Merry Smissmas Everyone

It’s that time of year again. It’s Smissmas. “Medic, don’t you mean Christmas?” No, I mean Smissmas. It’s just like Christmas except it’s a silly version taken straight out of Team Fortress 2. Now, I haven’t played Team Fortress 2 properly in a long time. Due to being a Medic main and the average player not really understanding a Medic’s limitations, I kinda drifted away and started playing games where I didn’t need to worry about others keeping my character safe. The lack of decent Team Fortress 2 updates with anything actually in them put me off entirely, especially since these days, every update is just hats and the odd map, all made by the community.

But Team Fortress 2’s Smissmas, in my eyes, was always a pretty interesting spin when it comes to holiday festivities. Most games have some sort of warm, calm tone when it comes to Christmas. For example, Warframe doesn’t have specific festivities, but they do have Tennobaum, where players send each other gifts and the developers donate to charity. League of Legends, back when I used to play it, always had a silly, lighthearted event with a silly game mode or two, but everyone would always take it too seriously. Team Fortress 2 on the other hand… well that’s… slightly different.

I mean, they have all the normal stuff, like Santa delivering gifts and things like that. They even have “Santa training facilities”. Which BLU once blew up. Most Christmas stuff is perfectly normal in the Team Fortress 2 universe. But at the same time, they have Australian Christmas. In which an old guy called Old Nick, riding in a sled pulled by Kangaroos with antlers tied to their heads, comes and steals children to work in his workshop. Because… why not, I guess? Although Old Nick didn’t last too long as a character, since BLU Spy convinced a kid to stab Old Nick in the neck with a sharp icicle.

So yeah, Team Fortress 2 is a pretty stark contrast to other games. Or at least, it used to be. These days, Team Fortress 2 gets very little in terms of Smissmas stuff and absolutely nothing in terms of lore. Basically, TF2’s lore has been dead for years. All we get now are some cosmetics and maybe a snowy map or two. Sure, previous winter updates have been pretty badly received (the End of the Line update drew a lot of ire, but then again that was back in 2014) but at least that was a community update that tried. Now you can guess easily what we’ll get.

I suppose at least we always get a stocking stuffer every year, with some random weapons, a giftapult (that always ends up sending a random gift to some bot or alternate account) and a nice can of paint. Originally these stocking stuffers had keys in them too (just the one key) but that doesn’t happen any more. Probably because people made a billion alt accounts so they could get their free key. Alt accounts are why we can’t have nice things.

Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and that you get to take some time off and relax a little bit. Have a great day, everyone!