analysis – Page 10 – The Daily SPUF

Cops & Zombies 4: Assault Rifles

April 26, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, Cops & Zombies, guide, weapon

I don’t know how I managed to make it to the fourth article without discussing the assault rifles, but they’re the bread and butter of the FPS genre so I can’t leave them on the backburner forever. The archetypical jack-of-all-trades, assault rifles are a community favorite and I doubt that philosophy is ever going away. They have respectable damage output, moderately fast reload, moderate accuracy and higher-than-average firepower, and the real question becomes: Now that you’ve decided you want an assault rifle, which one should you pick? Both games have a super vanilla “literally no downside” rifle and an AK-47 (actually… [Continue Reading]

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Cops & Zombies 3: Shotguns

April 25, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, Cops & Zombies, guide, shotgun, weapon

On one side of the spectrum, we’ve got the long-range super-accurate sniper rifles, in the middle we’ve got the midrange medium-accurate assault rifle, now to round things off here come the short-range screw-accuracy shotguns. Not that these guns can’t hold their own in mid-range combat; horde games always give players some of the best shotguns that can wreck the enemy even outside their favored range, and keep the damage coming indefinitely due to the quick single-shell reload system. Left 4 Dead 2 has a larger variety of shotguns available to the player, with the Chrome Shotgun and Pump Shotgun among the earliest… [Continue Reading]

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Cops & Zombies 2: SMGs

April 23, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, co-op, Cops & Zombies, guide, weapon

Both Left 4 Dead 2 and Payday: The Heist have two ‘tiers’ of non-pistol weaponry. Tier 1 is generally less combat-effective and consists of weaker shotguns and submachine guns, whereas Tier 2 is where the more varied heavy-hitters enter the picture. To me, this makes Tier 1 sound much more interesting from a balance perspective, as the devs had to make sure they were combat capable without feeling like primary weapons. Nowhere is this more clear than with the SMGs. Both games have two SMGs with pretty predictable roles. There’s the accurate one with low damage per bullet (Uzi in Left 4 Dead… [Continue Reading]

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Cops & Zombies 1: Sniping

April 22, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, Cops & Zombies, guide, sniper, weapon

Assault rifles felt like an obvious place to start this series, what with assault rifles being the generic all-purpose middle ground of the gun spectrum, but personally I’ve always found sniping a more interesting balance challenge for a co-op horde game. You’re being flooded with a bottomless wave of bad guys, why on earth would you want a semi-automatic long-range weapon when an assault rifle can clean an entire courtyard faster? Because you’re on a team, that’s why. If your three allies can keep the bulk of the enemy down, you become something of a specialist who excels in picking specific targets,… [Continue Reading]

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How an FPS Should (and Shouldn’t) Reward Experience

April 18, 2015January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, experience, non-tf2, On Shooters, Team Fortress 2, valve

While I’m not the Valve-only gamer I was a few years ago, I do seem to always find myself coming back to Valve’s pre-eminent titles. No matter how many times I grow tired of their old games and branch out in the hopes of finding similar but fresh content, I always eventually come crawling back for more Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress or Counter-Strike. Recently I took a bit of time to try and puzzle out just what exactly Valve had done to continually attract me so. And I think I’ve figured it out. The single best thing about Valve games in… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

Thoughts on my first season of competitive TF2

April 5, 2015 Medic 0 Comments 4v4, analysis, competitive, criticism, medic

Season 4 of 4v4 was my first ever step into competitive TF2, after months of people telling me I’d do really well, that I’d be perfectly alright, that I was plenty good enough, even though I can only play Medic. They may have been right, but I’m still not sure and I’m not sure whether I want to continue or not. At least in 4v4. The first thing I noticed is organization. For 4v4, matches are on Friday, to be completed and scores updated by Monday. But it’s really hard just trying to get a date from the other team.… [Continue Reading]

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TF2 is in palliative care, and the signs are all there…

April 3, 2015 Medic 0 Comments analysis, community, SPUF, tf2 is ded, trading

Original article by Sud, as seen here. As much of a downer subject that it may be, I get the feeling reading through threads around here that people are a bit in denial as far as hope for TF2 to receive significant future support, and I just wanted to sound out a bit about the topic. TL;DR is at the bottom if you don’t like words. Unfortunately, Valve is no longer the happy little company that it was when it was developing Half-Life, and Steam was a twinkle (or the beginning of a cataract) in Gabe Newell’s eye. Valve has… [Continue Reading]

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The Classic: Underpowered or Misunderstood?

March 21, 2015 Zarik 0 Comments analysis, Classic, conga, sniper, TFC, weapon

Not too long ago an update hit, an update that some think of as the bane of TF2’s existence thanks to the addition of these then new taunts, mainly the conga, however there was a shining light to the update: we got 4 new weapons! That’s right, four whole new weapons, one being the Classic, which is suppose to be a homage to TFC’s Sniper Rifle. The Classic received a graphical update that’s very faithful to the original model, and honestly the gun looks amazing. Despite being ecstatic about this homage, I found myself a bit dumbfounded at the stats,… [Continue Reading]

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Saxton Hale – The Tenth Class

March 19, 2015 Answers 0 Comments analysis, class, comparison, demoknight, fun, love, melee, Saxton Hale, SPUF, theory

Preface You know, after all this time, I would have thought someone would have been able to come up with a legitimate class description for the one and only Saxton Hale. I’ve searched the SPUF archives, and while there are some interesting ideas for non–core TF2, as far as I know, there is no actual proposal for Saxton Hale to join the Nine on the battlefield! This cannot continue. Every day I ask myself: “What Would Saxton Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-(breath)-Aaaaaaaaaale Do? (WWSHaaaaaD?)” and while the answer is usually “Grow a Moustache, you hippy!” today the answer to that question is “Try to Make Saxton Hale a Balanced Class in Team Fortress… [Continue Reading]

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I want to like the Cow Mangler 5000

March 15, 2015 Engineer 0 Comments analysis, criticism, weapon

Hi there, I’m an Engineer, and I solve practical problems. Actually, no, I’m the Medic and I’m commandeering this article because it’s been sitting, unchanged, since 2013. But I’m going to put on my roleplaying shoes and finish this. So, the Cow Mangler. Fun. Laser-y. Confusing. Pointless? The Soldier has a lot of weapons, particularly rocket launchers. It’s expected of the jack of all trades class. The Cow Mangler 5000 is probably one of Soldier’s weakest weapons. Engineers hate it. Kritzkrieg Medics hate it. Pyros love it. Actually I think Pyros kinda dislike it too, unless they’re reflecting those spangly… [Continue Reading]