Tactical Advantages You Can Gain with Weapon Skins

In the spirit of my old series where I cover all sorts of tiny aspects of Team Fortress 2 and the ways you can gain tactical advantages from them, I think the time is ripe to cover one of the more controversial cosmetic elements added to our favorite shooter. Cosmetic weapon skins have slowly spread across the Steam FPS industry like a plague, with Counter-Strike Global Offensive being patient zero, and for the most part their only function is to make an otherwise respectable weapon look garish or possibly badass. But is there a way to use them to your advantage? Of course… [Continue Reading]

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M1014 – The Ubiquitous Shotgun

I’ve written two articles on several guns that make very frequent appearances in games I enjoy playing: The SCAR rifle and the Mac-10 SMG. This almost requires that I write third third article on the final member of the triumvirate: The M1014 shotgun. (We’re not counting the AK47, its popular enough that nobody’s surprised it appears in every game ever). In most games, the M1014 fills the role of the balanced upper-tier shotgun; there’s nothing wrong with it in particular, but some other gun might trump it in certain stats. In the original Counter-Strike, the XM1014 was one of only two shotguns… [Continue Reading]

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Mac-10 & Cheese

Recently I talked about my brother’s primary weapon in his airsoft loadout, the SCAR rifle. His backup weapon is the Mac-10 SMG, which has an equally-illustrious career in video game history: The MAC-10 is an extremely compact submachine gun capable of spraying a truly devastating stream of bullets in a very inaccurate cone. This is not a sharpshooter’s weapon. Because of its high damage and compact frame, it has a reputation for being a criminal weapon, often appearing in the hands of villainous, poor or seedy factions. Left 4 Dead 2 factored this into the weapon’s design according to the developer’s commentary, which… [Continue Reading]

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SCARs of War

As mentioned in this video, I recently moved from Texas to California. This has given me some quality time to reconnect with my family members who live on the West Coast. In particular, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my younger brother, who I have loads of memories growing up with but he was a little young to really remember me. While showing me his hobbies and life focuses, he revealed that he plays airsoft, and showed me his primary weapon: I was pretty surprised that the SCAR rifle found a way to once again sneak into my life,… [Continue Reading]

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Why Killing Floor 2 Isn’t Actually a Beta

I’ve been avoiding writing this article on Killing Floor 2, because I’ve already made it quite clear that I’m disappointed in the game and its developers. There’s not much to be gained from just ragging on something over and over, and I’m only giving them further undeserved attention. But since I made a video on their Versus mode, I needed a tie-in article, and I figured I’d cover probably my biggest gripe with the game: Tripwire marketing it as an “open beta.” A beta is an unfinished version of a product that the developers are working on completing, and I’ll grant that… [Continue Reading]

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My Favorite Gun in Various Horde Games (That Nobody Uses)

Maybe it’s just due to my desire to step outside of my comfort zone, but for some reason I often find myself gravitating toward guns that don’t fit the established meta of multiplayer games. Games like the ones on this list aren’t exactly well-known for their weapon customization and yet in each case my favorite gun turns out to be something customized in a way that makes it completely unused by the majority of players. So I thought I’d take a moment to argue a case for my favorite guns in some popular horde mode games on Steam. 1. The laser-sighted silenced… [Continue Reading]

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Killing Floor 2 Disappoints Again

Tripwire has announced that its upcoming content pack will include a crates and keys system completely lifted from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a move that is becoming increasingly popular with similar models now existing within Payday 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2. As you play you’ll receive cosmetics (that you can sell on the Steam Community Market) and crates (that you can open by buying keys). Said cosmetics come in six shades of rarity (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Exceptional, Master Crafted, and Precious) and while they’re currently cosmetic-only, Tripwire says: “In the future we may be adding weapons with new gameplay for sale, but this will appear in… [Continue Reading]

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Killing Floor 2: Now With More Fire and Stuff Blowing Up

I’m going to be honest, I’ve been pretty ticked at Tripwire. Ever since Killing Floor 2 was first released in Early Access back in April, Tripwire had succeeded in adding a single map and no other game-changing alterations for over four months. I hate to be one of those people who clamor for new content, but when a game is released into beta you kinda expect additions and stuff since the whole point of a beta is to allow the devs to change and tweak content without worrying about needing to commit to anything. Even the graphs where they reminded everyone that developing new content takes… [Continue Reading]

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Game Design: Differentiating Your Baddies

First-Person Shooters do a great job of naming all the guns. Whether borrowing real-world names like “M14” in the name of accuracy, generic names like “sawed-off-shotgun” in the name of clarity, or custom names like “Klobb” in the name of uniqueness, I can’t think of a single instance where I was disappointed in the dev’s firearm naming efforts. But this satisfaction does not always transfer to their naming of the things being shot. In a way, I think it’s almost more important that the bad guy units in a shooter be given decent names, especially if the devs are hoping a… [Continue Reading]

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Flooricide

Killing Floor 2 came out recently, and I’ve taken the opportunity to take my first steps into the Killing Floor franchise. For someone who’s spent a significant amount of my gaming time perfecting my ability and understanding of Left 4 Dead 2 and Payday:The Heist, it’s a bit odd for me to avoid the third member of Steam’s horde-based co-op triumvirate. But I’d never liked how the objective was literally killing the zombies (or Zeds, to be politically correct.) I prefer my enemies to be an obstacle preventing me from achieving a more global objective, like reaching the next safe room or breaking… [Continue Reading]

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