Rambling on about Minecraft – My way of playing

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I’m genuinely surprised that I haven’t written more Minecraft articles in the past. I used to be an avid Minecraft player, especially back when I started writing for the Daily SPUF, but it’s never really come up. I suppose it’s because everyone has pretty much covered Minecraft elsewhere, plus I wasn’t really doing anything new or innovative like building complex redstone mechanisms or recreating world icons or things like that. I just did what most people were doing, which was survive. That being said, I HAVE recreated CTF_Turbine in Minecraft, on an old creative mode server that no longer exists,… [Continue Reading]

Playing With Other People

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It turns out that most of my life, I’ve been a bit of a lone wolf. Yes, I’m a Medic main, but I don’t really play that much with other people, I’m more likely to play a game on my own and maybe invite people round later. It does depend on the game, but games with other people tend to have a lot of different obstacles to jump over, to the point where I just end up playing alone. Getting the timing right is the big one. There’s people I genuinely enjoy playing with, but they’re never online, or one… [Continue Reading]

Happy Late Birthday, Team Fortress!

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I know I’m late with this, and Team Fortress’s birthday was the 24th of August, but Valve is late with everything so hopefully they forgive me. Anyway, let me get all the fireworks and confetti out of the way… Anyway, back to the actual event itself. Twenty years is a pretty damn long time. Older than my sister, in fact. Yes, Team Fortress is older than my little sister. That… is a worrying thought. It’s a very impressive thing though, that a class-based first person shooter series of games is still around. Despite the fact that the little, Short-Circuit-killable bouncing… [Continue Reading]

M1014 – The Ubiquitous Shotgun

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I’ve written two articles on several guns that make very frequent appearances in games I enjoy playing: The SCAR rifle and the Mac-10 SMG. This almost requires that I write third third article on the final member of the triumvirate: The M1014 shotgun. (We’re not counting the AK47, its popular enough that nobody’s surprised it appears in every game ever). In most games, the M1014 fills the role of the balanced upper-tier shotgun; there’s nothing wrong with it in particular, but some other gun might trump it in certain stats. In the original Counter-Strike, the XM1014 was one of only two shotguns… [Continue Reading]

Poem Day

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According to the billion posts on my Facebook feed from Tearaway Magazine, it’s national poetry day or something. Probably in New Zealand. Really, the only reason I’m linking that is because our former SPUFer and ferocious catsnake Dekky (the guy behind the Phlogisticast and some of the Bionicle articles here) is a writer for Tearaway and he’s a damn good writer himself. Oh and he’s a friend. Anyway, I should probably do some poems or something. But I’m lazy and I generally dislike poetry, so I’m finding poems posted on SPUF about TF2 and are posting them here. Small problem… [Continue Reading]

A Rant About Dawnguard

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I don’t suppose many of you remember the Dawnguard Snipin’ series I did a while back, which concluded back in January, but it was pretty clear that 1. I had played through Skyrim’s vampire-based DLC before and 2. that I clearly went with the Dawnguard and didn’t consider the vampire side at all. I’ve actually played both sides, and I’m considering doing a brand new Skyrim playthrough at some point, including Dawnguard and Dragonborn, but it recently occurred to me just how stupid the Dawnguard storyline is. I did go on about it in Dawnguard Snipin’, but most of those… [Continue Reading]

The Daily SPUF is back!

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Hi everyone and welcome back to the Daily SPUF! After a bumpy week or so, the Daily SPUF is working again! Mostly. I still haven’t worked out how to get featured images working again, but they’re not really needed. Pretty much every picture was saved apart from those uploaded in the last week before blog.spuf.info died, and I’ve managed to save a few of those too. But let’s not worry about a few pictures, let’s bask in the glory of this new theme, and the new shiny stuff and the actual logo and things like that! As you can probably… [Continue Reading]

On Learning How to be a Sniper of Sorts

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I’ve never really been someone who picks the Sniper class in any sort of game. My aim isn’t absolutely horrible because I have been practicing and have finally got my mouse working at speeds I like. But I’m still not really Sniper material. The fast-paced, middle of battle headshottery isn’t part of my skill set yet. I should clarify though. I am not ready to play as a Team Fortress 2 Sniper. TF2’s Sniper is a weirdly weak class when it comes to sniping classes in general, with the inability to score headshots unless scoped in and after a brief… [Continue Reading]

What’s so damn special about Overwatch’s matchmaking?

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I see this all the time. “TF2’s matchmaking sucks! I’m going to play Overwatch because it has better matchmaking!” Anyone who says this isn’t thinking straight. There are legitimate reasons why you might want to play Overwatch, or even play it over Team Fortress 2, but if you’re going because TF2’s casual and competitive matchmaking sucks, then you’re not thinking things through. Here’s a conversation I had with my sister, who is an avid Overwatch fan. “I hate this map.” “Why?” “Too many choke points.” “Can’t you choose what map you want to play?” “Uh, no.” In Overwatch, you can’t… [Continue Reading]

My Favorite Payday 2 Glitches

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Payday 2 is built on an outdated engine and has received years upon years of updates, new content, and balance tweaks. Completely divergent mechanics like flamethrowers, explosives, grenades, vehicles, and weapon skins have found their way into the original relatively-simple gameplay, not to mention an ambitious skill system with infinite combinations of dozens of abilities. This is a prime environment for some completely insane glitches! 5. When the Arkansas Toothpick granted 230 Concealment. I think Overkill meant to buff it from 27 to 30, but forgot to finish deleting the old value. Maximum armor, RPG, and Flamethrower? No problem, guards will never see… [Continue Reading]