First Experiences playing Payday: The Heist

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One of aabicus’s favourite games is Payday: The Heist. He’s been pestering me for a while to get it and play it, and finally, one month later, in a spur of the moment thing, I find myself abruptly thrown into my first heist. While aabicus is streaming. Cue me asking lots of questions. But really, apart from asking what’s going on, Payday: The Heist is a lot, lot simpler than the sequel. All you do is choose weapons, a bag, a perk and some cosmetic stuff. Then you start the game and go on a big heist. Our first heist… [Continue Reading]

Riveting Reviews of Randomness – a Daily SPUF contest

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It’s that time again! Time for a Daily SPUF contest! With prizes and stuff! In out other contests, the theme has always been Team Fortress 2. Which makes sense, since we’re a blog that mainly focuses on Team Fortress 2. This time round, we’re venturing away from our comfort zone. Far, far away from our comfort zone. So far away that we’re lurching into undiscovered terrain, like going to Frostflow Lighthouse at level 10 in Skyrim sort of undiscovered terrain. In Riveting Reviews of Randomness, your job is simple. Play a game that you have never even installed before and… [Continue Reading]

All aboard! …or not

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As I wrote before, Left 4 Dead 2 and Payday the Heist are very similar games in a number of ways. From the obvious ones like weapon preference, gameplay style, and even the template for the map-specific movie posters, these games are so heavily intertwined they almost feel like they could be part of the same franchise. But of all the unexpected coincidences, there’s one that stands out the most to me because it makes me doubly sad: both have a cancelled cruise ship map. In 2011, Kotaku covered a series of prototype Left 4 Dead 2 posters, made before the devs decided to… [Continue Reading]

A TF2 Stream of Consciousness Journey

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Today we are going to take a journey through various entertainment mediums, beginning and ending at our familiar game of TF2, through a sort of free association.  At each step of the journey we will find some (hopefully interesting) fact about the work in question which in turn connects us to another work, and from there we will connect to another work via some other bit of trivia and so on, until we finally arrive back where we started.  As Charles Fort said “one measures a circle starting anywhere,” so Team Fortress 2 is as good of starting location as… [Continue Reading]

Which classes in TF2 are Specialists and which are Generalists?

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SPUF goes through phases when it comes to things to argue about. Some debates are seasonal like holiday updates, some are deceased like the Gunslinger, and others are eternal like random crits and autobalance. But one that crops up every now and then is the question of Specialists v. Generalists. It’s generally agreed that some classes in TF2 are more specialized than others. Engineer can do a number of things well, but he’s rather pigeon-holed into those categories especially when compared to Scout and Demoman. Where to draw the actual line regarding which classes are “Generalist” engenders much debate, with Soldier being the only one… [Continue Reading]

Valve Shuts Down LMAOBox in One Fell Swoop

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCAMqsxbS08 VACations everywhere! Today the LMAOBox community woke up to find that pretty much all of them have been banned. Read more here. This giant ban wave has hit platinum level comp snipers, high-tier traders with thousands of dollars in their inventories, and the creators of LMAOBox, though at least one transferred his entire inventory the night before so it appears they had something to do with the leak. MaxBox claiming he sent the debug version to Valve reinforces this, but there’s also evidence that he’s simply trying to take credit for something another user did. The LMAOBox creator has since… [Continue Reading]

What Dragonflight could do to be one of the best games ever

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Well, in my opinion at least. As you might have seen, I’ve already reviewed Dragonflight. I also made a video about it on the SPUF of Legend. Since then, nothing has actually changed with the game, apart from the fact that I did eventually complete the one and only mission in the game. My flying has become a lot better, and I love doing awesome loop the loops. Most of my time is spent in the Free Flight mode, so I don’t have to sit through the opening slideshow. First things first, more levels. Lots more levels. Having two levels… [Continue Reading]

Would Highlander really work in Matchmaking?

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In our beloved little competitive matchmaking beta, we currently only have access to 6v6 matchmaking. While it doesn’t really look like the much stricter, more organized community competitive leagues, it feels similar. 5CP maps, the odd King of the Hill map, optimal teams including Medics, Demomen, Scouts and Soldiers, 6 players per team (obviously)… You get the point. There’s also plans to have a Highlander matchmaking thingy, but it’s been greyed out since the beginning. But I’m wondering, will Highlander really work? In terms of getting people to play classes, it can happen. Highlander has been the other staple of… [Continue Reading]

Hydro Servers are back!

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Valve has added Hydro servers back into Quickplay! You can find them under the new “Alternative” tab, where it shares space with Special Delivery and Player Destruction. tc_hydro has always been the least-loved of the original 6 maps, completely ignored by everybody everywhere, even on console where there are ONLY 6 maps to choose from! Whenever I play (indeed, when I went on and played it today) I found myself turning my brain off and just farming defensive Kritzkrieg Ubers because any serious attempt to end the round is going to be met with frustrating and repetitive failure. I would LOVE if… [Continue Reading]

Streaming movies on Steam

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Well it turns out Steam wants to be the new Netflix. I wouldn’t have known, looking at my Steam Store page, but other countries appear to have a banner saying that a bunch of movies by Lionsgate are available for streaming. I wouldn’t have actually known about this had General_B not told me about it, but there’s literally no trace of this existing at all. Also Cyprus is a country, dammit. This isn’t the first time Steam has tried stuff like this. We’ve had movies on Steam before, the Meet the Team videos are all available for download, as is… [Continue Reading]