When Monday Night Combat was first announced, it was criticized for having a distinct Team Fortress 2 vibe. Its cartoon characters, class-based shooting, and over-the-top style didn’t convince gamers otherwise, but ultimately the game managed to distinguish itself as a genuinely awesome hybrid of third-person shooting and tower defense. Lately, it seems to be copying Team Fortress 2 in another way, but this time the similarities are a little harder to complain about.
The latest update to Monday Night Combat adds a ton of new features and tweaks, including a new arena and a giant chicken named Chickey Cantor. The new map and chicken will be available in the game’s Crossfire mode. Players that ride Chickey will receive a money reward, and those that shoot Chickey until he flies away will earn their team a “big single-life buff.”
The full list of new features, balance tweaks, and fixes can be seen below or at Uber Entertainment’s website:
New Features
-New Crossfire Map: Uncle Tully’s Funland
-New bot spawn buttons for Uncle Tully’s Funland
-Chickey Cantor now spawns in Uncle Tully’s Funland
-New reserved slots for server admins
-New Action Menu. The Action Menu is an in-game menu for accessing buttons to easily mute players or vote to kick them.
-New animation for all Pros when they use jump pads
-Added in a new random lines from Mickey Cantor during the course of the match
-Reserved slots for players, settable by the server admin. Players are specified by SteamID in the -HostileAccess.ini file; in a similar manner to how players are listed for banning. Adding an entry to the “VIPIDs” array (for example “VIPIDs=0×0110000104524662″) will cause that player to be a VIP on the server. When a VIP attempts to join a full server, the server will kick the most recently joined nonVIP player to make room for the joining VIP. If a server is full of VIPs, then any incoming VIPs will be rejected as normal. VIPs must still know the server password (if any) to gain entrance. Also, if a VIP is banned, the ban will take priority over VIP status. ALSO, the cooldown period which a player who has been votekicked must wait before rejoining a server has been made configurable. The default value of VoteKickCooldown=10 (minutes) can be modified in the HostileAcess.ini. Note that a player who has been votekicked off of a server must wait VoteKickCooldown*NumberOfVotekicks minutes before being allowed to rejoin, thus further discouraging repeat offenders.
Balance and Adjustments
-Added back the number of juice uses in the end game summary
-Adjusted the way we calculate All Star Rating
-Adjusted the key bindings screen to accommodate the new action menu
-Changed the hit sound for the cardboard tube on the Cardboard Tube Samurai skin for the Assassin
-Reduced ban time from a vote kick
-Increased height of glass barriers in Grenade III Arena
Fixes
-Fixed issue where level 3 Assault charge did not deal enough grapple damage to Bots
-Fixed Sniper’s juice armor obscuring scope visibility
-Fixed high frame rates causing reduced initial movement speed
-Fixed normal maps textures on Assassin’s sword and dagger
-Fixed Assassin’s being visible at distances they shouldn’t be in maps with fog
-Players can no longer be killed after the round has ended
That’s a significant set of changes. No word yet on when the updates will be coming to 360, though the version has underwent some pretty big updates in the past, and more are said to be planned. Here’s hoping that isn’t one way MNC will be emulating Team Fortress 2.
