Brand new video game articles, every day!
The main category of the Daily SPUF, containing all sorts of articles from games like Team Fortress 2, Warframe, PAYDAY 2, Left 4 Dead, League of Legends and more!
SPUFblog really likes Medieval Mode. You have plenty of evidence. Even if the gamemode itself is not the most popular one, it is still enough popular that it gets played regularly, and you can pretty much always find a good server where to play (I unluckily can’t say the same for Arena…). And this means you pretty much always have a chance to play the subclass we’re talking about today: The Caberdemo! Or the Handgrenade demo. Caberknight? Democaber? It’s not played that often, and thus people usually just refer to it as “That Demo who is just trying to be annoying”. But the Caberdemo… [Continue Reading]
So. It’s been a long time since July 10th, when this update arrived. With it, Valve sought to rebalance some common staples of TF2 play, and bring some new weapons to the forefront. In those five months… what’s changed? Has Valve done what it set out to do? Did they change the face of public servers forever with their weapon balance?
Well… No.
Oh, hello! Um, what was I talking about? No, I wasn’t sneakily getting high off my Kritzkrieg… Ah, the Otolaryngologist’s Mirror. One of my favourite hats. I love it so much, I own an unusual version of it. But it’s always surprised me that so people like it. I always assumed it was something along the lines of it being old or something, but I just don’t know. Oh well, at least I don’t need to offer my first-born for an unusual one…
With the second itsurblog thread closed, it’s clear to see that there is a major uproar about it. SPUFers, both big-names and the small-names, rise together as one, petitioning for a new subforum and posting up new itsurblogs, either disguised or clearly labeled. However, the few that stand against all of this madness get shut down. I argue for the unpopular position – the position that will certainly cause me some trouble, but such is the way of the minority view. Once a few people thought that the earth rotated around the sun, whereas the majority thought it was the… [Continue Reading]
You read that correctly, this one isn’t an article about TF2, but about the official forum meant for its discussion. No, not the Steam Community User Discussions, I’m referring to SPUF. Or as some may call it, the Steam Powered User Forums, despite the lack of an actual “powered” noun anywhere in the title for the Steam Forums. More specifically, by SPUF, I mean the TF2 section of the Steam Forums, and that distinction is something I’m going to be touching upon in this article. To put it simply, it’s sort of odd that we as a community frequently refer to… [Continue Reading]
Dying is almost always a bad thing in TF2 (indeed, most shooters). You aren’t helping your team while dead, you aren’t having fun while dead, and a good many unlocks are dedicated to keeping the player or his teammates alive. Trying not to die is, for the most part, a pretty good strategy and you’ll go far with it.
So why would you ever want to die? And I don’t mean “Divebomb the enemy medic, caber them, and then who cares if the enemy mows you down”, I’m talking “bind a key to ‘explode’ then press it and explode for no reason.” Here are a few situations:
Scorched earth is a tactic used by militaries where the main goal is to destroy everything useful for the enemy while retreating or advancing (destroying their manufactories, farms, oil fields and stuff like that). If you have participated in kindergarten gang wars, you will spot the similarity with the real thing – if you managed to win a small tackle-fight against your little enemies in their own lair built of wooden bricks, chairs and clothing – you totally wrecked their camp afterwards, victoriously, so they would have to build everything from scratch. You were also a terrible person, but whatever. Scorched Earth is also a fun little game with artillery tanks shooting at each other, but most importantly, it shares a similar name with one of the weapons in TF2 – the Scorch Shot.
Just before the holiday season, Valve shipped some new crates. There is a particular one I’ve looked forward to the most. Crate #77. Not only do you get a chance to unbox the strange Grenade Launcher again (hardcore traders fainting, poor people throwing hands in the air and praising the Lord), you can also get the strange Scorch Shot! I also had the joy of unboxing it right away with my first crate drop, just like I wanted. I could finally use Scorch Shot and force other people to see my kill counter on it when I kill them to death!
Why don’t people use the Scorch Shot more? Because they hate having fun! Well, it deals 50% less damage. Instead of regular flare’s 30 damage, you deal 15 damage. Yes, I know, people want to kill their enemies faster? Pfffft. It is way funnier to watch your enemies burn slow if you’re a Pyro. Things people do when on fire… ehhhh… It also won’t critically wound people on fire like Flare Gun does, but honestly, who cares? I can bounce people all over the map!
Yeah, I know, I can see you all scowling and wanting to hurt me. But let’s face it, the Quick-Fix is in a funny place right now. It’s not underpowered, it’s (dare I say it) overpowered. But instead of just screaming NERF NOW! or IT’S BROKEN KILL IT or all that nonsense, I’m going to take a calm, quiet look at what the issues are, and how we might fix them.
Do you own a Community Weapon? Chances are, probably not. There are only two ways to get one: Be rich and buy a sparkly Lugermorph, or become a respectful upstanding member of the TF2 Community who leaves the game a little better than when he arrived, and wait for Valve to contact you and give you one.
The system is as old as the concept of weapon qualities. Back in the day that Vintage weapons outnumbered Unique weapons, Valve implemented this method of rewarding specific members of the community. But I’m starting to think this procedure could use an update.
The first reason? Strange Weapons. A few days ago I passed time with a fun question: If I could get any Community weapon, what would I get? The first thing that came to mind was my beloved Crusader’s Crossbow, but wait, I have a strange crossbow! I wouldn’t want to stop tracking my kills. As a matter of fact, almost every weapon I love is already in strange form in my backpack. I’d have to pick some nonstrangeable weapon I enjoyed, like Gunboats. But this extreme restrictiveness seemed to dilute the fact that the Community weapon was supposed to be a reward. It should be a 100% Awesome thing to get a Community weapon; I shouldn’t have to bittersweetly choose which of my stranges to retire.
Yeah, another article about a Medic weapon. I write what I know, and I know a lot about Medic weapons. The Amputator is one of them. And like its counterpart, the Crusader’s Crossbow, it’s been messed around a lot lately. But despite what I and a lot of others felt, after using it, I don’t think the new Amputator is as bad as everyone makes out. Let’s have a lookee…