aabicus – Page 51 – The Daily SPUF

Prof. NiceHeart’s Guide to SMG Sniper

February 7, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments advice, Highlander, interview, loadout, sniper, weapon

Prof. NiceHeart was a short-lived SPUFer who got himself banned when someone realized he was an alt of Dr. EvilBrain, a prominent user who got himself banned for creating the shortest-lived itsurblog in history following the messy closure of the original. NiceHeart’s other claim to fame was being SPUF’s resident SMG-maining Sniper, and recently he set some time aside to advise others on how to improve at this oft-maligned subclass. One final note: At the time this interview was done, the Cleaner’s Carbine had these stats. Welcome! Tell us a bit about yourself. I’m Professor NiceHeart and I main Sniper for pubstomping,… [Continue Reading]

Questions to the Editors

2 Kill 2 Mockingbirds

February 4, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments announcement, history, story

Harper Lee is publishing a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird! You know, that book you read in high school along with stuff from Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare and a bunch of other dead writers? The fact that the author is still alive is as much a surprise as the announcement that she’s publishing her second book ever. Go Set a Watchmen has something of a legacy to live up to, what with its prequel winning every literary prize known to mankind, and earning its author numerous honorary degrees, the National Medal of Arts and a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to… [Continue Reading]

Featured

What happens on cp_orange…

January 29, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, balance, maps

cp_orange_x3 might just be my favorite custom map in all of TF2, for entirely the wrong reasons. It was there for me, man. From the beginning. And it’s always been there for me. cp_orange_3’s immortal popularity is no surprise to me; it’s a memory featherwight. You can play it on anything. For two months after graduating college I lived in a 125-square foot apartment with two roommates in San Francisco. I didn’t even have room for a desktop, I could only use my laptop on my bed and steal internet from the hotel next door. The only map I could play… [Continue Reading]

Featured

On Trimping

January 27, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments demoknight, glitches, strategy, TFC, weapon

Trimping is what separates the demoknights from the demoknaves. iReima has a great series where he turns a sword and shield into deadly instruments of ballet that let him put to shame anyone who considers the demoknight an underpowered subclass. Personally I can’t trimp to save my life. It’ll happen on accident a lot, and I mastered the minor ability to land on slopes and negate fall damage, but I use that in my sticky-jumping instead. I don’t think it’s much of a secret that when I want to play an advanced mobility class, I bust out the Sticky Jumper… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Passive abilities

January 25, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, demoman, engineer, heavy, loadout, medic, pyro, scout, sniper, soldier, spy, weapon

TF2 doesn’t feel like a game with a lot of passive abilities. There are few obvious ones, such as the scout’s double-jump and the Pyro’s afterburn immunity, but when you look into things, it turns out that almost every class has at least one. First of all, its debatable whether “more than 125 health” counts as a passive ability. Even though its pretty clearly the baseline for TF2, some people might consider speed and health a form of statistics instead of abilities. It’s also debatable whether any ability that requires equipping a weapon would count, like “can remove sappers” or… [Continue Reading]

Community Announcements Featured

In Memory of XYTWO

January 25, 2015 aabicus 1 Comment mourning, SPUF

XYTWO was one of the most recognizable SPUF regulars in the TF2 forums. He participated in conversations serious or silly, long or short, and far as I know he got along well with everyone. He had a fondness for Asian cartoons and he mained Pyro. He was among the top posters in all of the various itsurblogs and he even wrote one of our first guest articles. The two of us had a running gag hailing from the 1st Itsurblog’s D&D session where we’d pretend to have UST for each other. Spycicle has recently informed the forum that XYTWO died… [Continue Reading]

Featured

What was up with those Alien Promos?

January 17, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments cosmetics, criticism, halloween, pyro, scout

Valve did a pretty weird thing with the Alien: Isolation promos, what with those stat-changing qualifiers that relied on Halloween-restricted cosmetics. It was certainly a cool idea, I guess, not that I really got the chance to try them out. I didn’t pre-order the game and they didn’t become tradeable until people had long stopped wearing them. I’m honestly not even sure if it was fair of Valve to release them as promos. They were stat-changing promos, and Valve traditionally doesn’t do that since people (like me) who actually want to try the things out would appreciate a realistic chance of… [Continue Reading]

Featured

The Lost Art of Flagrunning

January 15, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, comparison, game mode, medic, scout, TFC

This article is going to take the same pensive tone of the similarly-themed “The Art of the Backcap“, except whereas backcapping isn’t completely lost, flagrunning by and large is completely absent from TF2 in the game’s current incarnation. It was largely dead from the getgo. Flagrunning is the act of playing with one objective in mind; reaching the enemy’s flag, grabbing it, and getting it as close as you can to your team’s capture zone before you die. It may sound odd for me to claim such a simplistic act is completely gone from TF2 (after all, matches do end… [Continue Reading]

Featured

ProKarting

January 10, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments advice, game mode, strategy

Everyone needs to play more TF2Kart; the devs have added additional maps, powerups, and other cool things since it came out, and I personally can’t stop playing it. On the whole it’s a super simple pick-up game that needs no explanation, but I’ve learned a couple tricks to augment my playing. If you’re ready to take your karting skills to the next level, read on. Tip 1: Jump at the end of boost strips. Air velocity is maintained until you hit the ground again, meaning that you can get the most out of your boosts by being airborne when they… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Team Fortress Classic Should Go Free-to-Play

January 6, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments comparison, request, TFC

Team Fortress Classic, the predecessor to Valve’s most successful multiplayer FPS, has had a pretty decorated history itself. Released in 1999 as a Goldsrc port of the hugely popular Quake mod Team Fortress, it came bundled for free with Half-Life which granted it a large and prospering player base for years, a player base which stayed strong until 2007, when TF2 came out. At around the same time it received a $5 price tag, and as a result the community for this game has dwindled to near nonexistence. Whenever I try to play I can only find two servers that are reliably… [Continue Reading]