubt it, the fundamentals of the game feel like muddy water.

I played this game for several hours, most of it was spent trying to figuring out basic mechanics.

1 - Why is my gun shooting coins? Is this a buff? Oh wait... they explode... so I guess they hurt people?

2 - Secondary fire shoots bacon, which does more damage I guess? But is harder to hit? what...

3 - Ok so I engage an enemy in what seems to be a safe fight, I hear loud meowing noises, my character is pelted repeatedly by fire, I'm stunlocked by 3 people grappeling me, Im launched outside of the ring and killed.


4* - Early game you're apparently supposed to focus on farming instead of engaging the enemy, this is as boring as it sounds.   

That's a lot of what I don't like about MOBAs in general and SMNC in particular. You're given a lot of incentive to play extremely conservatively and defensively which not only leads to each round lasting 30-45 minutes but also kind of blows up in your face when you get people on the opposing team that have paid for a full set of high-end buff Products and on-use effects so they can then two-shot you with a grapple attack. I would rather be playing something like Team Fortress or even Battlefield where you have objectives to accomplish and play a more active role while not being some one-man army that wins a map single-handedly.

And yeah, the game explains little to nothing. Unless things have changed dramatically in the past couple of months, there's not even anything approaching a tutorial aside from a half-assed in-game readme file and even that is more or less "Well, uh, we hope you played a lot of regular MNC in this one particular mode, 'cause this is like that, kinda sorta."

The game pretty much failed my, "Why would I not just play TF2?" test. Doesn't sound like I missed much.

MOBA and 1st/3rd person just don't seem to me to be a good mix. I didn't much like Monday Night Combat anyway, and this didn't look like much of an improvement. We'll see whether Smite manages to pull it off.