The Daily SPUF – Page 321 – Brand new video game articles, every day!

Team Fortress 2 Competitive Beta Sign-Up

January 28, 2016 Medic 0 Comments beta, competitive, group, matchmaking, progress, steam

Well, who’d have thought it? There’s actually matchmaking things going on for reals! No more will B4nny (bless him) be the only reliable and constant source of information about Team Fortress 2’s official matchmaking. Nope, yesterday, a Valve employee popped by and announced that there is now an official Steam group, as seen here. It’s almost definitely official, since the admins are three Valve employees, and the group also has a selection of Steam Community moderators. The main admin of the group, someone called Jill, has got nearly 4000 hours on Team Fortress 2, which is a sign of, um,… [Continue Reading]

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Damn Dastardly Decorated Death Contraptions

January 27, 2016 Medic 0 Comments Cosmetic, decorated, gun mettle, tough break, weapon

I am honestly already sick of decorated weapons. We’re only on our fourth campaign, our second campaign to give us skins for our weapons and somehow I am already sick of them. We’ve had a huge amount of variety, a bunch of weapons, a lot of new content, but despite Valve’s pushing of them, I’m still not a fan of them. Why is this? Well the first reason for me personally is that I’m a cheap bastard. I don’t really want to pay €6 to get things that I’d be doing in TF2 anyway, with weapons I already use. Contracts… [Continue Reading]

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Optimizing Your Panda Express Strategy

January 26, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments food, heavy, I don't know!, I have no idea!, orange chicken, panda express, scout

Everybody has a vice, and mine is Panda Express. Their orange chicken is impossibly delicious and definitely my favorite food on this planet. Thank god I move so often and never seem to be anywhere near one, otherwise I’d be eating there all the time. The Panda Express at my old college campus was a place of many memories for me. It was where I first met my future wife in a study group for Dinosaurs class. I was its mayor on FourSquare before FourSquare revamped its mayorship system and made it stupid and pointless. I was there for all… [Continue Reading]

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Dawnguard Snipin’ – Part 6

January 25, 2016 Medic 0 Comments dawnguard, dawnguard snipin', non-tf2, Skyrim, sniper, sniping

You know what mate? I’m getting kinda tired of walking. When Medic got back from Skyrim, he told me that there was tons of walking, but it was actually eventful. This is all just tedious! I spent all of last time walking, hope this time perks up. So after killing those two winged bastards, things start to get a bit tight and valley-y. I ain’t got a clue who you get onto those bridges up there (or even how they were built, these ugly Falmer aren’t exactly smart), but eventually we get to a place called Glacial Crevice. We head… [Continue Reading]

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Cardboard Weapon Bonanza!

January 24, 2016 Medic 2 Comments analysis, art, cardboard, cosplay, criticism, suggestion, weapon

This morning, I sat in bed staring at my bookcase, the top of which is adorned with cardboard Team Fortress 2 weapons that I’ve made over the years. Very dusty ones. I’ve mentioned my cardboard weapons many times in the past, with my collection of Medic melee weapons, and even wrote about how to make your own shotgun. So I decided to maybe find all my cardboard weapons, finished and unfinished. The result was worrying. Thing is, cardboard is a really good modelling material. I can’t afford stuff like Worbla, the weird card material that hardens under heat and is… [Continue Reading]

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Landfall: The Newest CTF Map

January 23, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments ctf, maps, tough break

The new maps in Tough Break feel super generic, but they’re at least very well made. And after the oddity of themes like aliens, halloween and PASS Time, maybe its good for TF2 to take a step back and support some tried-and-true game modes with new gimmick-free maps. Nevertheless I’m surprised to find myself liking ctf_landfall as much as I do. It’s Capture the Flag after all, a legendarily poorly-designed game mode. But somehow, Landfall does a really good job of balancing the concept and avoiding perpetual stalemates. The map has a wonderful three-dimensional design with two designated layers of… [Continue Reading]

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On Assortedness and AIs

January 22, 2016 Medic 0 Comments AI, bots, insanity, no internet, Team Fortress 2

Having nigh non-existent internet makes you ponder about things. It also infuriates you by teasing you with a possible internet connection, only to laugh in your face as it takes five minutes to load DuckDuckGo, and seven minutes to load Google. Loading the Daily SPUF to schedule and write articles has been a painful series of events. Seriously, this is what I have to contend with. A note to all future torturers out there. If you really want to get information from someone, lock them in a room with my bad internet connection. They’ll be begging for release within half… [Continue Reading]

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Weapons that are deemed underpowered

January 21, 2016 General_B 0 Comments medic, soldier, spy, weapon, weapon balance

In this game there are several weapons which people view as garbage, now most of them are actually complete shit but a few of them are just being utilized the wrong way. Listing time! The Overdose: “OH MY GOD!”you say, “That 10% movement speed is amazing for decent medics and the penalty doesn’t mean anything.” say the good Medics. whereas newer players soon realize that it has to be active and don’t see a point so scrap it immediately. The real use of the Overdose has nothing to do with 10% and so much more to do with 3%. Let’s… [Continue Reading]

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The state of public TF2 isn’t as bad as I thought

January 20, 2016 sbf sud 0 Comments autobalance, matchmaking, skill

It’s far, far worse. I was messing around with some of the new options Valve has put into the game, and happened upon the option to enable mouse cursor on the scoreboard. I then by chance clicked on a name on the score screen, and realized, as late to the party as I might be, that you can actually see all the statistics of the player you clicked on – kills, deaths, assists, healing, damage, everything. The ability to have access to this information is huge for me, as when the team is doing poorly, I’m in the habit of… [Continue Reading]

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Why TF2 is Hard

January 19, 2016 ___ 0 Comments advice, balance, criticism, newbies, settings, This is one of the best articles on the state of pub balance I've seen in a while.

There’s a lot of talk about the states of publics nowadays, but one of the things that’s really hard to remember once you’ve got good at TF2 is how it is to be a new player. Most players worth their salt have played for a couple of hundred hours. To these people, TF2 is a fairly easy game. And why wouldn’t it be? TF2 is a game where most of the characters are extremely accessible. Soldier rockets splash. Grenades splash. Stickies splash. Flamethrower requires low aim. So does the minigun. So does Engineer. And especially Medic. But what if I told… [Continue Reading]