Lara Croft is Disappointed

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A while back, the TF2 team announced a contest in which we were told to make promo items for the new Lara Croft game. The only stipulations were that it had to fit inside TF2, it had to be related to a Lara Croft game and it could not be Heavy in short shorts. On December 3rd, they announced the winners, and as good as they are, it’s left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths. Three items made it as promos and a few more were accepted, to be added to the Mann Co. store at a later date. The… [Continue Reading]

Popularity, Lore and Intrestingness

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When you have a game with multiple characters, it’s hard to make sure that they all get equal amounts of usage, story and fun. Often one character will stand out ahead of the others, either because the developers like that character the best or simply because that character is the most popular or pliable. Or both. Team Fortress 2 is no exception to this. No franchise is. People need to sell this stuff to make money you know. The main character of Team Fortress 2 was always the Heavy Weapons Guy. Big powerful man with a silly Russian accent and… [Continue Reading]

Gunslingers vs. Highlanders: an analysis

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There was recently something of an upset when the Highlander team swept the Gunslingers in the recent tournament, and it rightly seems to have attracted something of an interest in the SPUF community. (I notice there hasn’t been a single thread arguing the Gunslinger is OP since the event…) Since I’ve participated in two of these events, playing Medic for Season 2 (the first time the Gunslingers won) and the most recent Season 5, I’ve got a pretty good perspective from which to analyze the two teams. On a fundamental level, the first major reason that Highlanders performed so much better… [Continue Reading]

My first look into competitive Team Fortress 2

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A while back (actually, the day before the Demoknights VS Highlander event), I was asked by Confusion to play Medic for a 4v4 match. After informing him that 1. I was not actually a very good player, 2. I was a mediocre Medic at best and 3. I’d never played an ounce of competitive TF2 before, outside SPUF events, I decided “what the hell” and agreed to play. Honestly, I didn’t even know that the SPUF-based EU 4v4 team was still alive, let alone still competing. It would have been a missed opportunity if I’d declined, and I’d have let… [Continue Reading]

The Spoils of WAR!

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Ever since Demoman lost the WAR! under some pretty spotty rationale regarding a propaganda contest, many people have asked that Valve migrate the Gunboats over to the Demoman, either through a wholesale migration, release of a Demoman-only reskin (the ginboats?) or a reworking of the Wee Booties. Sometimes this wish extends also to the other weapon tailored to explosive-jumping, the Market Gardener. After all, Soldier and Demoman already share the BASE Jumper and orange-painted Jumper weapons, why not go all the way? As a Demoman main, I’d adore them on a basic level. A Dapper Apple found the concept super powerful when… [Continue Reading]

Some fun and useful console commands that are not so well known

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The console in Team Fortress 2 (and other source games) is usually seen as a handy tool for abusing cheats on servers with sv_cheats set to 1, or as a way to change graphics options and do other helpful tasks. Today I am going to shine some light on some console commands that don’t really help you, but are fun to use as gimmicks or as ways to gimp your game to make your gameplay harder and possibly more fun. To start this article off, let’s talk about the console command “pda_click“. Pda_click is a silly command that can be used… [Continue Reading]

Things TF2 still really needs

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I wrote an article about things that Team Fortress 2 lacks before and none of those things got added, as far as I recall. In Valve’s eyes, I simply don’t exist unless I’m sorting out my brother’s stuff after he got phished. And even then it took a week for Steam Support to sort things out. So since Valve clearly doesn’t acknowledge my existence, here’s another list of things that Valve should add to TF2. Because why not? If you want, you can read the first article here. 1. Play testing before updates. The last few TF2 updates have been… [Continue Reading]

Ah, Geoff.

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Ah Geoff, the Medi Gun for the person who hates building Uber and overhealing and wants to make his life needlessly complicated. I’ll be honest, my relationship with Geoff has been veering towards the bad side of things more and more and more. It wasn’t until I completely and utterly fucked up my binds for the Vaccinator (I forgot that I no longer had reload bound to Mouse5) that I realised why no one else was stupid enough to use this thing against hordes of grenade-knights. I wasn’t even meant to play in that match anyway… Anyway, rants and stuff… [Continue Reading]

Future Suggestions for Heavies

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I feel sorry for Heavy mains, since everyone says they’re skilless noobs who should try to learn a different class. On the one hand, those Heavy-hating Scout mains do have a point, but on the other hand, why are you being so mean for no reason? The Heavy Weapons Guy is a simple class to play though. Anything you do playing as Heavy can be carried on to other classes, he doesn’t really have anything special that you need to learn just for him. Alright, there’s spin up/down time and jump-revving, not to mention the art of throwing sandviches at… [Continue Reading]

What if Scout Got a Grenade Launcher?

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Would you be interested in playing the Scout with the Grenade Launcher as your primary? Or perhaps the Loose Cannon for all you Force-a-Nature fans? It might seem a bit different at first, having to rely on explosives instead of hitscan, but I don’t doubt an enterprising player could find a way to make it work. I’ll stop beating around the bush. If you have any interest in playing a scout with a grenade launcher, try the Sticky Jumper. Several users on SPUF have been complaining (again) about the jumpers, claiming that they’re impossible to use efficiently and should be… [Continue Reading]