Why 2fort_Invasion is Better than Normal 2fort

“In other news, and I know this is really nitpicky and off-topic, but I’m a little unsure as to why 2fort_invasion is worthy of the complete Valve seal of officiality. It’s just a reskinned 2fort and there are literally dozens of those…Though once Valve fixes the glitch where that map crashes hl2.exe on lower-end computers perhaps I’ll be able to play it and learn how wrong I was to doubt it.” ~aabicus, roughly a week ago Welp, guess I’m eating my words, because 2fort_invasion turns out to actually be a pretty amazing map. For a reskin with no balance changes from one… [Continue Reading]

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2fort could be saved, yet somehow we still haven’t managed it

Note: I wrote this on my mobile. You should be impressed. Do you know how many variations of 2fort there are? Tons of them. Far more than any other official map. You don’t see them on the TF2 map workshop because Valve nor us want them there, the workshop is for brand new stuff, not fixes and modifications. Valve will do their modifications in their own time, and you can always sell map stamps with new maps – community fixes are harder to make money from. But you visit tf2maps.net or gamebanana, the 2fort variations will flood you. 2fort night,… [Continue Reading]

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Why your first round should be on 2fort

I’m serious. I know 2fort is like the least-respected map in TF2, and a haven of bad map design and stalemates to end all stalemates. Where a single Engineer can indefinitely keep an entire team of demo-medics at bay thanks to the spawn points and chokeholds all favoring the defensive team to a horrific degree. But you know what? That’s not what you notice on your first round of TF2. You care about figuring out what this gun is you’re holding. How movement works. Why anyone plays people other than the giant Russian. And 2fort does a great job of… [Continue Reading]

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Some other spots to get to (that aren’t that hard!)

This article’s existence is more of the culmination of a running gag than a legitimate article. It’s the Frankensteinian surgery of two articles that both sat laboriously in my Drafts folder for ages, silently judging me every time I opened up WordPress and viewed my dashboard. The earlier article began its life as “Good Offensive Teleporter Spots on Non-Payload Maps”, intended to be a sequel of sorts to this article. It’s only candidate was the first spot on this list, I added it and then continued playing TF2, confident that more would present themselves to me in time. Now here we are… [Continue Reading]

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Halloween Capers

I hope Scream Fortress isn’t so stupid this year. Tradition has always had it that, for Halloween, the TF2 team gets together, waters the potted plant and actually comes up with somewhat new content. I say somewhat, the map we get is always a Halloween revamp of an old map, but the guessing game of what each year’s map will be is always amusing. Scream Fortress started with simple roots. The first map was Harvest, set under a bright moon, with a cute little ghost floating around, scaring and stunning people who got too close and making them easy prey… [Continue Reading]

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TF2 Update – Map Workshop Beta

Hey, look, an update! With a blog post to go with it! It’s only been three months since we had the last announcement on the front page! Except that one was for the fricking Taunt workshop, and while that’s fun and all, we’ve not seen a single new taunt released. But now Valve have decided to one-up themselves while at the same time destroying the community-driven tf2maps.net site by announcing a map workshop! Yeah, a map workshop. In beta. It’s basically like the Garry’s Mod workshop. You find a map you like, you download it. If enough people download a… [Continue Reading]

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Why is this still a thing? – Mannpower

Hands up if you play Mannpower. Come on! Don’t be shy! Hm. Not a lot of you. But I’m sure if we check the server browser, we’ll fine loads of people playing Mannpower! Huh. Lots of people playing cp_orange, that’s a bit like Mannpower, what with its homing rockets and perma-crits, right? Um. No, apparently not. According to my server browser right now, there are only 10 not-empty Mannpower servers. Compared to the twenty five or so 2fort servers. Not looking good. The previous beta game modes, pl_cactuscanyon and rd_asteroid may have had similar numbers. But Asteroid genuinely brought something… [Continue Reading]

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Medic’s Fifth Ever Competitive Match – 404 Medic not Found

No, seriously. What just happened? I have no idea. Week 6’s match was absolutely all over the place. I’ve decided, I’m not actually going to attempt to describe it. I don’t think I can. It was mental. Insane. Crazy. I don’t know any more! So instead of trying to make something coherent from that match, I’m just going to go over all the good bits. But first off, self-loathing! Turns out, I suck at every class but Medic, and I really need to play more Demoman, because sticky bombs and the Pain Train are the best weapons ever. Maybe try… [Continue Reading]

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An easy way for Valve to crank out new maps

Repurpose old ones! Sounds obvious, but this has been a mainstay of Team Fortress from the beginning. I’ve already mentioned that 3 popular (and one rarely-played) TF2 maps were originally maps in Team Fortress Classic, ported over due to their popularity. TF2 itself is quite fond of self-plagiarism, with there being no less than three versions of Gorge (four if you count Itemtest), Badlands, and many many maps with two different versions. These reskins come for a number of reasons. Sometimes Valve wants to showcase a new game mode and so they release some brand new maps along with a… [Continue Reading]

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Mannpower is the new TF2 Beta in Disguise.

Now before I say anything else, I would just like to point out that this is theory, as in pure speculation, none of this is officially confirmed. OK, now since that’s out of the way let’s talk about Mannpower. My first reaction to this “game mode” was that it was incredibly silly. Grappling hooks and powerups that make you super stronk were something I expected from custom mods and trade servers, not from an official Valve beta.  That is until I spent time looking through it and looked at the details which lead me to believe that Mannpower is just… [Continue Reading]

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