A Comprehensive 100 Tour Review of Mann vs Machine

$429.84 Over the past 3 months, I’ve spent over $400 on Team Fortress 2: Mann vs. Machine. I want to provide an honest and accurate reflection of Mann vs. Machine, in addition to clearing up some of the misconceptions about the game mode that many of the newer players have. For those of you that are looking to continue or start playing MvM, this guide will lay out the basic details that you’ll need to determine whether or not MvM is right for you. You will not profit A lot of players start playing MvM in hopes of turning a… [Continue Reading]

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Retrospective 2, or what little I saw of it…

Retrospective 2 is a TF2 tournament, more like one we’d recognise, with eliminations and things like that. Normally, I see all these things advertised on the News section of the Team Fortress 2 website and I don’t honestly pay much attention to them. They’re tournaments I’m not skilled enough to play in, or they’re LANs which I’ll never be able to play in, or it’s an announcement about ETF2L. That’s pretty much it. I wouldn’t have given Retrospective 2 any further thought if it wasn’t for W0lk, the SPUF 6v6 roamer and 4v4… thing… asking me about it. You see,… [Continue Reading]

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Breaking TF2 in a different game mode

Mannpower always attempted to screw over any sense of balance, particularly class-based. Most games are generally decided by who can get the best powerups first, with little hope for one team once things get steamrolling. Alternatively, things just grind to a halt while everyone goes around killing each other. Most people think the game mode is rather unbalanced and all that. It’s pure chaos, even more so than normal TF2. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Not when we already HAD a chaotic, nonsensical, semi-finished game mode already available. The last few years, Halloween has brought us fun… [Continue Reading]

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Maybe we do need deathmatching after all?

Team Fortress 2 has a LOT of game modes, not all of them successful. Territory Control, Arena, Special Delivery, Medieval, all rather tired and ignored, lacking in maps or players or both, while King of the Hill, Capture the Flag and Attack/Defense flourish. 5CP and Payload play along, trailing behind slightly. The most popular servers around have always been 24/7 Dustbowl or Teufort or something like that. Why? Because we all really like deathmatching. That’s the one thing Team Fortress 2 has never really had – a pure killing game mode. While every single game mode requires you to kill… [Continue Reading]

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Fighting Back against those Metal Bastards!

Mann VS Machine is nice. It’s a twist on normal gameplay, where you can make yourself an ultra strong monster of a mercenary, while defending a hole in the ground from a horde of robot monsters. Normally, you’re defending a control point from the enemy mercenary team, who are approximately the same strength as you, unless you’ve gone and stacked 7 sentries and a bunch of Demomen on Snakewater Last. The thing is though, Mann VS Machine is RED defending from BLU, because Gray’s robot army is weirdly tinted blue. So where is our game mode where BLU attacks RED,… [Continue Reading]

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Why is this still a thing? – Mannpower

Hands up if you play Mannpower. Come on! Don’t be shy! Hm. Not a lot of you. But I’m sure if we check the server browser, we’ll fine loads of people playing Mannpower! Huh. Lots of people playing cp_orange, that’s a bit like Mannpower, what with its homing rockets and perma-crits, right? Um. No, apparently not. According to my server browser right now, there are only 10 not-empty Mannpower servers. Compared to the twenty five or so 2fort servers. Not looking good. The previous beta game modes, pl_cactuscanyon and rd_asteroid may have had similar numbers. But Asteroid genuinely brought something… [Continue Reading]

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Less and Less Sure about 4v4

So, the more I play 4v4, the less and less sure I feel about it. This isn’t because of my two recent losses, no. I played a random 4v4 lobby and did really well. It’s the game mode. It really is. There is something off about 4v4 that 6v6 and Highlander both seem to have. And the pressure… The pressure… 4v4 has always been a much more deathmatch-centric game mode. It’s all about keeping yourself alive and the enemy dead for as long as possible. But you have to keep everyone alive. Losing one person, even just a Scout, is… [Continue Reading]

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Medic’s Fourth Ever Competitive Match – Things Get Exciting!

So yes, this time, I actually have something to report! An actual close match! This one was really close, and at one point it looked like it was all over for us. A quick note first. The last two games, I didn’t really go into detail. Not because we lost, not at all. It’s just there’s not much to write about when you get steam rolled. And admittedly, if it wasn’t for the excitement of my first ever match, I wouldn’t have written about Stallone either. Anyway, let’s get started! The map this time was Maple Ridge, a KOTH map,… [Continue Reading]

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Medic’s Second Ever 4v4 Match – The struggles of coordination

So, I just finished my second ever 4v4 match and, unlike last time, it was horrible. Confusion unfortunately disappeared 10 minutes before the game, leaving me to arrange anything. Yes, get the person who’s never played competitive to organise everything. At the same time, the serveme.tf server we had was glitching out and refusing to load configs and constantly disconnecting. But the actual story starts earlier in the week. You see, we planned to do some scrims, practice matches. But every match we scheduled was cancelled. We were supposed to scrim before the match, but the other team cancelled. Morale… [Continue Reading]

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CTF, a fun gamemode or the paradise of engineers, snipers and scouts

Okay, now I am gonna talk about CTF. CTF AKA Capture-the-flag is one of the most frequently criticized gamemodes in this game. But I try to argue that it actually is quite fun. Some arguments I hear about CTF not being fun: 1. It is either an steamroll or a camp-fest: Well that is a point I can’t really argue against, as it really depends whether the enemy team fortified their intel room with sentries or not. But for the steamroll argument I just have to say no. I do not understand why people say that steamroll-ability is bad. Yeah, I… [Continue Reading]

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