criticism – Page 6 – The Daily SPUF

On Becoming a Parody of Your Former Self

March 31, 2016 Medic 0 Comments analysis, comics, criticism, heavy, lore, medic, miss pauling, soldier, story

I’ve been re-reading and re-watching a lot of TF2 stuff lately. While my desire to actually play the game has fizzled out lately, I’ve always been a fan of the crazy TF2 back story. Always will. But my recent reviewing of it all has made me notice a few things. Things are changing. In ways I’m not sure I like. It hit me when I read Gargoyles and Gravel Pits, the Scream Fortress 2015 comic. In it, Medic is depicted as a complete lunatic, while Engineer is pretty chill about everything. And I realised that Medic has gone more and… [Continue Reading]

Featured Now for Something Completely Different

Ain’t no strings on me

March 5, 2016 Medic 0 Comments criticism, rant, tired

Right now, I should be browsing SPUF and r/TF2/, discussing the recent stress tests. I’ve missed all of them. I don’t really care, despite having a hint of excitement early on the morning of the fourth. On the dawn of a new age of Team Fortress 2, I have finally freed myself. I have cut the strings that tie me. It’s taken a long time, but I have finally done it. I have uninstalled Team Fortress 2. I’m tired and jaded. I am sick of playing a game where I always lose. No matter how hard I try, failure spits… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Grinding For Mediocrity

February 23, 2016 Medic 0 Comments campaign, contracts, criticism, gun mettle, pass, tough break, why

A new campaign for CS:GO was released the other day, and poor aabicus was suckered into it. After having to turn all his settings down to low or off in order to even play the damn game (a recurring bug that popped by Team Fortress 2 in the last Invasion update, remedied in the same way), aabicus spent a brief amount of time getting some fire damage and some pistol kills, he got rewarded with an old, crappy case and weapon that sold for 45 cents on the Steam Market. The day before that, my sister had a Dead Ringer… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

An Opinionated Opinion on Official Matchmaking

February 20, 2016 Medic 0 Comments criticism, matchmaking, opinion, tired, waiting

I’ve been holding off on writing an actual article on official matchmaking for a while, not sure whether it’s been the right time or not. It turns out there’s never a good time, so here’s a heavily opinionated article on the matter. First off, whether I’d actually play matchmaking or not, I’ve always wanted ranked matchmaking in TF2. It’s that sort of thing that probably wouldn’t have fitted in early on, but as competitive leagues began to get bigger and bigger, Valve should have properly jumped on it and done something with it. All these years later and we’re only… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Come on already!

February 17, 2016 Medic 0 Comments comics, criticism, lore, rant, story, Team Fortress 2

I’m a very patient person normally. I’ll wait my turn. It’s part of my British heritage that I’m otherwise not very proud of. But now I’m starting to think that I’ve waited enough. I’m talking about the damn TF2 comic series. Quick note. I know there’s people who haven’t read all the comics yet, so spoiler alert. Seriously though this whole thing started in 2013. 2013, I TELL YOU! Deep breath, Medic. Deep breath. The original plan was 6 comics, published bi-monthly. One every two months, not one every two weeks, like some of us had hoped. After reading through… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Followers in various video games

February 11, 2016 Medic 0 Comments advice, analysis, criticism, followers, non-tf2, rpg

Most games with a story, whether they are single player or multiplayer, have a habit of dragging someone with you for a while. How games do this, well it varies greatly, so I’m going to talk about the few games I’ve placed recently. Sometimes, followers, companions, whatever you want to call them, are bloody awful. Sometimes you forget they’re there. Often the game developers want you to have some sort of attachment to the morons you generally have following you around. One of my favourite examples of a follower done right is that of the security guards and scientists in… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Advertising does not belong inside games!

February 8, 2016 Medic 0 Comments anger, criticism, gah, rant

The other day, I had a Skype voice chat with someone. Bloody hell, it was awful. Skype had messed around with my microphone settings, the other person kept on cutting out and there were adverts EVERY FUCKING WHERE. Alright, I get it, it’s a free program and Microsoft (who, last time I checked, was doing pretty well) wants to make money, but fuck off with your completely intrusive adverts. Luckily, there was a way around those adverts, but still. This whole thing with adverts inside programs reminded me of all those advert servers. When Quickplay was released, apart from a… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

Sniper and The Stealth Buff Nobody Spoke Of

January 30, 2016 ___ 0 Comments analysis, criticism, maps, sniper, watchtower

Recently-ish on SPUF, having no more need to complain about the now bus-sized mini sentry, and arguing random crits to the death, we’ve come back to one of the classes that has been complained about throughout the ages, from the earliest days of first person shooting, all the way through the rail pad on q3dm17 (also known as the longest yard) to these modern days, where one will instant kill you with a quickscope, often through 8 walls: The marmite-like sniper. You either play sniper, or you hate them, and even if you’re in the first category, they’re still annoying.… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Cardboard Weapon Bonanza!

January 24, 2016 Medic 2 Comments analysis, art, cardboard, cosplay, criticism, suggestion, weapon

This morning, I sat in bed staring at my bookcase, the top of which is adorned with cardboard Team Fortress 2 weapons that I’ve made over the years. Very dusty ones. I’ve mentioned my cardboard weapons many times in the past, with my collection of Medic melee weapons, and even wrote about how to make your own shotgun. So I decided to maybe find all my cardboard weapons, finished and unfinished. The result was worrying. Thing is, cardboard is a really good modelling material. I can’t afford stuff like Worbla, the weird card material that hardens under heat and is… [Continue Reading]

Featured Now for Something Completely Different

Why TF2 is Hard

January 19, 2016 ___ 0 Comments advice, balance, criticism, newbies, settings, This is one of the best articles on the state of pub balance I've seen in a while.

There’s a lot of talk about the states of publics nowadays, but one of the things that’s really hard to remember once you’ve got good at TF2 is how it is to be a new player. Most players worth their salt have played for a couple of hundred hours. To these people, TF2 is a fairly easy game. And why wouldn’t it be? TF2 is a game where most of the characters are extremely accessible. Soldier rockets splash. Grenades splash. Stickies splash. Flamethrower requires low aim. So does the minigun. So does Engineer. And especially Medic. But what if I told… [Continue Reading]