Battle of the Firespitters: Pyro vs Toa Vakama

Hello again. Are we all sitting comfortably? Good. You might want to stand up again, because your chair has just burst into flames. Along with the floor. Grab your computer and run, because two of the most hotheaded combatants in the universe are duelling just across the street. On one side is our masked, gloved and asbestos-clad Pyro. He/she is a very familiar being to us SPUFers. Specializing in ambush and close-range combat, the Pyro is a formidable beastie that skulks in the shadows. We don’t know very much about Pyro and probably never will. What we do know is… [Continue Reading]

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How to Attract Medics and Influence People

As a Medic main, I’ve had a lot of experience with people who want me to heal and Uber them, and people who I want to heal/Uber but they don’t seem to notice. In this day and age of loadout versatility, it’s no longer enough to be playing the correct class in a situation; you need to have the correct weapons equipped before Medics are going to start considering you a viable Uber target. Here are some tips for those wishing Medics would consider Ubering them more often. These are listed by class, and only cover classes that are considered regular… [Continue Reading]

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Phlogisticast Episode 5

Hey look! A SPUF-related pod cast that has lasted more than a couple of episodes! Yes, really. Seriously. Anyway, the Phlogisticast has got its 5th episode out. In it, Dekky, Thunder and I talk about goodness knows what, mostly Pyro stuff. There’s also some really awful French accents, a chat with a real life Pyro and discussions about the normal Pyro stuff. On top of that, there are plenty of tips for playing Pyro. And on top of ALL of that, we discuss Black Mesa. Yay! You want to listen? Click here! Please excuse the fact that Dekky believed the… [Continue Reading]

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Super Important TF2 Decisions

If Brink and Loadout taught us anything, it’s that players love to get to make their own decisions. Customize their inventories and weapons just the way they like it, be the masters of their own destiny, etc. To this end, TF2 probably gives their players more decisions than both of the previous games combined. But in some cases, these decisions can result in choices that are less than relevant. In fact, you could say these decisions make no difference whatsoever. 1. Rotating your teleporter entrance. The teleporter exit determines what direction your teammate is facing when they come out (and… [Continue Reading]

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Some Under-loved Weapons Which Shine on rd_asteroid

When I first played rd_asteroid, my eventual thoughts were…meh. It’s decent, but before I really understood the map and the game mode it was confusing to the point of frustration. And once I’d played it long enough that it was no longer confusing, its many flaws just seemed to hamper my ability to enjoy myself. A whole lot of classes seem underpowered on this map and several design choices (especially the plethora of overly-good sentry spots) only make it worse. But the more I played, the more I slowly realized that a number of my problems were due to my… [Continue Reading]

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On Love and War Class Nerfs

The Love and War Update handed us some neat stuff, like a neat-o short film, server-wide conga events, parachutes, and bread.  Also with the update shipped three (now two) serious nerfs for three classes.  This, I feel, was the weakest part of the update.  They were not thought out well, and were in some ways too strong, and in others too unnecessary in a game with bigger problems. Let’s get demoman out of the way.  Spuf has probably read ten thousand words on the controversial nerf, so I’m going to make this one short.  The sticky launcher needed a nerf,… [Continue Reading]

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Pyro vs Machine

Time and again, I ask myself the same question. I spin in my sleep trying to answer it. When it’s finally time to log in and load up another MvM server, it springs to my mind again when I see another player use these five words: “We don’t need a Pyro.” If this statement is uttered I will either switch to Engineer (if I agree) or ask why we don’t need a Pyro. “Why,” ask I, “do we not need a Pyro?” An innocent enough question, surely. But on certain servers I’ve had a variety of Pyro-trashing results. Apparently some… [Continue Reading]

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Art Time with Medic – How to draw a Pyro

Hello, peeps! Today, as you can see from all the slightly creepy pictures, we will be drawing a simple Pyro. You can use pretty much any art program to do this, you don’t need to shell out for a legitimate copy of Photoshop (although Adobe doesn’t deserve money for what they did with the CS collection) or anything. MS paint isn’t very nice, but there are loads of free or cheap tools. My better-artist-than-me sister recommends PaintTool Sai. Anyway, let’s get started! Start off with two circles. They’re the eyes. Normally I’d do a rough sketch of how the body… [Continue Reading]

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On Fire

  Flames are weird in video games. In real-life, they’re impossibly debilitating and would make continuing to do anything, much less fighting other people, an excruciating experience. Also, real-life flamethrowers can shoot yards of deadly liquid flames that put every video-game flamethrower to shame. In video games you generally want the players to still be functional and you want flamethrowers to fill the “close-range combat” role, so these aspects of flamethrowers are often toned down. You can read more about it on the TV Tropes page Video Game Flamethrowers Suck. Monolith Production’s Blood was the first game to have afterburn,… [Continue Reading]

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The Pyro should remain a mystery.

The tagline for the Spy was that he is a riddle wrapped in an enigma, but it turns out we know quite a lot about the Spy. He fancies Scout’s mother and he had a full miniature meal in his teeth. The only thing that we know about the Pyro is that when fire is around, he sees everything as rainbows and candy. We don’t even know if he’ s a he. Actually, I say that, there is some stuff we know about the Pyro. We know it likes puppies and we know that it can actually run a business,… [Continue Reading]

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