Ephemera – Warframe’s Unusual Effects

It was only a matter of time until Unusual Effects started fleeing Team Fortress 2 and infecting other games. In fact, Unusual Effects have been doing so for years. First these sparkly effects began infecting other nearby Valve games and before long everyone was getting into particle effects. But then everyone switched over to skins on guns and the world hasn’t been the same since. Sure, there were Unusual Guns, but they never really had the same effect that Unusual Hats did. Actually, right off the bat, I’ve kinda made a mistake here. Ephemera aren’t really Unusual Effects at all.… [Continue Reading]

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Lord of the Flies

Once upon a time, long long ago, young aabicus made up his mind that he was ready to buy an unusual hat. I’d recently unboxed an Orbiting Lantern Officer’s Ushanka and sold it for $200 through Paypal, so I felt comfortable dropping some of that on a replacement unusual for a class I actually played. Which hat was a no-brainer; my beloved Prussian Picklehaube was the first hat the game had ever dropped, and it sat proudly on my medic’s head ever since. But what particle effect? There were so many, and I had to weigh the pros and cons… [Continue Reading]

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The Dry Gulch Gulp

The Dry Gulch Gulp was added into the game during the 2013 Summer Event. It is a paper soft drink cup with a lid and straw the sits in the Engineer’s pouch and does absolutely nothing else. I suppose it isn’t fair to say that since that applies for most cosmetics, but most of them aren’t just random items stuffed into a pouch. The Dry Gulch Gulp to me is a mystery, a digital manifestation of a question I have asked myself when I see some cosmetics: what is it doing here? No offense to the guy who made it,… [Continue Reading]

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Cadaver’s Cranium

The Cadaver’s Cranium shambles into the game during Scream Fortress 2010. It is based on the popular portrayal of the Frankenstein’s monster, and is an extra half a head rather crudely stapled onto the Heavy’s head, with thin black hair covering the extra scalp. Last I check, hair transplant isn’t supposed to include a large chunk of the skull with it. The Cadaver’s Cranium is a hat that holds a special place in my heart, as mine was a gift from a stranger when I was still very, very new. Years ago, a young, fresh-faced and newly premium’ed Warlock decided… [Continue Reading]

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The Soldier’s Sparkplug

The Soldier’s Sparkplug is one of the many roboticised cosmetics added into TF2 during the Robotic Boogaloo update. It is, as its name suggest, a spark plug owned by the Soldier, which for some reason he kept in his mouth like a cigar. And also, said spark plug is smoking according to the TF2 Wiki. Before we talk more about the narcotic car component, can we first talk about the cosmetics introduced in the update in general? To me, while some are pretty good, like Filamental and the Byte’d Beak, some are just… odd. Stuff like this and Electric Escorter on… [Continue Reading]

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The Sneaky Spats of Sneaking for Sneaky Sneaks

The Sneaky Spats of Sneaking slipped into the TF2 universe on the slick shoes of the Spy on seventeenth May 2012. Spats are traditionally used to protect shoes from mud and water, so this supposedly allows a sly Spy to slither among the ranks of enemies through harsh terrain with nary a scratch on the smooth leather. The slippery rogue will have an untarnished pair of shoes fit for the dance floor after a frenzy of stabs and slashes when he swings by the nightclub later that evening, The Slippery Spats of Slipping is a layer of white leather over… [Continue Reading]

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The Planeswalker Helm

The Planeswalker Helm? That ugly-looking Medic helmet? Yes, that helmet that looks like the gutted-out carapace of a deformed shellfish slapped onto the Medic’s head. The Planeswalker Helm is a promotional item for for people who pre-ordered  Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012. It’s based on Garruk Wildspeaker, a planeswalker, which is a sort of powerful ascended being in the Magic: The Gathering lore. Garruk himself is a 8 feet 2 inches, 480 lbs beast of a man who’s a warrior-druid that wields a pretty sweet axe and prefers the wild. About the only connection he has… [Continue Reading]

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What’s up with Levels on Items?

One of the first weapons I got was an Ubersaw. I’m pretty certain I don’t have it any more, as it wasn’t the achievement one. Most of the other first weapons I’d found were for classes I wasn’t playing – Scout, Sniper, Spy, Heavy, Soldier, the classes that I found genuinely hard (or too slow) early on. So I was mostly playing Medic, Engineer and Pyro and I didn’t really have any weapons for the other two. One of the first things I noticed on my brand new weapon was a level, level 10, compared to my level 1 Bonesaw.… [Continue Reading]

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The Gentleman’s Gatsby

“I was wondering around the other day, using my spectacularly riotous tickle mittens to coax my fellow adversely-colored brethren into fits of eye-watering hilarity, when a kind fellow noted the bubbly intrigue of my fine trusty battle helmet I had acquired from a rather loaded fellow whose name I do not recall, his name began with “Fus” or something of the like. But anyhow the man was bewildered. “Where do those bubbles come from?! What kinds of sorcery is at play?” he asked, as he consumed a particularly large fishcake. “Well…” I replied in haste. “This is an unusual hat.… [Continue Reading]

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Damn Dastardly Decorated Death Contraptions

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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