I Love My Weapons

Now, this may come as a surprise to you, but TF2 has quite a lot of weapons! I know! Gobsmacking, isn’t it? But TF2 isn’t simply a mere game of murdering the other team with things that kill stuff. It’s a game of murdering the other team with things that kill stuff that you named and fell in love with! TF2 has always been a weird and wonderful game, full of zany characters with more weapons than you could shake a stick at. But it’s one of the few games I’ve ever played where weapons used by thousands upon thousands of players can feel completely unique to you.

Simply by slapping a name and description tag on a weapon, you can make murderous pixels into your murderous pixels. It could be a reflection of your personality, something you like, or your terrible, terrible sense of humour. It’s really up to you. It’s something I’ve always had fun toying with whenever a friend or I get a new weapon to play with. I can happily sit in place, staring at the blinking cursor, trying to come up with a name and description for far too long than could be considered healthy.

Sometimes the name comes to me instantly and other times I will give up and come back to it until I have the eureka moment. With so much character in the game, from lines of dialogue, to body language in taunts, it’s nice to add your own expression to the game and feel you’re adding to it in your own minute way. It can even spawn philosophical discussion among the deepest depths of a Valve server.  There I was, meatshotting an Engie in the stomach, when all of a sudden a message popped up in the chat: “If it has no mouth, how does it bite?” As amusing as it was, it becomes more depressing when you have to explain it to them.

My weapons have gotten laughs from people, others have found comfort in my Medi Gun, but it’s even better to find someone like-minded who has named their stuff. My favourite being an enemy Sniper who owned a Machina named “I Only Bodyshot”. Not only was he brutally honest about his incapabilities of spreading grey matter but he would also publicly apologise every time he accidentally scored a headshot. Then again, not all people see the funny side. One angry man was reported as saying: “F2Ps trying to make their weapon sound like Sniper, fucking sad.” (Grammar dramatically mended for your viewing pleasure. For the record, when asked he said he’d played since 2013. I’ve played TF2 since early 2008.)

Be warned though, it can sometimes have unforseen consequences… Well, kinda. A friend of mine recently acquired a Strange Sniper Rifle and wanted help with a name. I laughed under my breath as he asked what he should name it. “Aimbot.exe” I sniggered jokingly. “And the description?” “For more hacks go to www. mad-aim . com”. “Done.” Amazed he’d even gone ahead with it so quickly, we jumped into a match at random and started using it.

Of course, as luck would have it, he gets a flying headshot on a double jumping Scout mere moments after joining the server. The Scout immediately declares him a hacker, even going as far as saying he has “proof”. When I confronted him about this “proof”, he declared with pride his flawless deduction. The Sniper Rifle name. Unfortunately, I was laughing so hard I couldn’t see for tears and failed to defend my friend as he was mercilessly kicked from the server for the first time in his history of TF2.

Finally, I’d like to end this with the new additions to my weapon family! After much time practicing rocket jumping and murdering bots (So, so many bots…) I’ve got myself these two beauties to help me when I finally play Soldier online. (Cheers for giving these back to me when I briefly ragequit Soldier, Crimson!) I had fun coming up with ideas for the Market Gardener but the Direct Hit has me stumped. I’ve been trying to think of something to do with airshots or accuracy. I thought of AA guns but ‘Flak Cannon’ aren’t the words that come to mind when I think of a precision weapon.

Damn, I can’t think of anything. Ah, well. It’s part of the fun. It’s a new day tomorrow, the earth keeps turning and Abby loves being nude. What’s new? I’ll sleep on it… The weapon name ideas, not Abby. “The Daily SPUF – Precise and to the point!”? Eh, who knows… Leave a suggestion if you like!