Did Team Fortress 2 Ruin Gaming Forever?

If there are three things that Team Fortress 2 is famous for, it’s the unique art style with cartoony and memorable characters, how utterly insane the game is and, well, hats. There’s a reason why TF2 is referred to as a “war-themed hat simulator” with just how many cosmetics are available. But there is one more thing that TF2 is famous for: Crates. Mann Co. Supply Crates that require Mann Co. Keys to open, for sale in the Mann Co. Shop for about $2 each. Did the inclusion of Crates and Keys in 2010 doom the gaming industry forever, flooding… [Continue Reading]

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Jungle Inferno, the new Team Fortress 2 Update, is here!

I know, I was supposed to do write-ups for each of the days of the Jungle Inferno update, but considering how Team Fortress 2 updates work, with reveals on the first days and the actual event being released on the last day, I didn’t think there would be much point. So day two was all the new campaign stuff, like the old Gun Mettle update but with a twist. Now, rather than ending up with a billion stock weapons with weird (and often ugly) textures on them, completing part of the new campaign grants you a War Paint, that can… [Continue Reading]

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I miss Mystery Heroes. – [Overwatch]

So I  was going to write an article on how annoyed I was with the system Blizzard currently has for unlocking the new Summer cosmetics, since they can only obtained in summer loot boxes, which only have 1-2 summer cosmetic slots and 90% of the summer unlocks are worthless voice lines and sprays. There’s absolutely no way to increase your odds of landing something you actually care about, and here I’ve got 1600 credits just wasting space on my account because I’ve already bought everything I could possibly want except the awesome new Widowmaker summer skin. I understand why they did… [Continue Reading]

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On Community Updates

Community updates have always had some sort of sparkle to them. You get a ton of great content-creators gathering and making something as a team. Right now, we have two communities working together on two very different but rather complimentary updates – the Iron Gauntlet, which features Mann VS Machine maps and robotic cosmetics, and the Mayann Project, which is more of an Indiana Jones themed update. Both look very promising and some cool themes behind them. And of course, more Mann VS Machine stuff is always good for me. Thing is though, despite the fact that community updates bring… [Continue Reading]

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I guess it’s campaigns forever now…

The Smissmas update is not exactly that Smissmas-y. Yes, Miss Pauling is supposedly on holiday. Yes we’ve got the noise makers and the stockings. Yes there’s a festive crate wandering around. But there’s no spirit or anything going around. Once everyone’s dumped their Giftapults and Secret Saxtons, that’s kinda it. Previous years weren’t much better, but they did bring new weapons for people to use. Just a few generally, but enough. This year we’ve received not new weapons, but weapon reworks and not always in a good way. It’s not really a rework if a weapon is made pretty much… [Continue Reading]

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Unboxing… Stuff

You know, last time I spoke about this, I bitched and whined about how my brother always unboxes the best shit ever. Sister also did unboxing and got… stuff. It actually kinda got me thinking about things. There’s a huge number of crates around. I’m pretty certain we’ve sailed past the 100 crates mark. The Gun Mettle cases, the Invasion ones, the Gargoyle Cases, they’ve surely put us past 100, right? Unless you’re going to be pedantic and say they’re cases, not crates. If you still need a key to open them, they’re still essentially crates. But the majority of… [Continue Reading]

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Killing Floor 2 Disappoints Again

Tripwire has announced that its upcoming content pack will include a crates and keys system completely lifted from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a move that is becoming increasingly popular with similar models now existing within Payday 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2. As you play you’ll receive cosmetics (that you can sell on the Steam Community Market) and crates (that you can open by buying keys). Said cosmetics come in six shades of rarity (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Exceptional, Master Crafted, and Precious) and while they’re currently cosmetic-only, Tripwire says: “In the future we may be adding weapons with new gameplay for sale, but this will appear in… [Continue Reading]

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Talk about Luck – Unusual Thoughts yet again

It’s been a while since we last chatted about unusuals. Every time I do so, I end up complaining that my siblings have stupid amounts of luck while I end up earning my way up the TF2 property ladder. I did this the most in the first one, I think, but I did it the same in parts 2 and 3 as well.Well today’s going to be exactly the damn same! Not really. Alright, on Monday, my brother Terroxy says “I’m going to buy some keys!” so he goes and buys 5 keys. He’s a bit of a trader, so… [Continue Reading]

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The Future for Decorated Weapons

Originally I wanted nothing to do with the new decorated weapons. I knew they’d make Valve another fortune of microtransaction money, but you don’t have to be Warren Buffet to realize that. I just thought they looked unanimously stupid, especially when the majority looked like someone plastered wrapping paper on them. Plus the rest of TF2 doesn’t have that scratched scuffed appearance, for the most part the buildings are clean and the weapons will have bright red bloodstains at worse. I’m sure it worked for CS:GO but just wholecloth porting the concept over without alterations seemed as phoned-in as the strange weapons… [Continue Reading]

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May 10th – 17th

Remember when last week I expressed disbelief that Valve cranked out so many patches the week after so many big updates? Well, apparently Valve waits two weeks to take some time off, because this is the week where not much happened. In fact, in TF2’s eight years of existence, only four of those years had updates during this week. 2010 saw the inclusion of a few tweaks to the new crafting system. The gunboats were flagged as a Soldier secondary, and the crafting requirements for tokens was reduced to only two items of the same class. This made tokens actually… [Continue Reading]

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