Beginner’s Guide to Loadouts in Left 4 Dead 2

It has come to my attention that very few people on TF2 SPUF play Left 4 Dead 2. This is a real shame because the game is very, very fun and in recent months I’ve found it consuming far more of my allotted game time than TF2 does. So I basically thought I’d just write a quick guide detailing two of my favorite loadouts in the hopes that this info might help you if you ever decide to pick the game up. Left 4 Dead 2 has a wonderful array of weaponry, and the best part is that all of it… [Continue Reading]

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Flaring Up

Poor Pyro can’t seem to catch a break. Ever since his Team Fortress Classic days people have derided him as underpowered, unbalanced, gimmicky, over-reliant on newb opponents…the insults are as varied as the tools Valve has bestowed upon the poor unintelligible merc. Plenty of people have written opinions on why Pyro is underpowered (here’s mine) and even more people have written theories on how to fix that problem. Before I go into that, I want to try and sum up some fundamentals that are often brought up. Firstly, Pyro’s short-range emphasis is seen as one of his major problems since… [Continue Reading]

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A Shotgun Update

I adore the Team Fortress 2 shotgun. Sturdy, reliable, and intuitive, it’s the only weapon shared by four different classes and until the BASE Jumper was added, the only weapon to occupy different slots on different classes. I consider the shotgun TF2’s tenth signature weapon due to its ubiquity and recognizability. There is a sort of elegance in the fact that Valve has never added any sort of reskin or retexture for the shotgun. Every player since 2007 who’s wanted to make use of its six-clip buckshot backup has used the same simple gun; no golden, festive or botkiller variants… [Continue Reading]

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Why you should heal Shotgun Heavies

Most gag classes are not getting any sort of love from my Medigun. Trolldiers can go find their health somewhere else. Demoknights usually are in charge of taking care of themselves, what with the medley of health-returning swords at their disposal. Gunspies will get the same treatment as regular spies, i.e. a spritz behind friendly lines or a long-range crossbolt if I have a split-second and line-of-sight. And don’t get me started on so-called combat medics. But shotgun heavies, on the other hand, are always treated by me as lovingly as any other legitimate class, and they can look forward… [Continue Reading]

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On Double- and Single-Barelled Shotguns

Not really TF2-related, but I thought I might take this opportunity to talk about a trend in shooters I’ve noticed. Loads of games seem to like giving you two shotguns, one of which is pretty much twice as good as the other. The Ur-Example is probably Doom II, which introduced as its only new weapon to the franchise a double-barrel shotgun, which was the first weapon in the game to have a clip you had to reload (which really cast an odd light on all the weapons in Doom I, I guess that pistol can carry 200 rounds without having… [Continue Reading]

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Team Fortress Classic Soldier and HWGuy

The ultimate migratory classes for TF2 vets who are first trying the game. I don’t know what much to say about them, they play almost identically to their TF2 counterparts, and if you don’t change your playstyle in the slightest you won’t really go wrong. Here are some generic tips though: 1. Rebind your slot 5 weapon to slot 4. Just a suggestion, it really helped me. In TFC, there are actually 5 weapon slots, but no class uses more than 4 of them. I’ve never really understood the logic by which Valve chose each weapon to link to which… [Continue Reading]

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5 things you may not know about stock weapons

The weapons that have been in the game since it came out in 2007. The oldest things in your backpack. Every player in the game has used them. Could there really be something you don’t know about them at this point? Maybe. Here are some things I didn’t know about several greytext weapons for a surprisingly long time. 1-Sticky Launcher nuances: Holding down right-click lets you charge up a sticky and shoot it really far. You already knew that? Shucks. How about that destroyed (not detonated) stickies leave 1 ammo you can pick up (or extinguish yourself, in the case… [Continue Reading]

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Six Shots

Ah, the Shotgun, everyone’s favourite stock weapon. Last time we covered it, we were talking about Fat Scouts (i.e. Heavies) but this time, we’re talking about Soldiers. Before we start, a little-known fact about me, Soldier is my second most played class, a fact that has been firmly reinforced since I faced a horde of beeping monstrosities. Being the all-rounder that Soldier is, the Shotgun is, in his hands, one of the most powerful tools around, despite the fact that he also has a bloody rocket launcher. But why?

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A guide to Shotgun Heavy

Shotgun Heavy, AKA “Fat Scout”, is a method of playing Heavy by attacking and killing enemies with only your secondary and melee weapons. Not a supremely easy (or even very effective) strategy, it is more for use in the mindset of not entirely caring or messing around. As such, if you are in a situation that you playing Shotgun Heavy is a pure detriment to your team and is causing your team to lose, don’t do it; more, reserve Shotgun Heavy for times when you’re on a team that is good enough to where you can essentially do whatever you… [Continue Reading]

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