Conga Contagion

Well, who would have thought that a bunch of new taunts would have gotten people so excited? Actually, I take that back, the taunts were hinted at ever since we got that gif animation of an Engineer sitting in a chair drinking beer. That taunt is now in the game, alongside a bunch of other class-based taunts, all of which can be bought in the Mann Co. store or unboxed via the reel crates (which are actually rather uncommon). Among these taunts, there are single, class-based ones, like the aforementioned Engineer one and the lovely Buy A Life taunt for… [Continue Reading]

The Phlogisticast

I’m selling my soul for advertising again but it’s for a good reason, really! You know that guy Dekky who’s been providing newbie-friendly articles around here? Well, he’s starting up a newbie-friendly podcast too! It’s also vaguely related to SPUF because I dunno, we all kinda wanted a SPUF podcast and we never got around to it. But with serial lurker Dekky, we might finally get one. And the best bit is that I’m in it, so you can all totally hear my horrible, completely-not-German-in-the-slightest, worryingly-not-Medic’s-gender voice. Oh, and you also get to hear the wonderful voices of Dekky and… [Continue Reading]

The Sticky Launcher Nerf got reverted

So it seems that some people listen after all. There’s always been hysteria over the Demoman and his stickies, ever since he’s been able to explode them before they touched the ground. Some think he’s fine, some want him altered a bit, some want him nerfed, some want him nerfed into the ground, some want Demoman’s head on a pike and some people want him removed completely. Alright, we’re not going to get the last two, but discussion is a good thing. The problem is, which side of an argument do you take? In this case, Valve tried taking the… [Continue Reading]

The Air Strike – The Mother of All Snowballing

What happens if you push a snowball down a hill? It gets bigger the further down it goes. In theory. Snowballing is used similarly in video games, particularly the idea that once someone has started getting strong, they get stronger and stronger and stronger. And stronger. Almost to the point where there’s no stopping them. This phenomenon is something most often seen in RTS and MOBA games but snowballing has never really been that big an issue in Team Fortress 2. Enter the Air Strike. A quick look at the stats. In exchange for a much faster firing speed while… [Continue Reading]

A couple of useful sites…

For a change, I thought I’d do something different and sell my soul and advertise a few things point out some useful sites for TF2 players to use. Everyone’s heard about the official Team Fortress 2 Wiki, which I will not shorten to TF2Wiki so you don’t get the wrong idea, but there’s a billion other useful sites around. Today, I’m going to point out four of them. Gamebanana – tf2.gamebanana.com Gamebanana is heaven if you want to customize your game in any way. It’s got the majority of skins, textures and all sorts for pretty much every moddable game in… [Continue Reading]

Are Unusuals Worth It?

The scenario is simple. You’ve just acquired your very first unusual. Or maybe it’s your second unusual. Or your third. Whatever. The point is, was it worth all the effort trying to get an unusual hat? Or is it all pointless? Let’s start from the beginning. There are only a few ways in which you can acquire an unusual hat. The first and technically the simplest way is to unbox an unusual, with that one-in-one-hundred chance to get something worth more than the key used to open it. Of course, this is a rare occurrence and it’s the only source… [Continue Reading]

IT’S ALIVE!

It’s here. I’m late, I know. I think everyone expected the update to be much longer, like 3 days or so, instead of 2 days. Oh well, here’s all the fancy stuff from this update.   Love & War Update Added 5 new weapons, 15 new taunts, and 43 cosmetic items for the Love & War update Partner Taunts can now be performed with the opposing team Added a new Taunt Loadout with 8 slots so multiple taunts can be equipped at the same time Taunts are no longer equipped in the Action Slot Pressing the Taunt key in game… [Continue Reading]

Expiration Date – The longest TF2 short to date

So, it turns out that we are getting an update. It’s called the Love and War Update and it’s a multiday one, the sort of update we haven’t had in a while! Although, to be fair, this is the first big update we’ve had in a while anyway. The star of the first day of the update though was the 15 minute long (alright, 14 minutes and 59 seconds) Team Fortress short Expiration Date, featuring all our favourite mercenaries and the lovely Miss Pauling. I’ll give you a brief talk over what happened, with some of my own comments, after… [Continue Reading]

Tick Tock.

Click naow. Admittedly, I don’t know what this is, since I’ll probably be asleep. What will it be? Bread? Trains? Moons? Moon bases? Train breads? Bread moon trains? Who knows? Either way, it’s a countdown and we’re all hyped! Here’s a few things to think about as this timer counts down: What is it? Will it be good? How many bugs will this possibly introduce? How many threads will there be on SPUF? New weapons? New game mode? Is Team Fortress Classic related to this? Bread?

Art Time with Medic – How to draw a Pyro

Hello, peeps! Today, as you can see from all the slightly creepy pictures, we will be drawing a simple Pyro. You can use pretty much any art program to do this, you don’t need to shell out for a legitimate copy of Photoshop (although Adobe doesn’t deserve money for what they did with the CS collection) or anything. MS paint isn’t very nice, but there are loads of free or cheap tools. My better-artist-than-me sister recommends PaintTool Sai. Anyway, let’s get started! Start off with two circles. They’re the eyes. Normally I’d do a rough sketch of how the body… [Continue Reading]