6 Things I Learned After 500 Hours of TF2

Team Fortress 2 is my latest obsession nowadays. Yes, this first-person shooter with cartoonish graphics may have been released in 2007, but this game still gives me fresh laughs and plenty of enjoyment today. I love the wacky lines, the teamwork you can foster, the griefers, the hats, the taunts, and all the other lovely (and not-so-lovely) chaps you can play with in order to win a round. In truth, I’ve spent the last 6 months or so accumulating around 500 hours of playtime in this game (in public servers alone). 500 hours may sound like a lot of time… [Continue Reading]

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MeeM’s thoughts on difficulty and continuity

Often, I find myself asking: “why are you still doing this” or “your team isn’t trying, why should you”. And nearly every time I fail to answer, and then consequently die for not paying attention. But that’s the thing. Why did I die? I died because I made myself die. Not directly, rather I made the decision that I should die a couple of hours before playing. Now, I’m fairly certain most people, at some point in any game, get to a point where they no longer feel challenged and quickly after they become bored. At least this was true… [Continue Reading]

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A Love of Laughter

No matter how we look at it, Team Fortress 2 is an awesome game. There’s bits we whinge about and bits we complain about, as well as stuff that really shouldn’t be in it *cough*random crits and current autobalance*cough*, and a lot of us have gone and written about the things we all dislike, for our Week of Love and Hate. We’ve also written about a lot of things that we love too. Despite how simple that sounds, it’s actually a very hard subject to write about. I spent ages trying to pick a subject. At first I was going… [Continue Reading]

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So, that TF2 update…

I said I would write about the February 29th update, so I am. Luckily there was also a March 1st update which I can also write about, although most of that was bug fixes and the un-fucking-up of CP_Foundry. The important matchmaking stuff that you’re all interested in is available in video form here. Go on, watch the video! The biggest thing to point out was a very random Matchmaking Stress Test that happened late on the 1st of March. People of all sorts of flavours could suddenly go and play matchmaking. Unfortunately (and typically) I managed to miss it,… [Continue Reading]

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Come on already!

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]

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Ruined for Other Games

Team Fortress 2 has spoiled me. All these years that I’ve been playing it have ruined me when it comes to playing other games. The game may not have been my first FPS, but I’ve got nearly 1800 hours on the game and it’s done some weird things to me. The first thing that has always bothered me is aiming. The majority of shooters generally want you to scope in or use an iron sight in order to aim more accurately. At the very least, you have way less accuracy when running than you do when standing still, and increased… [Continue Reading]

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On Assortedness and AIs

Having nigh non-existent internet makes you ponder about things. It also infuriates you by teasing you with a possible internet connection, only to laugh in your face as it takes five minutes to load DuckDuckGo, and seven minutes to load Google. Loading the Daily SPUF to schedule and write articles has been a painful series of events. Seriously, this is what I have to contend with. A note to all future torturers out there. If you really want to get information from someone, lock them in a room with my bad internet connection. They’ll be begging for release within half… [Continue Reading]

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On Rambling Bohrok

In a recent article, I noted that a lot of my, um, knowledge in writing comes from running a writing forum. But my writing career started by writing Bionicle fan-fiction. Bionicle fan-fiction is actually rather different from most other fan-fiction, as only 80% of it is shit, the other 20% isn’t that bad and some of that 20% eventually gets made into canon when judged by BZPower moderator Bonesiii (the only person to know more about Bionicle than the creators of Bionicle’s lore) in contests. Alright, the sexy romance stuff (even MY pseudo-romance stuff) is always shit unless it’s Hewkii… [Continue Reading]

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Five reasons why I’m not pre-ordering Overwatch

Everyone’s going on about Overwatch. Me? I’m pissed off. Mostly because I missed the open-to-all Beta weekend, because that was the one weekend I didn’t have stable internet. Typical. Still, I’ve been watching Overwatch and I do really like the look of it, and I think Valve will have to step up their game if they want TF2 to be able to keep up. That being said, I won’t be pre-ordering the game any time soon. Here’s why. 5. I don’t feel as if it’s worth $30 right now. Overwatch being a mostly multiplayer game is good and all, but… [Continue Reading]

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Distractions

Though I’ve seen plenty of articles on the Daily SPUF about TF2’s loadouts, balance, and players, as well as a ton of pieces on favorite maps and cosmetics, classes and weapons, I haven’t seen much about distractions. I’m not talking about in-game distractions, like the Sandvich Heavy that’s been crouch-walking everywhere for the last 10 minutes, or the 2nd Engineer that insists on placing his Sentry right next to yours. These distractions would make a good article of their own, but it would probably be of a darker tone. Decline and Fall of the TF2 Playerbase, anyone? Now where was… [Continue Reading]

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