aabicus – Page 42 – The Daily SPUF

Persian Persuader’s Not Looking too Peachy…

December 19, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments balance, demoman, melee, nerf, persian, weapon

The Tough Break update was amazing. I love almost all of the balance changes, especially because pretty much every class was buffed in cool ways. Especially my Medic! Holy crap! Ubercharge on Crossbow and Amputator? I’m so excited, except that part of me that fears a complimentary nerf now that those wholly-unneeded buffs were added. Thank god for the alt-fire addition to the Amputator, by the way, now I don’t have to juggle stupidly around with the taunt menus to use my AoE heals. But this article isn’t about Medic. As great as the majority of changes were, the only… [Continue Reading]

Featured

A late look at pass_pinewood

December 15, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments engineer, maps, pass, pass time, scout

I have had a hell of a time finding a decent game of PASS Time recently. There’s currently a bug that allows a single player to crash a Pass Time server, and Valve’s tardiness at fixing this bug is causing the playerbase for this game mode to wither and die. The few times I’ve succeeded, the map either changed immediately to pass_warehouse or somehow was already on pass_warehouse despite what the server browser would have you believe. It is genuinely possible that people just can’t wrap their head around pinewood, because it’s a more advanced map for sure. It takes… [Continue Reading]

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Shotgun heavy is an odd beast

December 13, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, heavy, shotgun

Shotgun heavy is an odd beast. While he’s a valid and viable subclass, he’s also decidedly a joke because he’s forgoing his ultra-powerful minigun. Not to mention his signature weapon, the Family Business, is completely unremarkable, serving only as another basic shotgun with one of the few examples in TF2 of boring stat alterations. But really, because of this Valve is free to do more of the same just because it couldn’t possibly hurt. No heavy shotgun’s coming anywhere near the Sandvich in terms of viability, even if it were a Widowmaker that also healed Heavy for the amount of… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

Killcams and Comp TF2

December 10, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments competitive, death, mechanics, sniper

Killcams are a masterfully-designed element in TF2. As the developer commentary states, killcams were added due to many Team Fortress Classic players having trouble determining who killed them and what they themselves did to get into that lethal situation. By showing you a quick screenshot of your attacker with some subtle “swoosh” effects showing you his rough location, Valve turned every death into a learning experience while simultaneously lessening the chance the killer can keep farming kills from the same location. But I’m wondering if that behavior becomes slightly unbalanced in a competitive setting. When you’ve reached the point that all the… [Continue Reading]

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Secrets and Hidden Content in Left 4 Dead 2

December 4, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments fun, Left 4 Dead 2, Not TF2

Left 4 Dead 2, like any game, has loads of code/assets that ultimately went completely unused. But some of them are accessible via use of console commands (often in conjunction with sv_cheats 1), letting you see and play with cool beta content! 1. Hidden reload for the Hunting rifle. At one point, the hunting rifle had a much more complicated reload before Valve changed it to something shorter and simpler. But you can still accidentally access the older reload by holding a non-inventory item (like a gas can), throwing it with m1 and immediately shoving with m2. No, I have… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Player Solos All Payday the Heist Maps On Hardest Difficulty

November 30, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments announcement, Not TF2, payday, solo

While Payday 2 is certainly the more popular of the two games, Payday the Heist is indisputably harder. With seemingly endless waves of punishing aimbot police officers, the hardest difficulty “Overkill 145+” has remained the domain of only the most skilled teams of heisters. Until now. Yesterday, Signor Tromboncino uploaded his playthrough of No Mercy, completing his playlist of soloing the entire game. For four of the heists he had bots and for the remaining five he was completely alone against the best the Washington PD had to throw at him. His loadout of choice is the Bronco revolver, M308, and Grenade Launcher, though he doesn’t hesitate… [Continue Reading]

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PD2 – Practical Uses for the Hitman Perk Deck

November 28, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments criticism, Filler, Not TF2, payday 2

Before August 2015 there were a lot of perk decks that sucked in Payday 2, but none of them sucked as much as Hitman. The only perk deck in the game with negative consequences for equipping it, and providing only meager armor regeneration bonuses and the ability to dual-wield pistols (but not as well as the Akimbo skill in the Fugitive deck), it’s underwhelming and only used by complete noobs like this guy. Then the Perk Deck rebalance came and Overkill buffed a bunch of weaker decks into truly awesome stuff. The only one they missed was Hitman, meaning there’s… [Continue Reading]

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Killing Floor 2 Disappoints Again

November 25, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments cosmetics, crates, criticism, killing floor, non-tf2

Tripwire has announced that its upcoming content pack will include a crates and keys system completely lifted from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a move that is becoming increasingly popular with similar models now existing within Payday 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2. As you play you’ll receive cosmetics (that you can sell on the Steam Community Market) and crates (that you can open by buying keys). Said cosmetics come in six shades of rarity (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Exceptional, Master Crafted, and Precious) and while they’re currently cosmetic-only, Tripwire says: “In the future we may be adding weapons with new gameplay for sale, but this will appear in… [Continue Reading]

Featured

What if Pyro had a shotgun primary?

November 24, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments pyro, shotgun, suggestion, weapon, yert

This article is dedicated to Yert, one of the winners of the 900th Article raffle. What’s so interesting about the Pyro is that he’s a dedicated short-range class in a midrange game. Flamethrower, Shotgun, and Fire axe are all heavy hitters up close but rapidly run out of steam the further away your opponent is, and that’s kinda weird in a game where most secondaries are designed to fill a niche where the primary weapon is weaker. But that leaves open the tantalizing possibility of replacing the Flamethrower with an incendiary shotgun of some sort. Pyrophoricity Level 1 Incendiary Shotgun… [Continue Reading]

Featured

On Ladders

November 21, 2015January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments criticism, design, mechanics, On Shooters

Abandon all gravity ye who enter here. You think you’ve tackled the toughest foes first-person shooters have to throw you? Do you evaporate bullet sponges, quickscope flying speedsters and melee tanks to death without thinking? Then I present to you the one enemy who doesn’t care. The foe whose only strategy is to use your own weight against you, the foe who can morph the game into a platformer at the worst possible time. Not only is it seemingly impossible for any shooter to make ladders that don’t suck, they also can’t agree on the mechanics. Do you latch on by facing… [Continue Reading]