Anger, real life and video games

Lately, I have been incredibly angry and upset. Real life has been a horrible pile of crap with things going wrong everywhere. My laptop is breaking, my phone is getting old, we’ve had a huge water leak and sewage issues and internet issues and the list just goes on and on. Of course the constant stress of all this is starting to get to me and beat me senseless. Combined with the lack of anything to really look forward to as of late, you lose track of things. I need to relax. Which I will do, during my week holiday… [Continue Reading]

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The Meet your Match Update is here – Early Thoughts

The Meet your Match update has shipped, after apparently holding off for a bit as to not disturb a major ETF2L match, which is nice of them. Honestly though, I’m not sure what to say. I suppose I’m happy that we’re getting an update, and that we’ll be getting more updates in the future. Of course we got new taunts. The TF2 youtube channel had them uploaded but private for ages. Taunts are basically the new hats, but better because they don’t fuck with the art style in any way. Of course we got crates. The keyless crates are interesting.… [Continue Reading]

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How I think the rest of the TF2 comic will go

Alright. I’m done. I’m tired of the stupid TF2 comic continuing to not exist. It was supposed to be a bi-monthly comic, starting in August of 2013. TWO THOUSAND AND THIRTEEN. It is now July TWO THOUSAND AND SIXTEEN. IT HAS BEEN NEARLY THREE YEARS. SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK? No, seriously, this is beyond ridiculous. It’s beyond Valve Time. It’s reaching Half-Life 3 levels of silliness. There’s more proof of the existence of Left 4 Dead 3 than there is for TF Comics #6. It’s depressing. So here I am, making up my own ending. Someone should buy me cookies… [Continue Reading]

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Meet your Match update – Called it.

I fucking called it. See, I said it in this article. Unless the ‘Neato’ update comes in the middle of next week (which, knowing my luck, it will), all of next week’s articles will be a bit different in some way. Anyway, yes, competitive has been released, unranked gameplay is no longer the casual slogfest it used to be and copies Overwatch and every other matchmaking system, at least on Valve servers, Pass Time is out of beta and OMG WHAT THE FUCK THEY FINALLY MADE SUNSHINE OFFICIAL OMG FUCKING FINALLY. There’s also Metalworks and Swiftwater, two major competitive maps… [Continue Reading]

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It all dies in the end…

When was the last time you played something other than Payload, Attack/Defend, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill or Control Points? Was it a while go? Probably. You might not have touched some of the letter game modes in years. Not that I blame you, there’s a lot of excitement right now for matchmaking, everyone’s all geared up for it. The chosen maps are mostly 5CP, with the odd other random map thrown in. Apparently Viaduct is in there somewhere. I like Viaduct, always been a fan of King of the Hill. Normal Viaduct isn’t the greatest map, the… [Continue Reading]

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DC and the F2P: Initiation – TF2 Pub Tales

These excerpts were found within the diaries of DC’s sister, among some cinders and next to a pair of Pyrovision Goggles.    The Prologue So there my sister DC was, sitting around in her chair, mumbling about hats and projectiles and typing away some kind of nonsense. She’s been at it for nearly a year now, a year of me waking up in the middle of the night sometimes when she screams for a doctor or just madly cries out to no one in particular. I have reason to believe that her participation in Team Fortress 2 has caused her to… [Continue Reading]

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Concepts

Valve doesn’t like adding new concepts to the game, which is why there are so many +/- weapons, even the ones that don’t look like they are. The Airstrike for instance, is entirely +/- but the description doesn’t show it as such. Anyways Valve occasionally figures out they can change around a concept for new weapons and balancing, and then do it to a bunch of weapons (cough, switch speeds in tough break getting added to like 30% of melee weapons, cough). This seems like a new thing but switch speed has been around for ages in the Degreaser and… [Continue Reading]

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Why is Competitive Matchmaking coming out of beta?

After 11 mediocre stress tests, TF2 Competitive Matchmaking is coming out of beta. And tons of little things that we’ve complained about don’t seem to have been addressed. The game doesn’t run much better on DX9, so those needing DX8 (some of whom may be on plenty strong enough computers that just don’t play nice with TF2) are locked out of competitive. Other graphical settings, mostly ones only accessible via console commands, are also turned off. Matchmaking seems to have trouble matchmaking people of varied ranks. The issue of class limits and class composition is still… an issue. Those ‘small’… [Continue Reading]

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6 Truths All Valve Pub Players Know

There are many, many ways to enjoy Team Fortress II. In the classic modes, you can fight over control points, deliver payloads, steal enemy intelligence, and even deliver booze to alien motherships. You can also hop into a team that decimates robots of all shapes and sizes. Or perhaps go into the dark unknown of community servers that run all sorts of mysterious plugins and curious maps. Personally speaking, I enjoy lingering by the Random Quick Play screen, which means that I typically play on random Valve public servers most of the time. (That’s something you might have probably guessed… [Continue Reading]

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Day of the Demoman

Something strange has happened recently… I figured I’d talk to you lovely people about it. (That isn’t the strange bit, but hang in there!) I’ve always disliked most explosive damage weapons in games, especially in multiplayer. I find them wholly unsatisfying and irritating as they often are capable of the performance of weapons with much higher skill requirements without the need for the aforementioned skill. I like knowing I’ve earned a kill. Not just gotten one via a panic mash of button presses. Hence why when you get killed for the fifth time in a match by a Soldier shooting… [Continue Reading]

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