Straight Downgrades? In my TF2?

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]

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Scream Fortress needs to be scarier.

I have to give the blog and update writers for Team Fortress 2 a lot of credit. Whoever these people are, they are amazing. They rarely fail to amuse, except when they joke that an already very late comic was actually early and the next one won’t be until next year. It’s always full of amusing jokes and all sorts of strange references. The Saxxy Awards for example mentioned Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: Winter Soldier. And of course, when Scream Fortress comes around, the poor writers try their best to make it all seem spooky. Except it’s… [Continue Reading]

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Straight Upgrades? In my TF2?

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]

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The Rise of Mun-Dee

Blood in the Water is an awesome comic, whether it was six months late or early. Its accompanying blog post on the TF website reads, “This double-sized monster has got it all, folks! All the action! All the words we know! 113 pulse-crushing, revelation-choked pages!” They weren’t kidding. Perhaps the chokingest revelation of all, the one I’d like to comment on today, concerns the identity of the TF2 Sniper. For years he’s been scoring those headshots with his trusty rifle or bow. He’s been throwing insults and his own urine around in vast measures. He’s been the bane of many… [Continue Reading]

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How to Get Random Critical posts on SPUF

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]

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Art Time With Medic: How To Draw Raccoonicorn

Wowee, it’s been a while since I did one of these. But since I have no idea what I am doing or anything like that, plus I am running out of ideas that are new and nice, I decided to do a quick one of these articles. Oh well. Anyway, you all remember Sketchtoy, a site that lets you draw stuff then give the link to other people, who can then watch as you draw it? Well that’s what I’ve used in today’s article. I was going to use Illustrator, but that’s a bloody expensive program and teaching you all… [Continue Reading]

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Making new players stick around a bit more

Team Fortress 2 isn’t as popular as it used to be. For the longest of times, it sat happily at the top of the most played games right now list on Steam, grinning like a lunatic. Now? Not so much. Both Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have overtaken Team Fortress 2. They basically tripped it up and kicked it in the bollocks. Dota 2 is strong because of the HUGE fan base that already existed, plus cosmetics plus a competitive environment. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive builds off the popularity of the previous games and is a more modern shooter that… [Continue Reading]

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A Particularly Pudding-Filled Story

This may or may not be part of a series. So you may want to read this first, then this. Then this one.   Things had been quiet around BLU’s headquarters for a while, but it wasn’t until the machine disappeared that it got really quiet. Spy though enjoyed the quiet and detested the machine. It had a name, but Spy refused to use it. Yes, it had been insanely helpful, keeping robots and REDs at bay for months at a time just by thinking about it, and yes, before it mysteriously disappeared, it did help Engineer and Medic build a giant cannon… [Continue Reading]

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Simple ways Valve could improve offline mode

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]

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PhlogistiCast updates: 2014 Saxxies and the fourth TF2 comic!

  Some say that one day at Valve is six years for the rest of us. Some blame this temporal distortion for the delay of certain games and DLC. Some have feared the PhlogistiCast has also defected to Valve Time. I am here to put your fears to rest. It’s not true. What proof do you need, besides two videos in one weekend?! That’s right, we’ve got two thrilling news videos up on our channel and waiting for your views! In the first I ask Nethero, esteemed SFM expert, about the 2014 Saxxy winners and his own experiences with the… [Continue Reading]

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