THE TIME: Saturday December 14 at 6pm GMT THE PLACE: SPUF Regular server Who doesn’t love Medieval Mode? I love Medieval Mode. I just get tired of DeGrootKeep after a while. So, this tournament is going to involve non-medieval maps played with Medieval mode enabled! (The theme is “Maps ruined by mini-sentries”) Current Map rotation: koth_king, sd_doomsday, and for the tiebreaker/fun round plr_hightower_event (for those of you who’ve wanted to try Medieval with spells ;). After that we’ll be taking requests for other maps the participants might want to play. More information: -There will be 8 players per team -All… [Continue Reading]
And if you don’t remember the previous Strange Parts Post, clickity.
First Archimedes, now Foppish. aabicus’ past self was really lucky when he chose his favorite Medic cosmetics. Pixel art obtained from AG’s Pixelize Yourself.
I’m a Strange Item fanatic. I love showing off how many kills I’ve got with this weapon or that one. Or recently, how many points I have with this and that class (“InstaCakes is credit to team!”) and in general (Strange Speks!).
So I was thinking: Some weapons aren’t Strange yet. Some are Strange Festive, but not plain Strange (Buff Banner! Sandvich!). Some are Strange and deserve to be Festive (I WANT A STRANGE FESTIVE SHOTGUN!). And then there are cool ideas for Strange Parts that no-one has thought of yet, and Strange Parts everyone has thought of but not added. For example, why is there a “Robot Spies Destroyed” part and “Cloaked Spies Killed” part but no plain “Spies Killed” part but Spies Killed has only been added with the latest update? Why isn’t there a Strange High-Five yet?
This new column will function as a sort of “Letters to the Editor” section, where readers can submit questions to our staff. In addition, I will use it to announce credit or submission mistakes when they are made by The Daily SPUF, so that each author is given the attention and credit they deserve. To submit a question about the blog, TF2, or anything else: simply login, click the +New button, write your question in the title, and provide further information if necessary in the body. Make sure to mark the Category “Dear Aaby” in the upper right-hand category box.… [Continue Reading]
The Direct Hit can either be the most devastating single-shot rocket launcher unlock or the worst rocket launcher to ever disgrace the battlefield if you can’t place your shots right and want to rely on splash damage. As a Soldier-main who’s retired his first strange Direct Hit for the easier stock rocket launcher after reaching a few hundred kills past Epic Rank, I too can agree that it’s a troublesome weapon to many who don’t know the nature behind using the Direct Hit. But mastering this pesky launcher can pull off some both quantitative and hilarious outcomes.
The first First Person Shooter (FPS) I played was Left 4 Dead. But because my computer then was a steaming pile of crap, it took me literally 45 minutes with a frame rate of under 10 frames per second (also FPS) to inch my way across the first level of No Mercy. Amazingly, I did it first time, but I made it to the safe room with a miserable 10 health.
It took a very long time for me to get a good computer and properly understand what it was like to move around in a First Person Shooter. My early adventures in Left 4 Dead just did not compare to what it was truly like. Then again, Garry’s Mod isn’t the best example of a First Person Shooter either. Team Fortress 2 though was still out of the question, as explosions would cause my computer to die…
Ever since the Two Cities Update, the face of Mann Versus Machine has been invariably altered. With the obscene buffs the Medic and Soldier received from this update (I’ll complain less about the Medic, because he really needed some love, and now he’s basically indispensable), MvM, for some, has come to an irritating middle-ground, where the older missions, namely Operation Steel Trap (and, to some extent, Gear Grinder. Yeah, remember them? Me neither) have become laughably easy, or something you run through with your friends as six Demoknights for a chuckle, and the newest missions are hair-pullingly difficult. To me, and hopefully at least one of you, this is bogus.
“Ahaha! He thinks he can plant the bomb!” “Dude, that’s enough. He’s only Intermediate, after all.” Picture by Noble Atomic.
As someone who has sunk a considerable part of their TF2 experience into MvM, I remember the soul-crushing agony of trying to find a match on the night the update dropped, those encounters with blokes who had been on the same Expert Mission server for three hours trying to find a winning team, being a bloke who has been on the same Expert Mission server for three hours, and screaming in unison with the Announcer when an Engineer bot showed up (more on them later). And now, after slaving away at Empire Escalation for as many hours as I once had at Mannslaughter, I realized that, with all these updates to the Medic and Soldier, going back to those missions and still expecting a challenge would be impossible.
That being said, there are things that are positively infuriating about the way MvM currently works that could also make the experience more enjoyable. So, I’m going to propose some changes Valve could make to the way MvM works in order to keep MvM (all MvM) exciting for players at all levels, as well as improve the experience over all.
It’s that time of year again… most leagues are finishing up recording another winter season into the record books. Currently ESEA is in its final week of the regular season, UGC is nearly finished with playoffs, ETF2L 6v6 is proceeding with its Premiership playoffs, and ETF2L HL is in the second half of the season. So near the end, I think most can agree… this season has perhaps not been as exciting as it has been. For the ESEA Invite division, the LAN situation has pretty much stabilized… and it’s much less contentious than in previous seasons, with each seed… [Continue Reading]
The Kritzkrieg is considered the pinnacle of balance in Team Fortress 2. Many a Medic will go on and on about how it’s perfectly balanced, how it’s useful, how… Oh, I don’t know. Despite how great everyone says the Kritzkrieg is, I just can’t bring myself to use it!
Valve have recently rolled out an awesome MvM update – Two Cities. For most part it’s great – Medic and Soldier buffs, killstreak weapons (that don’t look too good in most occasions but some are really awesome), Rottenburg. On the downside there is Empire Escalation Wave 4. But that’s later.
Since it’s a blog, it’s kinda logical for someone to get their opinion here, or maybe a story, if they have anything to share, so I’ll do exactly this thing.
As we all know, TF2 is a perfect game with absolutely no flaws. As a matter of fact, not only is it completely flawless now, but it’s actually remained a perfect game since the day it came out, with a grand total of zero glitches for the past seven years. That’s pretty impressive.
But every so often Valve feels the need to remove legitimate gameplay strategies such as “Taunt with Amputator, disconnect from server, your team regnerates health indefinitely until the server crashes or changes maps.” Here are the ones I miss the most.
1. The Level 2 Mini-Sentry
Is a regular sentry gun cute? Maybe a little, but not really. Is the mini-sentry cute? It would be if it wasn’t one of the most annoying things in the game currently. But this gun? It’s adorable. I want a plush.
Who’s a cute derpy sentry gun? You are! Picture by AWSmith11.
