Conga Contagion
Well, who would have thought that a bunch of new taunts would have gotten people so excited? Actually, I take that back, the taunts were hinted at ever since we got that gif animation of an Engineer sitting in a chair drinking beer. That taunt is now in the game, alongside a bunch of other class-based taunts, all of which can be bought in the Mann Co. store or unboxed via the reel crates (which are actually rather uncommon). Among these taunts, there are single, class-based ones, like the aforementioned Engineer one and the lovely Buy A Life taunt for Spy (so glad that got added), pair taunts like the Square Dance and Rock Paper Scissors taunts and, finally, the Conga taunt. Unfortunately, there’s still no Sitting Pyro taunt. Shame.
On top of all these lovely taunts, the High Five taunt got an upgrade, and you can now use any of the more-than-one-person taunts with people FROM THE OTHER TEAM!
So yes, you can finally High Five that enemy team mate during Humiliation. Finally. And you can play Rock Paper Scissors with them too, making the loser die horribly if they’re on the enemy team. Since that’s random, perhaps it will replace the game of Spycrabbing when it comes to betting items. You can also dance with or headbutt your team mates and enemies. They all act in similar ways, with a waiting animation for when you’re waiting for someone to join you in your taunt and they have individual animations and voice lines for each class.
The most amusing taunt though is the Conga taunt. It’s on a whole new level of taunting. Instead of having an idle animation and waiting for others to join you, you can start your congaing and other players, friendly or otherwise, can join in whenever they want. The taunt goes on indefinitely, until you exit the taunt, get killed, the round ends, the map changes or the server crashes. But the thing with the Conga taunt is that it’s contagious. When one person starts congaing, ANYONE can join in, it’s not limited to a couple of people. You don’t need to own the Conga taunt to join in, and if the people owning the conga stop congaing, as long as someone’s still dancing, you can carry on dancing to your heart’s content.
The Conga taunt led to a very strange phenomenon on the day of its release. You’d join a server and find everyone congaing. Literally everyone. Earning the 10-man conga achievement was easy. So was the killing congaing people achievement. This curiosity wasn’t just present on trading servers and your average all-crits all-talk, instant-respawn TF2 servers, it was happening on REAL servers. Yes, real servers. It was everywhere. Thankfully, things have calmed down a bit, but still, the conga is still present.
The most unusual side effect though is on players who lack the conga taunt. I unboxed it (with the only key I bought for the event), and I’m not really fussed about congaing, I can do so whenever I want. For someone who lacks the taunt, there’s almost an obsession with not stopping, for fear that you won’t be able to conga again. It’s more like a chain reaction than anything else. Someone who owns the Conga taunt does their thing, starting off a conga. Players who lack the taunt join in. The player who has the taunt gets bored and leaves or dies or does something else, but those who don’t have the taunt will keep on congaing to make sure that someone’s still congaing so they can continue to conga if they so desire. It’s insane!
Thankfully though, this won’t last. It’ll burn itself out.
Hopefully.