Brand new video game articles, every day!
I’m being original here… Or am I? Today, we’re discussing the Original, the rocket launcher that reminds us all of the good old days, where rocket jumping was something new and grenades weren’t limited to a drunk, black, Scottish Cyclops. While we’re at it, we’ll be answering the question of whether the Original is a reskin of the Rocket Launcher or not…
Or will we?
This was a busy week in Team Fortress history! Back in 2007, Valve fixed a very annoying bug with the demo system where it would get all jittery when you played it back. In 2011, they fixed a problem with allclass hats where they wouldn’t appear until you touched a resupply cabinet. November 30th, 2012 saw the release of the Track Terrorizer, War Pig, Pyrotechnic Tote, Bearded Bombardier, Soviet Gentleman, Pocket Purrer, Medi-Mask, Koala Compact and Hat of Cards, the latter of which is one of my favorite Spy hats. 2012 was also the conclusion of the Saxxy Awards, meaning… [Continue Reading]
On the 21st of November, the Two Cities update shipped. With it came two new Mann Versus Machine maps, Mannhattan and Rottenburg, much-needed class buffs for the mode, and some fancy-schmancy new cosmetic gimmicks. Completing the Two Cities tour nets you a “Killstreak Kit” for a random weapon, and according to what I’ve heard (unfortunately I have yet to actually beat a single mission), a couple random “Specialized/Professional Killstreak Fabricators”, which can be completed using the pieces of robot scraps found by completing missions. Being the owner of two of these, I would like to make known some truths about… [Continue Reading]
If you had a baseball bat, and you were insane enough to hit random people with it, you wouldn’t really care about its looks. If it’s hard enough to crack some skulls – it’s good. However, you wouldn’t really hit people with wrapping paper, now would you?
That’s just your preference. If you would like to hit people with wrapping paper, but some federal laws and such nonsense forbid you to do so, you have TF2 for that. Play Scout and you get to hit people with baseball bats if that’s your thing. Unfortunately, you deal less damage (35 base damage per hit). Fortunately, you swing the melee faster. If you fancy some frantic beating while screaming nonsense and double-jumping around, you found your class.
Rotternburg is a beautiful map. Unlike the sad, concrete lump that is Mannhatten, which unfortunately fails to be particularly Mannhatten-y, Rotternburg fills its expectations of being a pretty village in the middle of nowhere. But there’s a lot more to Rotternburg than meets the eye…
Listen up, maggots! It’s your friendly no-fun tech admin Commander here. Recently we switched to a brand new blog theme, complete with author boxes letting you know whether or not the guy who’s writing is qualified to write on whatever they’re blabbering about. Of course, we already had a way to display the authors on each article, so we had to go and do complicated things in order to make sure we only display the info we need to. Unfortunately, that caused even more complications with adding descriptions for those of you who submit articles via a staff member. In… [Continue Reading]
If you’ve been keeping in touch with more exotic TF2 news recently (or e-sports news in general), you might have heard of the recent settlement of a case brought by the New Jersey attorney general against E-Sports Entertainment Association, or ESEA for short, a gaming league with major divisions in Counter-Strike: Global Offense and Team Fortress 2.
Obviously, if you’re involved in competitive, you’re probably monitoring the situation and seeing what comes of it. If you aren’t, and are wondering why this is such a huge story, consider this analogy: say the owner of a very well-known price guide for TF2 items was accused of price manipulation and then agreed to give up hundreds of buds without admitting whether they did it or not? That event would certainly lead to a major switch to another pricing guide which the community would place its trust in and primarily use. In both cases, the community is at a critical juncture, where a major decision affecting the entire future of the community lies in the balance. In the trading case, the community successfully rallied behind the new community-based alternative, although not without some regrets being voiced with its current state today.
SPUF enjoys arguing about TF2’s balance. A lot. One of the most common issues to sprout up involves TF2 melee weapons. It’s no secret the vast majority of stock melees are underpowered, except those with utility like knife and wrench. If their only job is to deal damage, then they’re gonna suck because every class has a plethora of primary or secondary weapons that deal more damage at longer ranges more effectively.
So when most competetive TF2 players agree that the bottle is the best Demoman melee weapon, this may seem unusual. How can it really be the best choice for its slot when it has no gimmicks beside emergency damage?
In my opinion, it has to do with the way Valve has handled the unlocks in that slot. Using demoman as an example, here is what I think the golden rules should be for designing melee unlocks.
I don’t know why I’m really writing about this, but after having played on the SPUF standard server (which you really ought to visit because it’s fun and all that) with ping that fluctuated between 270 and 400, I feel like I should. Normally, I’m okay with high ping. It depends mostly on where the server is, but I get more issues with American servers than, say Asian servers. Probably because there’s more sea between me and the physical location of said server.
So, the first thing I ought to mention is that the game isn’t really laggy. I do get random lag spikes and such, but game play is normally fairly fluid. My frame rate is almost always steady unless a Sentry Buster just blew up next to me. The problem is with the details.
Last Saturday our very own SPUF server was home to a new tournament, the Guillotine Games! There were 14 participants in total who fought for the title ‘Cleaverest guy on SPUF’ and a trophy to take home with them and show the world that they were the last scout standing! The tournament started off with a King of the Hill on koth_harvest. What started off as something that seemed an endless match, during the match the point switched hands several times and both teams were struggling to cap the point and wipe out the opposing team blocking the capture point.… [Continue Reading]