aabicus

I write articles! I also make games, release videos, voice act and lots of other cool things.

There Once Was a Caber from Ullapool

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Whose explosion was quite unbelievable With a loud angry bang It’d throw off Sniper’s aim By removing his head from his clavicles Now that Valve has, in their infinite wisdom, removed the ability of the stock bottle to shatter on a critical hit, the Ullapool Caber remains the only TF2 melee that is actually a bottomless supply of identical melee weapons as opposed to a unique item. It’s also a point of contention among the sub genre of TF2 players who enjoy going on SPUf and criticizing the game’s balance. For some reason they aren’t too hot on a melee weapon that deals… [Continue Reading]

The Plight of These Pestilential Pumpkin Presents

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Halloween is back! As Valve recently announced, all five of the previous Halloween events are playable! (I’m not sure why that’s news, they always make the old Halloweens playable, but it’s still appreciated.) However, as much as I want to get into the Halloween spirit, the one thought plaguing my mind is, “Are those darn presents going to screw me over again?” Most of the old Halloween maps come with presents that grant the player who picks it up some sort of event-restricted cosmetic reward. And that’s about all that’s remained consistent over the years, except for the number of… [Continue Reading]

TF2 receives first new Normal Quality item since 2007

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I can’t be the only one who thinks there’s something elegantly ground-breaking in that simple, simple change during today’s double-update. To quote directly from the update notes: “Made the Spellbook Magazine a base action slot item for players to equip and use when playing on a server that uses Halloween Spells” For gameplay, this means that if you join a server that has spells enabled (which can be any server thanks to a new cvar, but also plr_hightower_event by default) and your action slot is empty, it’s autofilled with this: A very minor change, at the moment almost inconsequential. Valve clearly… [Continue Reading]

Straight Downgrades? In my TF2?

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Weapons that are just worse than their stock counterparts. Not strictly worse like the Big Earner, where the upsides aren’t worth the cost to equip, but literally worse, as in there aren’t any upsides to begin with. Once in a blue moon somebody on SPUF asks for these, and it’s always seen as a bit odd. There are two main flavors to the argument for adding these; the first is that they’d serve as a sort of handicap in situations where a player wants to limit themselves, either for training purposes or when playing with friends who are of a considerably lower… [Continue Reading]

Straight Upgrades? In my TF2?

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Weapons with literally no downside. I’m not talking weapons like the Wrangler, where the downsides exist but are negligible in comparison to the upsides (indeed, sometimes the only downside is “you don’t have the stock weapon it replaces.”) I’m talking weapons that literally just don’t have downsides and are just better then their stock equivalent. Not counting ones caused by bugs or bad coding, there have only ever been three straight upgrades added to TF2, and one has since been rebalanced. The Amputator on release granted the healing taunt for free before being changed (for the better in my opinion)… [Continue Reading]

How to Get Random Critical posts on SPUF

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Are you one of those TF2 SPUFers who discuss TF2 despite not actually playing the game anymore? Or perhaps you still play TF2, but you miss the wonder of random criticals when on SPUF and not playing the game. Well, does SPUFer Thorisoka have the plugin for you! If you install this, then whenever you read SPUF threads, you’ll occasionally come across flashy CRITICAL POSTS. These posts are red-bordered and you’re not allowed to disagree with them. The downside is you’re literally not allowed to rep critical posts, because they’re shameful and the poster should feel bad (but if you really, really want to,… [Continue Reading]

Simple ways Valve could improve offline mode

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The offline bots will always make me smile. They have an earnest determination that really makes it seem like they’re trying their hardest to be the best teammates possible. Not that they’ll ever realize that dream, but good on them for trying. However, as numerous people throughout the years have noted, Valve has restricted them to stock-only for the duration of their existence, and any justifications for this restriction have slowly eroded as TF2 has evolved. Itemtest lets you equip a puppet bot with a number of working unlocks like Bonk! and Mann Vs. Machine bots use unlocks all the time.… [Continue Reading]

Four Things You Can’t Do With the Syringe Gun

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Recently I wrote an article on Four Things You Can’t do With The Crusader’s Crossbow, because the crossbow is amazing and complicated and lends itself well to causing exploits and that sort of thing. But the design of the Syringe Gun is no slouch in that regard either. Face it; we Medics have a pretty complicated and unique primary with those rapid-fire hitscan projectiles, and that’s caused some trouble for Valve in the past. Here are some things that have been deemed Too Awesome for the poor syringe gun: 1. You can’t boost teammates on a sea of needles. The most… [Continue Reading]

Making Strange Filters Work For You

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Strange Filters were integrated poorly. I know of nobody who disagrees with this. They should have been like strange parts, adding a prefix and a subcounter showing how many kills you’ve gotten on a single map. Lobotomizing the actual function of the strange weapon on 99% of maps is not the way to get people to buy them. This article by Brokkoli makes a good case for strange filters by pointing out that it makes your weapon truly unique. Indeed, you are unlikely to ever see a Strange Rigid Market Gardener for the rest of your TF2 career, assuming you made… [Continue Reading]

On Stealth

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Stealth and Shooters have always been strange bedfellows ever since they first met. On one hand the genres don’t appear to mesh well, what with your standard FPS starring a one-man army who plows through hundreds of mooks with an ever-increasing assortment of deadly weapons, and stealth involving slow, laborious sneaking past individual guards and relying on not making sound or setting off alarms. On the other hand, that’s exactly why stealth games have a dedicated niche fanbase, exactly because it goes against the conventions of the genre and uses the core elements of an FPS in a creative new… [Continue Reading]