Month: December 2013

Some strategies for Jailbreak mode

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For those of you who don’t know this game mode, Jailbreak is a psychological experiment disguised as a TF2 game. There are no respawns, and it requires custom specialized maps designed for the mode. Most of the server plays as RED, and begins the round drained of all ammo and clip. The BLU team consists of a few guards and a Warden, who have allcrits. The Warden must order the prisoners around, using his guards’ superior firepower to enforce control, and get them to participate in mini-games, where the players who lose the mini-games often die. When a single RED player is left, they are considered to have won the round, and are granted a “last request”, which carries over to the next round (for example, “next round we play the Soccer mini-game,” “next round I want the freedom to run around and ignore this song and dance,” or “right now I want all the guards to play Nine Square until they’re dead.” That’s it, there’s not much to the game.

UNLESS the prisoners decide to rebel. If anyone can survive long enough to reach the armory, they can refill their ammunition and get working weapons again. If the rebelling RED players can kill all the BLU players, they win in a much more satisfying way.

After a decent amount of playing this mode a few months ago, I’ve found some strategies that work pretty well.

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November 31st to December 6th

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2010 and 2011 were the big years this week. In 2010, Valve took efforts to fix some problems with players bypassing restrictions on building construction and destruction using the console. Until now, Engineers could immediately destruct sapped buildings and spies could destroy their sappers, as encapsulated in this great video: Fun fact: This happens because the game considers the sapper a building. This is why it’s immune to critical hits (a crit wrench does not remove it in one hit) and why the Homewrecker deals double damage to sappers (and does remove it in one hit) In 2011 Valve added… [Continue Reading]

8v8 Highlander Medieval Tournament with Non-Medieval Maps

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THE TIME: Saturday December 14 at 6pm GMT THE PLACE: SPUF Regular server Who doesn’t love Medieval Mode? I love Medieval Mode. I just get tired of DeGrootKeep after a while. So, this tournament is going to involve non-medieval maps played with Medieval mode enabled! (The theme is “Maps ruined by mini-sentries”) Current Map rotation: koth_king, sd_doomsday, and for the tiebreaker/fun round plr_hightower_event (for those of you who’ve wanted to try Medieval with spells ;). After that we’ll be taking requests for other maps the participants might want to play. More information: -There will be 8 players per team -All… [Continue Reading]

(Blog Posts about Strange Parts: 2)

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Smissmas is coming. *badum tss*

And if you don’t remember the previous Strange Parts Post, clickity.

First Archimedes,now Foppish. My past self was really lucky when he chose his Medic cosmetics. Pixel art obtained from g
First Archimedes, now Foppish. aabicus’ past self was really lucky when he chose his favorite Medic cosmetics. Pixel art obtained from AG’s Pixelize Yourself.

I’m a Strange Item fanatic. I love showing off how many kills I’ve got with this weapon or that one. Or recently, how many points I have with this and that class (“InstaCakes is credit to team!”) and in general (Strange Speks!).

So I was thinking: Some weapons aren’t Strange yet. Some are Strange Festive, but not plain Strange (Buff Banner! Sandvich!). Some are Strange and deserve to be Festive (I WANT A STRANGE FESTIVE SHOTGUN!). And then there are cool ideas for Strange Parts that no-one has thought of yet, and Strange Parts everyone has thought of but not added. For example, why is there a “Robot Spies Destroyed” part and “Cloaked Spies Killed” part but no plain “Spies Killed” part  but Spies Killed has only been added with the latest update? Why isn’t there a Strange High-Five yet?

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What is this?

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This new column will function as a sort of “Letters to the Editor” section, where readers can submit questions to our staff. In addition, I will use it to announce credit or submission mistakes when they are made by The Daily SPUF, so that each author is given the attention and credit they deserve. To submit a question about the blog, TF2, or anything else: simply login, click the +New button, write your question in the title, and provide further information if necessary in the body. Make sure to mark the Category “Dear Aaby” in the upper right-hand category box.… [Continue Reading]

On The Direct Hit

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"Dodge this!"
“Dodge this!”

The Direct Hit can either be the most devastating single-shot rocket launcher unlock or the worst rocket launcher to ever disgrace the battlefield if you can’t place your shots right and want to rely on splash damage. As a Soldier-main who’s retired his first strange Direct Hit for the easier stock rocket launcher after reaching a few hundred kills past Epic Rank, I too can agree that it’s a troublesome weapon to many who don’t know the nature behind using the Direct Hit. But mastering this pesky launcher can pull off some both quantitative and hilarious outcomes.

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Some Tips for TF2 If You’ve Never Played An FPS Before…

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The first First Person Shooter (FPS) I played was Left 4 Dead. But because my computer then was a steaming pile of crap, it took me literally 45 minutes with a frame rate of under 10 frames per second (also FPS) to inch my way across the first level of No Mercy. Amazingly, I did it first time, but I made it to the safe room with a miserable 10 health.

It took a very long time for me to get a good computer and properly understand what it was like to move around in a First Person Shooter. My early adventures in Left 4 Dead just did not compare to what it was truly like. Then again, Garry’s Mod isn’t the best example of a First Person Shooter either. Team Fortress 2 though was still out of the question, as explosions would cause my computer to die…

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Some Quick Fixes To Make The MvM Experience More Fun

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Ever since the Two Cities Update, the face of Mann Versus Machine has been invariably altered. With the obscene buffs the Medic and Soldier received from this update (I’ll complain less about the Medic, because he really needed some love, and now he’s basically indispensable), MvM, for some, has come to an irritating middle-ground, where the older missions, namely Operation Steel Trap (and, to some extent, Gear Grinder. Yeah, remember them? Me neither) have become laughably easy, or something you run through with your friends as six Demoknights for a chuckle, and the newest missions are hair-pullingly difficult. To me, and hopefully at least one of you, this is bogus.

 

"Ahaha! He thinks he can plant the bomb!" "Dude, that's enough. He's only Intermediate, after all."
“Ahaha! He thinks he can plant the bomb!” “Dude, that’s enough. He’s only Intermediate, after all.” Picture by Noble Atomic.

As someone who has sunk a considerable part of their TF2 experience into MvM, I remember the soul-crushing agony of trying to find a match on the night the update dropped, those encounters with blokes who had been on the same Expert Mission server for three hours trying to find a winning team, being a bloke who has been on the same Expert Mission server for three hours, and screaming in unison with the Announcer when an Engineer bot showed up (more on them later). And now, after slaving away at Empire Escalation for as many hours as I once had at Mannslaughter, I realized that, with all these updates to the Medic and Soldier, going back to those missions and still expecting a challenge would be impossible.

That being said, there are things that are positively infuriating about the way MvM currently works that could also make the experience more enjoyable. So, I’m going to propose some changes Valve could make to the way MvM works in order to keep MvM (all MvM) exciting for players at all levels, as well as improve the experience over all.

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The End is Here

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It’s that time of year again… most leagues are finishing up recording another winter season into the record books. Currently ESEA is in its final week of the regular season, UGC is nearly finished with playoffs, ETF2L 6v6 is proceeding with its Premiership playoffs, and ETF2L HL is in the second half of the season. So near the end, I think most can agree… this season has perhaps not been as exciting as it has been. For the ESEA Invite division, the LAN situation has pretty much stabilized… and it’s much less contentious than in previous seasons, with each seed… [Continue Reading]

It’s so good, I never use it…

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Eh... I'll just use my trusty stock Medi Gun again...
Eh… I’ll just use my trusty stock Medi Gun again…

The Kritzkrieg is considered the pinnacle of balance in Team Fortress 2. Many a Medic will go on and on about how it’s perfectly balanced, how it’s useful, how… Oh, I don’t know. Despite how great everyone says the Kritzkrieg is, I just can’t bring myself to use it!

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