Five Things I Miss From Team Fortress Classic

I loved Team Fortress Classic. While I won’t argue it was more balanced than TF2, or even better then TF2, since I consider the two so different as to be incomparable, I loved it for what it was. It was Team Fortress boiled down to its core: Two teams of dudes shooting each other and working together to fill their teammate’s inherent weaknesses. No cartoony graphics, no multinational band of misfits, just nails and bullets and grenades.

And there are some things I really miss from it, things that make me turn the game on and play on bot-choked 2fort/dustbowl servers (because that’s all there is left…), just to experience it again. Things like:

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A Flood of Hats

Too many hats?
Too many hats?

This year, we have been flooded by hats. Literally, flooded. Do you know how many new hats we’ve had this year? Do you know how many hats there are in TF2? According to the Team Fortress 2 wiki, there are 380 hats. And there are 306 miscellaneous items. Plus the 25 items from the recent update. That’s 701 items.

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Arena mode: why it failed

For once, it's not his loadout stopping people from playing with him. Photo by Gen. DeGroot.
For once, it’s not his loadout stopping people from playing with him. All photos this post by Gen. DeGroot.
Arena. We all know it’s a dead mode. Sure, there have been other modes that Valve dropped, like Special Delivery or Territory Control. But Arena was the only one with a considerable push behind it, starting with not just one map, but five: Lumberyard, Badlands, Ravine, Granary, and Well. It even received four more maps after its initial push. But despite this key difference, the mode still died. Why? Well, in short, it’s not very good. Why? There are a few reasons.

A Tale of Two Saws

We here at spufblog pride ourselves on keeping our daily articles relevant and balanced between all nine of Team Fortress 2‘s classes, and I’d say that this week’s articles are shining examples of that. Let’s see…we had article about the Sticky Jumper….followed by an announcement about “Demoman vs. Demoknights,” followed by an analysis about Demomen vs. Demoknights…followed by a break-down of the Demoknight’s Half-Zatoichi… Okay, at this point you’re probably pretty positive I’ve never played anything but demoman. But that isn’t true, actually he’s not even my main. I consider myself a Medic. Problem is, I haven’t played him recently… [Continue Reading]