Heavy Sorrow

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It was a quiet Sunday. The enemy had been bloodied and beaten over the past few days, having finally given up the ghost on Friday. With BLU gone, the dusty Egyptian lakeside ruins were incredibly quiet. Despite the dusty terrain, the air was incredibly cold and crisp. Still, it was pleasant enough to annoy other mercenaries. Scout quickly realised that he’d crossed the line as Heavy lunged at him. “I didn’t mean, it, man! Come on, it’s just a gag!” The Bostonian dodged and weaved around the giant, before ducking away to safety. Heavy gave up and went back to… [Continue Reading]

An Opinionated Opinion on Official Matchmaking

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I’ve been holding off on writing an actual article on official matchmaking for a while, not sure whether it’s been the right time or not. It turns out there’s never a good time, so here’s a heavily opinionated article on the matter. First off, whether I’d actually play matchmaking or not, I’ve always wanted ranked matchmaking in TF2. It’s that sort of thing that probably wouldn’t have fitted in early on, but as competitive leagues began to get bigger and bigger, Valve should have properly jumped on it and done something with it. All these years later and we’re only… [Continue Reading]

aabicus tries to CS:GO, part 4

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Big milestones today! Most of what I describe in this article I recorded on video, but after recording, when I try to open said video I get this: So RIP a little bit of aabicus’ CS:GO history. Because this included a few big milestones; my rank up to Silver 3, my very first competitive match, my purchasing of the Wildfire coin, my first game of Deathmatch, and my first time on a bunch of the new maps. Part of me is a little glad my last Silver 2 matches weren’t saved, because they were downright abysmal. I basically did nothing… [Continue Reading]

New CS:GO! New Nuke!

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UPDATE: Going to video settings and dropping everything to low/disabled makes it possible to play on AMD graphics cards! Whatever the problem is, it must be the same one that was plaguing ctf_2fort_invasion when it first came out. Please ignore how salty I was in this article.  Operation Wildfire just went live for Counter Strike: Global Offensive! The new Wildfire campaign comes with single and two-player missions, as well as bonus Blitz missions “for performing specific actions during global windows of opportunity”. Whatever that means. I’d love to tell you but apparently people with AMD graphics cards crash immediately upon joining… [Continue Reading]

Come on already!

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I’m a very patient person normally. I’ll wait my turn. It’s part of my British heritage that I’m otherwise not very proud of. But now I’m starting to think that I’ve waited enough. I’m talking about the damn TF2 comic series. Quick note. I know there’s people who haven’t read all the comics yet, so spoiler alert. Seriously though this whole thing started in 2013. 2013, I TELL YOU! Deep breath, Medic. Deep breath. The original plan was 6 comics, published bi-monthly. One every two months, not one every two weeks, like some of us had hoped. After reading through… [Continue Reading]

The Deadliest Ringer

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The Dead Ringer is a bizarre watch. Taking the feign death concept from Team Fortress Classic and really running with it, this watch has been the source of more bugs and issues than any other aspect of the most buggy class in Team Fortress 2. There’s also the question of just how a watch can get away with so many bizarre long-standing machinations like the few in this list. Even in a world where cigarettes can summon disguises and piss can selectively extinguish, it’s still pretty hard to rationally explain how a watch can: 1. Regenerate health. If you intentionally start taking… [Continue Reading]

Tips for Saints Row: The Third

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I rarely manage to actually complete games, and I never manage to get 100% completion, but Saints Row: The Third is the closest I’ve got, with a whooping 93% completion. I’ve got all the achievements in Skyrim, but you can’t actually get 100% completion in that game, so there. While I wait for the damn game to load after making the mistake of verifying the integrity of the game cache, here’s a bunch of tips for you. Never use cheats. Cheats have a nasty habit of infecting saves. You use cheats once, that’s it, that save is ruined. Play on… [Continue Reading]

Payday 2 and Old Memories

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Overkill’s monthly side job has updated for the new month, and this time it’s a brand new challenge. Old Memories reads: “Dallas is thinking about the good old days and he would appreciate if you did too. Complete Rats job on Overkill or above, using AMCAR and Chimano 88 with no skills and 2-piece suit.” This is a pretty clever reference actually, because Overkill knows players are going to speedrun the map in order to minimize the risk of going in nude, which is exactly what people used to do back when Rats was a treasure trove of XP in the… [Continue Reading]

Painted Weapons: A Sordid History

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For 99.9999% of TF2 weapons, paint doesn’t enter the picture. You paint cosmetics, not weapons, because paint would absolutely destroy the ability to recognize weapons on sight, right? But what the hell, let’s just add it in by this point. There’s gotta be a way to make Decorated weapons paintable. After all, that remaining .0001% of weapons consists of an elite few weapons that have in one way or another been painted. The most famous of course are the painted Cow Manglers. Two Team Spirit and one Balaclavas are Forever, they all came into existence in 2011 during an extremely short… [Continue Reading]

Rest in Peace, Dominion

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Just like Team Fortress 2 and Arena mode, League of Legends has a game mode with a hardcore but very small following. Dominion was basically a cross between Robot Destruction and 5CP, but done in a MOBA-esque sort of way. I’m pretty sure Dota 2 has a similar game mode but I don’t know what it’s called. Either way, it is a simple, fun little game mode with more focus on killing the enemy and capturing control points, rather than farming minions and moving towards the enemy nexus. Dominion also had the bonus of being a much faster game mode,… [Continue Reading]