Real Teammates of Genius II

Red Shed Brewers presents Real Teammates of Genius. Today, we salute you, Mister Spawn Gate Sniper Guy. When your teammates need a hero, when they need a man to drag them from the muck and ash, to take that RED defense on head first and attain a righteous victory, who do they turn to? Not the Medic with his false promises of “invulnerability.” Not the Demoman and his slow, inefficient Sticky Launcher. No, they turn to you, Mister Spawn Gate Sniper Guy, oh Sultan of Sharpshooting. When faced with the insurmountable defense of one entire Sentry Gun, you keep a cool… [Continue Reading]

Read more

A look at TF2 from the eyes of a new player

  Today, I chat with a close friend of mine, Dekky, who I introduced to Team Fortress 2. He’s a new player with a soft spot for shooting robots and firing rockets. We were all newbies once… How did you first hear about Team Fortress 2? Hmmm… probably from you Actually you and some other guys on the Budding Writers forum talking about it. AGES ago. Yah. That’s about all I can remember, really.. What was your first impression of the game as it loaded up and you saw the main menu? “Oooooooh, multiplayer!” Yeah. First thing I picked up on. Then… [Continue Reading]

Read more

5 Things you Might Not Know were from Team Fortress Classic

TFC is a simple game, especially compared to its predecessor. Two teams of nine mercenaries grab flags and kill each other, and that’s pretty much it. Contrast that to Team Fortress 2, where I’m hard-pressed to think of anything that hasn’t made it into the game in some fashion. But dig under the surface and there are a couple of things that actually debuted in TFC which you might not know about. Things like: 1) A bunch of popular TF2 maps. This one’s pretty common knowledge, but if you have no experience with TFC you may not know that a… [Continue Reading]

Read more

“Demoknight, Thou Shalt Not Increase Thine Turn Radius”

The balancing eyes of Valve, having recently fixed the first of two ways to increase your shield charge degree, have now gone ahead and nerfed out the ability to bypass the restriction with a controller too. This means that there is no way whatsoever to increase your turning radius beyond equipping the Ali Baba’s Wee Booties, and even then I cannot notice a difference with those things on. This has basically removed what little skill indexing Demoknight has. Many people (myself included) never saw why increased turning ability was somehow overpowered, considering you’re giving up the ludicrously powerful Sticky Launcher… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Why Valve was Justified in the Removal of the Charge-Turn Exploit

It, as hilariously evidenced by the whole Reddit fiasco of April 2013, is quite easy to divide the SPUF community -or quite possibly the TF2 community as a whole. Nothing however, is more effective at this than the change of a long present balance issue. The booties exploit, while I do consider them that, were an exploit so firmly rooted in the balance of Demo-knight as a whole that they could be considered a balance issue. Valve however has done right in removing the charge turning. The issue of allowing exploits like this goes against past principles and actions that… [Continue Reading]

Read more

“Medic takes Bionicle characters and puts them in the roles of TF2 mercenaries”

On the request of a single person, I’m writing this article. For those of you who don’t know, Bionicle was a LEGO franchise that started in 2001 and ended in 2010. The story started off with a bunch of mechanical heroes called Toa, protecting small, child-sized robots called Matoran on an island paradise from all sorts of evil or misguided nasties and evolved into one of the strangest stories around. Enemies include mind-controlled animals, the just-doing-their-job Bohrok and the terrifying, somehow snake-like Rahkshi. Spoiler, the good guys win. For more information, Biosector01 has pretty much everything in it. What if… [Continue Reading]

Read more

A Plea From a Broken Sword

To the Developers of Team Fortress 2 and the player fanbase. Hello. As a figurehead in the Demoknight community (Yes, that’s a thing), I have been vetted by a few other Knight enthusiasts to make an official statement on the status which is our beloved demoknight. It appears the community has gotten mixed responses from the backlash of the changes to the Chargin’ Targe turning bypass involving a joystick. Probably leaning towards positive since our methods of execution were nothing short of exploiting. For a lot of people it was a cheap way to get a kill, the next best… [Continue Reading]

Read more

OhGodPleaseNotBadwaterAgainPleaseNooooo!

Yes, that title is like that on purpose, because that is how I feel when I see Badwater pop up as the next map. I still think that when I see Badwater_Rainy pop up, but not quite as much, as I need to take a few seconds to rebind my swim up and swim down keys. Where does this hatred, where does this fear come from? Well, read on, I’m about to tell you. In my early days of Team Fortress 2, I quickly realized that Teufort is a bad map. I wasn’t so quick to work out that Junction… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Mod Showcase: Randomizer

Welcome back to Mod Showcase. Brickinator here. Today’s article is about Randomizer-  a plugin that combines the carefully crafted and immensely intricate balance system of Team Fortress 2 and defecates all over it. Any sort of tactics or strategy you had for each class has now gone out of the window because, in a Randomizer match, everything is down to chance. Using the word ‘chance’ to describe core multiplayer gameplay is like using the words ‘bloody and viscous’ to describe a urine sample, but Randomizer manages to pull it off. The first thing you need to realise with Randomizer is… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Playing the Sniper Rifle in Team Fortress Classic

Aabicus, don’t you mean “Playing the Sniper”? No, I mean playing the sniper rifle. Because that is your job. Your life. That gun is a battlefield-stomping menace that boasts more flexibility and versatility than anything in Team Fortress 2. I know you think you’ve fought sniper rifles in TF2, but you haven’t fought a gun that can: *Charge and headshot from the hip *Charge-up damage infinitely *deal slowdown on bodyshot that never goes away (unless healed by a medic) *Deal knockback to friendlies, leading to the comical-looking but super useful “Sniper Jumping” technique *Gib on fully-charged headshot But believe it… [Continue Reading]

Read more