MvM at Odoroki’s place
“Hey, Medic? Wanna play MvM?” Every Sunday, I get sent this message. It’s generally from Odoroki. If I don’t reply, there’s often a follow up message from Reima. They send me a request to join their game. Clicking on that request is a scary thing to do. Very scary. You never know what’s going to happen. All you know is that the game mode will be MvM. Somewhat.
You see, Odoroki has his own little server. On it, he does a lot of strange things. Then he invites poor saps like me to test them. And Reima tries to record it, since he records everything with Fraps because he’s weird, only keeping the decent stuff. No demos for Reima. But yes, these strange things are custom MvM waves. Odoroki has entire missions set up, ranging from “eh, that’s somewhat tricky” to “hm, this is pretty difficult” to “damn, this is hard” to “FUCKING HELL MAKE IT STOP PLEASE I BEG OF YOU PLEASE MAKE IT STOP”. Let’s just say, if you see an invite to play MvM, make sure you bring 1. your brain, 2. spare underwear and 3. some lubricant. It’s going to get painful. And.or frustrating. But always fun.
Tactics vary. Having a Scout is good, but not always necessary, since some custom missions do give you ample starting money. You will probably need someone who can delay the bomb, and Pyros, particularly Scorch Shot/Phlog ones, will help a lot, as it’s easy to let smaller bots slip by. Crit resistance later on is always required and resistances in general are an unavoidable purchase. You WILL need someone who can soak up damage though, and Medic projectile shields are exceptionally good at doing this, assuming they don’t randomly stop charging while you heal someone.
Some of the waves seem like the more difficult waves from official missions. Generally with obscure classes like Direct Hit Soldiers, or classes with some sort of hidden side effect. Lucky Soldiers for example use the Airstrike and get crits when they kill someone, but reflect kills will cause Pyros to get crits instead. A not so fun robot is the Giant Loch-N-Load Demoman, who creates sentrybuster-like explosions should it manage to kill someone, rendering everyone blind. Stupid fast giant Scouts appear less often than I expected, since they are among the most frustrating enemies, but giant, rapid-fire Soldiers are ten a penny.
The most terrifying thing though? Demotrucks. You see, Demoman bot AI is actually very weird. Demoman bots have the unique ability to be able to turn no matter what. Even if they’re using the Chargin’ Targe. Coupled with a large amount of health and some of Odoroki’s secret sauce, Demotrucks on their own are nasty. In the giant swarms that Odoroki places them in, you might as well just lay down and die. Or preferably find a nice, high up place, where you pray they can’t reach you with their extended reach. Oh and they almost always have crits on them. When you see them coming over the hills, all you can do is run.
What’s so great about all this is that it teaches you the true meaning of difficult and you realise that Valve’s waves aren’t that great. If you ever thought Mann Up was hard, you haven’t seen Odoroki’s waves. And if you thought the official advanced and expert MvM missions were hard, Odoroki’s missions will make you wish you were back fighting Lieutenant Crits and all those other pansy bosses.
If you see me on a Sunday evening screaming in hysterics, you now know why.