Celebrating 1000 articles with the Daily SPUF!

Wow. Just wow. 1000 articles. The big one zero zero zero. One. Thousand. Articles. All over 250 words. An article, sometimes two, every day since the 18th of August, 2013. It’s now 2016. Our very first article was complaining about the Half Zatoichi, which is a fair point. But while the weapons of Team Fortress 2, the classes of Team Fortress 2, even core mechanics, have changed since then, we’re still publishing an article every single day. Okay we’ve probably missed a day, but only because of extreme circumstances. No, really, we’ve only missed one day. September 19th, 2013. And… [Continue Reading]

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The Huntsman Sniper is a worse Combat Medic

This is one of those articles where the title kinda says it all. But of course, with such a big claim like “Huntsman Sniper is worse than Combat Medic”, I need to back up my claim with some sort of argument and, preferably, some evidence. Because evidence is cool and I am a man of science. But yes, the Huntsman Sniper is worse than a Combat Medic. Let’s look at the Huntsman first. Thirteen shots that need charging up for 1 second minimum to be able to do standard damage headshots, or 50 to 120 damage depending on how long… [Continue Reading]

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Dawnguard Snipin’ – Part 7

Well, my fellow mercs, I didn’t think we’d get this far. Last time round, I fought a vampire to get a shiny bow. Serana complained it wasn’t very shiny, but she’s a whinging brat. Anyway, my legs are knackered. I had to stop by in Medic’s place and dump all the loot I had stol- um, liberated from that snow elf church, and Serana and I are back at Fort Dawnguard to rally the troops and all that crap. It’s a pretty big place. Like Demo’s place but way nicer. Sorry Tavish. Isran, the guy who hired me, is standing… [Continue Reading]

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Windows in TF2

No, not that Windows. I’m talking about the ones that even Mac and Linux players have to deal with. Many maps in TF2 feature glass windows, which surprisingly are something of a new feature for the TF series. Going back into Team Fortress Classic, I can’t find any examples in official maps of transparent screens allowing the user to look but not interact with further parts of the map. They were consciously included in TF2’s design, as the Gravelpit developer commentary explains: “Height is a useful feature when designing defensible buildings. For instance, the cap B building needs to be defended from… [Continue Reading]

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A Syringe Gun Update

On my birthday in 2014 we published an article talking about the lack of cosmetic love for the stock shotgun. Since then, Valve’s kicked it up a notch and actually given us both a festive shotgun and Decorated shotguns, so they’ve kinda redeemed themselves. (we really still need an Australium one though.) And that means that the Syringe Gun is now the only stock weapon that goes completely unloved by Valve’s texture artists. I can kinda understand why, since it’s an underpowered and unremarkable attempt at a self-defense weapon that every Medic ignores because at least one unlock (usually the… [Continue Reading]

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Ruined for Other Games

Team Fortress 2 has spoiled me. All these years that I’ve been playing it have ruined me when it comes to playing other games. The game may not have been my first FPS, but I’ve got nearly 1800 hours on the game and it’s done some weird things to me. The first thing that has always bothered me is aiming. The majority of shooters generally want you to scope in or use an iron sight in order to aim more accurately. At the very least, you have way less accuracy when running than you do when standing still, and increased… [Continue Reading]

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aabicus tries to CS:GO part III

The more Counter-Strike:Global Offensive I play, the more interested I get in its version of asymmetrical multiplayer. Despite being a competitively-ranked player vs. player military shooter, it does not follow the common trope of giving both teams similar arsenals. Instead, the terrorist and counter-terrorist ordnance are differ from each other in several very distinct ways, encapsulated best by the two signature rifles of each team. Like other games, CSGO chose to differentiate these two guns primarily through emphasizing either damage or accuracy. The AK47 hits much harder than the M4A1-S but at the cost being far less accurate, a distinction that… [Continue Reading]

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Weapons that are deemed underpowered, part 2

We’re back again with a bunch of weapons that some people deem underpowered and crap and awful, but I think actually have a use! Last time we looked at the Overdose, Mantreads and Red Tape Recorder. Today we have four more weapons! The Sharpened Volcano Fragment. Yes, this piece of garbage isn’t as useless as it seems. The one use I’ve noticed this weapon having is in combination with the Degreaser and one of the Shotguns. Since the Degreaser has less afterburn damage, using this allows you to still give them full afterburn. Still a garbage weapon but has at… [Continue Reading]

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Sniper and The Stealth Buff Nobody Spoke Of

Recently-ish on SPUF, having no more need to complain about the now bus-sized mini sentry, and arguing random crits to the death, we’ve come back to one of the classes that has been complained about throughout the ages, from the earliest days of first person shooting, all the way through the rail pad on q3dm17 (also known as the longest yard) to these modern days, where one will instant kill you with a quickscope, often through 8 walls: The marmite-like sniper. You either play sniper, or you hate them, and even if you’re in the first category, they’re still annoying.… [Continue Reading]

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Juggling weapons: the new TF2 meta?

Red Robot sparked some interesting conversations in various social medias including SPUF when he released this video, commenting on a new ‘playstyle’ he’d discovered: Using the new weapon-dropping mechanic, he had the very Counter Strike-esque idea to juggle multiple weapons of the same loadout slot and carry them through the battlefield. His first idea was to pair the Crit-a-cola with the pistol, and I can definitely see the appeal in that combo. The pistol’s a half-decent jack-of-all-trades with middling accuracy, firepower, and firing speed, so giving it a damage boost and falloff-immunity could be godly in the hands of a pro scout.… [Continue Reading]

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