Junkrat – The Overwatch Demoman

Overwatch has a Sticky Jumper.  I couldn’t believe it when I found out. Junkrat’s playstyle is almost identical to my single most preferred playstyle in TF2. I just spent about two hours on the training map reaching all sorts of insane places with the concussion grenade. I am going to fall in love with this character, I just know it. Now, let be fair; he’s not as mobile as a Sticky Jumper Demoman. For one, he only gets one (recharging) conc grenade so he can’t fly particularly far with each jump, and he can’t chain them. No air pogos, no cross-country flights….but… [Continue Reading]

Read more

The Ullapool got Cabered

So I was playing on sd_doomsday, as I am wont to do, attempting to revitalize my old Sticky Jumper spark. For a weapon that hasn’t changed, it’s amazing how different it feels having to play with the new roster of available melee weapons. ‘Head Launcher‘ my beloved Persian Persuader is still deceased and all of the swords have become less attractive with the new draw times. My other favorite the Scotsman’s Skullcutter is still too slow and sets my teeth gnashing every time I die because my Demoman was taking his sweet time switching to it. When you’re switching to your… [Continue Reading]

Read more

The Only Weapon Removed From TF2

I know I already wrote an article on this, but the Persian Persuader has become the first weapon removed from Team Fortress 2. I’ve searched my memory banks and the TF2 Wiki and I’m almost positive the Tough Break Persian Persuader is the first weapon ever to have every single one of its stats removed and replaced with new ones. (I’m not counting the generic sword stats that every bladed Demoknight melee shares, those are inherent in the classification.) For comparison, we went from this: +100% increase in charge recharge rate All ammo collected becomes health Cannot pick up ammo To… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Persian Persuader’s Not Looking too Peachy…

The Tough Break update was amazing. I love almost all of the balance changes, especially because pretty much every class was buffed in cool ways. Especially my Medic! Holy crap! Ubercharge on Crossbow and Amputator? I’m so excited, except that part of me that fears a complimentary nerf now that those wholly-unneeded buffs were added. Thank god for the alt-fire addition to the Amputator, by the way, now I don’t have to juggle stupidly around with the taunt menus to use my AoE heals. But this article isn’t about Medic. As great as the majority of changes were, the only… [Continue Reading]

Read more

A late look at pass_pinewood

I have had a hell of a time finding a decent game of PASS Time recently. There’s currently a bug that allows a single player to crash a Pass Time server, and Valve’s tardiness at fixing this bug is causing the playerbase for this game mode to wither and die. The few times I’ve succeeded, the map either changed immediately to pass_warehouse or somehow was already on pass_warehouse despite what the server browser would have you believe. It is genuinely possible that people just can’t wrap their head around pinewood, because it’s a more advanced map for sure. It takes… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Early Impressions and Strategies for the Beta PASS Game Mode

Let me start by saying that PASS is a hell of a lot of fun. It’s one of the first beta modes that feels like it should be in beta; it’s bizarre and completely different from anything TF2 has tried before, but it’s addicting and condones itself to all sorts of strategies and playstyles that really makes it stand out as a game mode. I genuinely hope this develops its own tournaments and things because it’s just as much fun to watch as it is to play. Everybody is still learning the ropes of this new game mode and there… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Holy shit this is the 800th article.

  Bloody hell. The time has flown! Seriously it feels like a few weeks ago that we celebrated our 700th article. And I spent most of that article writing about how much I love you all and how I can’t live without you all and all that sort of stuff. I guess I kinda have to do the same for this article, but eh… Thing is, lately, it’s been pretty rough for both me and aabicus. Dear old Aaby has had spouse-based health issues, job-issues and house issues, while I’ve been taking on all the responsibility of running the family… [Continue Reading]

Read more

How Weapon Dropping Improved My Favorite TF2 Loadout

Let’s ignore the Ubercharge bit for a moment. The weapon-dropping mechanic on its own is surprisingly ineffectual considering what everyone started worrying about when they first heard it was going to become a thing. The weapons aren’t that easy to actually pick up, the presence of nothing but sidegrades and the fact that you have to drop a weapon you actually chose to equip means that in the grand scheme of things it’s just a fun new ability that opens up rare moments of awesome, aids in allowing players to try out skins they otherwise don’t own, and causes relatively… [Continue Reading]

Read more

May 25th – June 2nd

This article will wrap up Ketchup week. We’re back on track for “This Week in TF2 History”! Congrats everybody! I know it wasn’t actually a week, but the only alternative was to wait to fall behind an extra 14 days before starting, and that’s just the sort of logic that got us into this mess. Speaking of messes, the Spy weapons added as per Sniper vs. Spy were all decently buggy due to how strangely they messed with the mechanics of the game. The Dead Ringer in particular had more bugs than any other weapon before or since, and the… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Ways TF2 Could Have Been Designed Better

TF2 was the first online game I really played full-time hardcore srs-bzns style. Before TF2 entered my life, I’d occasionally get to try games on my friend’s N64s and I had vague memories of Oregon Trail and Humongous Entertainment games growing up, but I’d been largely sheltered from the gaming world due to my parents thinking that games rotted your brain. So once I left for college and experienced newfound freedom, The Orange Box seemed a logical first purchase, since I’d also played Portal when it came out for free in 2007 and (somehow) passed my parent’s “nonviolent and educational” criteria.… [Continue Reading]

Read more