 |  | |
|
When it looked like Valve’s next Team Fortress 2 update would be the Spy’s unlockable weapons back in September last year, I said the prospect filled me with dread. Now that they’ve ambushed us with info on two of his new tools, and the whole thing is much more imminent that anyone realised, I am filled with a dark and terrible glee.
I’m not usually a fan of feigning death in multiplayer games, except as an entertaining way to fuck with ragdoll physics in Unreal Tournament 3. But the Dead Ringer dodges the two problems I usually have with fake-outs like this: 1) Trying to time your phony death to convincingly coincide with an enemy shot, which is fiddly at best and impossible with any degree of lag, and b) Having to shoot every damn corpse to make sure it’s not just pining for the fjords. Here, the timing is automatic: when you’re holding it (presumably) the first hit you take appears to have killed you. And corpses are never going to get up: the uncertainty is just “Should he really have gone down that easily? Is he cloaked somewhere around here now?” It still might lead to a tedious amount of speculative firing, but we’ll see.
The Cloak and Dagger is more exciting to me. Being able to remain invisible indefinitely, staying still to recharge, suits my style: I’ve tired of sprinting to the front line and sap-spamming sentries or hoping I slip through a crossfire by sheer luck. My most interesting lives as a Spy have involved taking impractically long routes around and stalking the enemy team from deep within their base, seeing how long I can prey on them uncaught rather than how rapidly I can score. Currently this is only viable on certain maps, like Well, that have high alternative routes and gloomy corners to recharge in. I’m hoping Cloak and Dagger will let me be this much of a dick in every match. It’s safe to assume that a) the Sniper update is still coming at the same time, b) these two are mutually exclusive alternatives to the conventional Cloak, and c) the Dead Ringer provides some immunity to being revealed by stray shots, or it might not be terribly useful.
More Team Fortress 2
| ||
 |  |
DrugCrazed: Protip: Nobody uses the DR. So when I do, I kick ass since I'm the only one who does.
| ||||
 |  |
| | |
|
As Chris also spotted, the screenshot accompanying the latest Scout update preview seems to show a game mode with a cart for each team, racing up a hill. Presumably the mechanics are the same: the more people near your cart the faster it moves, but it stops if an enemy’s in range. So your team is split between pushing their cart, shooting the enemies pushing their cart, and running over there to block the enemy cart entirely. I like the sound of that. When the carts are close, there’ll be heavy crossfire and cart-blocking. Then when one gets ahead, both move faster as they’re less hindered by the enemy team. At that point, crossfighting is in the losing team’s interests because they can get back to their cart sooner after respawning. If it works that way, it could be really interesting. You have to wonder how big a part Sentries play in a mode like that, though.
As for the new items – the Sandman stunning ball, and the Bonk! bullet-dodging energy drink – there seems to be even more whining than usual about imbalances. I’m not as sceptical, they sound great. I was disappointed with the Heavy items not because one involved slowdown, but because I just didn’t particularly want two of them. Both the Scout ones so far are highly desirable, and it seems absurd to fret about their effectiveness when we’ve been told no specifics.
More Team Fortress 2
| ||
| |
fbjxqocopy: VsZGUC tqtenqwmgdnc
| ||||
| |
| | |
|
I like those gaming-moments-of-the-year lists, but they don’t always tell you what the best games were or even what they were like. So mine’s a games-of-the-year list, but with defining moments instead of descriptions. There’s often a particular experience in a game that exemplifies its appeal, usually the one that springs to mind when you fancy playing it. I’m talking about those rather than highlights or secrets – though often they coincide. This’ll be spoiler-free – indeed, it will at times say nothing meaningful at all – and in descending order: best first. It’s: a huge open-world action RPG set in Washington two hundred years after a global thermonuclear apocalypse. Wilted fifties chic mixed with zombies being decapitated in slow-motion.  Defining experience: The Oasis I’m not going to say anything about where or what Oasis is, and the screenshot above isn’t from it. Most people probably complete Fallout 3 without ever finding it – I know I did, first time through. Oasis is just the crowning example of what made Fallout 3 my favourite game this year, and the main thing it has over Oblivion. I’d heard of it, but I wasn’t looking when I found it. I was just investigating some interesting rocks, as one likes to do on a Sunday. The wasteland is generally pretty flat, but I’d found a complex network of valleys and crags that looked like they might contain something interesting. They did. Despite its size, and despite is apparent barreness, every interesting-looking place actually is interesting. It doesn’t have Guilds like Oblivion, so its content isn’t organised into neat little mini-careers your character can systematically complete. It’s sown evenly throughout its blasted landscape, leaving little pockets of story, character, treats, secrets and unique treasures.  It’s a brave choice. More people will miss more of Fallout 3′s most extraordinary moments than they did with Oblivion. But once you realise it, once your pessimism about this next house, cave or Vault being a generic one has been disproved often enough, it evokes an explorer’s excitement that I don’t get anywhere else. But I wish: the skills were more fairly balanced. Small Guns and Repair are just flat out more effective than the others. Melee and Unarmed are crippled because you can’t target bodyparts, and Lockpicking gets its arse kicked by Science because most locked things have a hackable terminal to unlock them. It’s: a co-operative horror shooter for four people, in which the tide of zombies and superzombies intensifies towards the end of each hour-long campaign.  Defining experience: “TANK!” But I wish: there was a difficulty mode where the first four levels are frantic, but the finale isn’t impossible. And that Versus mode was just the latter two maps of a campaign, and the Director would give the losing side the Tank earlier or at the same time as it did the winning side. It’s: a squishy building game in which you conjoin sentient goo-balls with different physical properties to reach your goal.  Defining experience: A Blustery Day Not my favourite level – that’s Red Carpet – but Blustery Day is more typical of World of Goo. A new style of art that the level’s theme exquisitely, a booming score far too stirring for a physics game, and a smart new kind of puzzle that seems impossible until it occurs to you, obvious thereafter. But I wish: there were fewer simple levels. Early on this makes sense, but later there are one or two where the task is simple but daunting – building a very long bridge, or a very tall tower. I never hit a difficulty spike in World of Goo – it’s eerily close to flawless – but on these few the challenge felt fussy rather than creative. It’s: a creative adventure in which you play every phase of a species’ life, from the microscopic to the interstellar, designing how it evolves along the way.  Defining experience: “Holy shit, what’s that?“ Spore’s riddled with Star Trek references, but there’s a more profound one that’s not explicit: here’s the game where you seek out new life. There’s an actual galaxy to explore, and you’ll meet species that perhaps one other human has ever seen: their creator. I know a lot of people got pretty hung up on what they expected from Spore, or what else Spore could have been – and that is an interesting discussion. But I hope it didn’t blind anyone to what Spore actually is: an extraordinary exploration of human creativity, and the home of the most astonishing creatures I’ve ever seen. But I wish: the other stages were integrated into the Space stage: fight an eco disaster by designing an anti-virus that you then control in the Cell game, impress a warlike race by beating their champion in the Creature game, claim a planet without a colony module by beaming down and starting a Tribe, or mind-control an enemy leader from orbit and take his planet by winning a Civilization game. It’s: a sci-fi action RPG with guns and science-magic in which you captain a spaceship to search for a single evil alien.  Defining experience: “I’ve had enough of your snide insinuations.” Actually that’s not the defining experience, but anyone who’s played it and said that line knows why it springs to mind whenever you try to nail down why Mass Effect is so much better than ordinary RPGs. For anyone who hasn’t played it yet, be sure to say it if you ever get the chance. For me the defining experience was when I’d landed on a new planet, and was asked by security to surrender my weapons. I wasn’t going to do it. Thinking like a gamer, I’d assume the designers would never kill me while I’m defenseless. But I’d become so wrapped up in the character that BioWare’s writers, my decisions, and Jennifer Hale’s exemplary voice acting had collaborated to produce that I wasn’t thinking like a gamer anymore. I was thinking go to hell. You want my weapons? Come and fucking take them, see what happens. I won’t spoil what the outcome was, but the moral of the story is this: trust Mass Effect. It’s so well written and exciting that you’ll find yourself slipping into a role that’s very much your own – stick with it, and you’ll find the story moulds around it beautifully. But I wish: exploring a new planet felt a bit more like exploring a new planet. The Mako fun-bus was jarringly at odds with the serious tone of the game, I’d much rather have beamed down on foot.
More Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2
| ||
| |
Redhawk: I love that Mass Effect screenshot. It looks like Kaidan was giving some serious speech and Shepard just popped into the screen and was like "HAY GUSY".
| ||||
| |
| | |
 Disclaimer: this expression does not faithfully represent my feelings on these changes. Left 4 Dead has ceased to be a regular fixture in my schedule, but it somehow made TF2 feel old, or overfamiliar. So I’m mega-, perhaps even ultra-pleased with the timing of the pretty dramatic overhaul that just went live. Also, Scout update is next, thank God. I was wrong about the Spy hint in the previous TF2 blog post title. I asked Robin about it a while back – he was amused by the extreme scrutiny speculators subjected his wording to. He just has the TF2 script doc open and selects a line at random.
More Team Fortress 2
| ||
| |
Jazmeister: @Doctor Disaster
I have a deep respect for this kind of thing; it works similarly with the spy's pistol, as the knife never 'naturally' crits. If the sapper could quit, it would blow up the building and shower stickies everywhere that would blow up when the engie placed a new sentry. Balance THAT. | ||||
| |
| | |
|
To commemorate my 100th hour playing as him, and since he’s clearly next in Valve’s update schedule, it seemed appropriate to take a swing at a Meet The Spy script. It’s a moronic undertaking, of course, because the real one will be humiliatingly superior. He’s an easy target, because he’s basically made of dramatic irony – but that also leaves a minefield of awful clichés to step around. Anything that involves someone we believe not to be a Spy turning out to be a Spy is automatically dross. I love the bit in Meet The Sniper when our man wonders aloud whether he’s been spotted – and is then copiously shot at. Acknowledging the concerns that go through your head playing as him felt truer and funnier than these scenes where the starring class automatically wins against all-comers. So this script is mostly focused around the characteristic moments of playing a Spy. I reject the perception that he is unwaveringly aloof: aloof, sure, but he’s all about the wavering. No other class experiences more moment-to-moment panic or humiliation. A warning, though: it’s long.  1. INT — BRIEFING ROOM — DAY — PRESENT The title card vanishes to reveal the edge of a table. With a sudden bang, a blue briefcase is slammed down onto it, then clicked open by two gloved hands.
Zoom out to reveal a Red Team SPY as he slouches down into a chair, Blue Team corpses of various classes strewn around the briefing room. He takes a wad of papers from the briefcase, licks a gloved fingertip for purchase, and leafs through them uninterestedly. As usual, his accent takes a drunken tour of Western Europe as he speaks.
He rips the topsheet from a dossier, draws his cigarette case, opens a small compartment containing tobacco and, in a deft yet impossible to animate movement, rolls it into a smokeable.
He reaches down and lifts the nozzle of a dead Pyro’s Backburner and lights his intelligence roll-up on the pilot light. He takes a few puffs, then points it at us.
With a black loafer, he gently kicks the cranium of a dead Heavy at his feet. A lump of part-chewed Sandvich drops from his slack craw and his tongue lolls out.
 2. EXT — DUSTBOWL, TUNNEL — DAY — PAST Our red Spy, running along a tunnel, cloaks. We can still see him as a red silhouette. Blues pour in: a HEAVY, SCOUT, PYRO, DEMOMAN. The Spy has to flatten himself utterly against the wall to avoid brushing the Heavy, dash to the other side to avoid the Scout, dive clean over the Pyro just as he blasts a gout of spychecking flame, land into a forwards roll, and stand up face to face with the obviously intoxicated Demoman, who chooses that moment to stop dead and take a swig of his bottle. The silhouette tries to go round him to the left, but the Demoman staggers in that direction as he drinks. He tries the right, with the same result. He gives up and stands impatiently as the Demoman glugs, and glugs, and glugs. The silhouette looks at its watch, taps its foot. At last the Demoman advances, veering drunkenly into one wall then the other, and the silhouette tiptoes carefully around him. And slams into an identical blue silhouette, shimmering in and out of visibility.
Both step back in apparent shock, draw their revolvers, then cautiously circle one another until they have switched. Then, without taking their eyes off each other, they walk backwards in their original direction, and eventually turn to run full-speed.
The blue silhouette ducks round the corner and decloaks – a fully visible BLUE SPY, smirking. Simultaneously our man exits the tunnel…
 3. EXT — DUSTBOWL, CAP 3 — DAY — PAST …and slips away to the side, decloaks and straps on a paper mask with a Spy’s face on it.
He waits until the Blue Spy also exits the tunnel in search of him, and gives chase just inches behind. As he does so, a blue MEDIC spots them and gives chase. The three run to:
 4. EXT – DUSTBOWL, APPROACH TO CAP 4 — DAY — PAST
Meanwhile our man is swishing and thrusting his knife just centimeters from the enemy’s back, and finally he cuts a corner that his target does not. The knife sinks in, our man’s mask drops to the floor, the real blue Spy’s eyes widen, and he drops to his knees.
Our man leaves his knife in his victim’s back, and instead pries the Blue Spy’s knife from his hand before he collapses.
We dolly with the Medic as he arrives on the scene, just in time to see the Spy take a different corridor back to Cap 3. We lose sight of the Spy just before arriving back at:
 5. EXT — DUSTBOWL, CAP 3 — DAY — PAST We cut to a close-up of his narrowed eyes as they scan his team for suspicious activity, then pan across the team itself: A SNIPER squats on the control point on the far right, peering down his scope. A SOLDIER trundles forth from the trench in the center. On the left, an ENGINEER and a Spy wearing an unconvincing Engineer mask stand either side of a level three SENTRY, facing away from it in opposite directions. The Medic’s gaze pauses on them, then pans slowly back to the Soldier, none the wiser. Before the Engineer leaves the frame, he turns and notices the Spy standing next to him. He reacts and thumps his wrench menacingly into his open palm. The oblivious Spy, without looking round, reaches back and slaps an Electro-Sapper onto the Sentry. We pan away before we see the Engy’s reaction, as the Medic suspiciously watches the Soldier rocket-jump over his head, but we hear:
And the sounds of vigorous Sentry-wrenching and sapper-fritzing.
He turns and leaves for the front line.
6. INT — BRIEFING ROOM — DAY — PRESENT The Spy is lounging in the same seat where we left him, makeshift cigarette halfburnt and forgotten in his right hand, twirling an Engineer’s hardhat on his left. He contemplates the hat.
The hardhat slips from his finger and clatters to the briefing-room floor behind him. The sound snaps him out of his reverie and he sits up straight.
7. EXT — DUSTBOWL, CAP 3 — DAY — PAST The Engy chases the disguised Spy around the Sentry, the Spy slapping Sappers on the device, the Engy knocking them off with his wrench. By now they’re wading noisily through a heap of thirty bashed-in sappers on the ground. The Engy suddenly reverses direction to catch the Spy, but the Spy doubles back just in time to stay out of range.
He jumps to slap a sapper on top of the Sentry.
He ducks to affix one underneath it.
As the Engy pauses to reach each one with his Wrench, the Spy catches up behind him and shivs him in the spine. At the precise moment of impact, his mask drops to the floor.
His eyes close. The Spy begins to brush dust from his suit and opens his mouth to speak, then…
…his eyes widen in alarm, and he dives into the nearby hut under a hail of fire. We cut to a Sentry’s-eye view: a green nightvision-style view of the scene with an overlayed wireframe. A box around the entrance to the hut is labelled:
After lingering on it for a moment, it pans abruptly to the corpse of the Engineer, draws a box around it, and adds the tag:
The view pans back to the hut, and our Spy is now standing exactly in the “MEATBAG” box wearing the Engineer mask again. The view zooms in on the mask and clarifies the resolution, then a box pops up labelled:
We see gurning mugshots of each of the nine classes flicker past, the Pyro in a party hat, the Demoman holding up an identity plate at a police station, the Scout in the Heavy’s headlock, until it settles on the Engineer, which is labelled “FATHER”. A new line prints below this:
As it writes, the Spy approaches and withdraws another Sapper. This is highlighted in a box labelled:
The Spy slaps a sapper directly over our view, turning everything black except the text.
8. INT — BRIEFING ROOM — DAY — PRESENT Our man has his feet up on the table, tapping ash into a Soldier’s upturned helmet on the desk.
9. INT — DUSTBOWL, TUNNEL — DAY — PAST Our Spy is trundling along in a theatrical imitation of the Heavy’s gun-burdened waddle, clutching his tiny revolver in both hands as if it is enormously heavy, wearing a Heavy mask and bellowing for a Medic in a pitch-perfect Heavy voice. Soon the Medic returns from the frontline and latches on to him.
The Spy takes a moment to strap on a new Heavy mask that bears a broad grin.
Soon they reach the four attackers the Spy passed on his way in. As our Spy approaches, we see a close-up of his grinning Heavy mask, and we move into slow-mo as he pointlessly slaps a baleful one on top of it. His balisong rises gradually in his hand until it is poised to strike, then the three Heavy masks fall from his face in rapid succession: angry, happy, grim, then his real expression: a contorted rictus of fury and dark anticipatory delight. His knife curves slowly downwards, but before it hits we cut to:
10. INT — BRIEFING ROOM — DAY — PRESENT The Spy swings his legs down off the table and leans towards us, eyes narrowed, intense.
He draws his balisong from his blazer pocket and raises it for emphasis.
With the final word he brings his knife down a third time, but an instant before we would see it hit, we cut back to: 11. INT — DUSTBOWL, TUNNEL — DAY — PAST Close up on the Medic’s face – a vision of dismay. There’s the characteristic critical-hit backstab boom! and:
We see flecks of blood splatter the Medic’s face, causing his horrified expression to flinch. Another critical-stab sound:
Another stab, another splash of blood, another flinch:
Stab, splat, flinch:
The Medic’s face is now glistening with blood. His eyes narrow, he grits his teeth, spits a gob of swallowed blood to the floor, and we pull back to see him draw his Ubersaw. Dolly with the Medic as he pursues the fleeing Spy. As they exit the tunnel towards Cap 4, we cut to the chase from the side: the Doc is clearly gaining. But when the Spy reaches the large rock near the cap, he suddenly trots to a halt, spins around and calmly draws his cigarette case. The Medic is an inch from him when he comes into view of a level three red Sentry on his right, which-
-pummels him gracelessly into a rock. The spy brushes at a speck of blood on his suit, and begins:
Hot spurts of blood geyser horrifically from the Medic’s gibbering corpse, splattering the Spy. The Spy irritably wipes his face with a gloved hand and starts again.
The spy glares at it, soaked in blood.
Cut to:
 12. TEAM FORTRESS 2 LINE-UP SPLASH The usual suspects, the usual tune. Zoomed, of course, to our man. Beat.
13. INT — BRIEFING ROOM — DAY — PRESENT The Spy is still stabbing the table in a frenzy, woodchips and spittle flinging in all directions, when finally he senses us and looks up, suddenly aware of what he’s doing. His stabbing hand slows until the knife-tip is just tapping gently on the table’s lacquered surface, then he composes himself, flips the knife’s blade back into its housing in a complicated twirl and tucks it back into his jacket pocket.
He tosses a dossier back into the briefcase, clicks it shut, takes it by the handle and stands up.
He tosses his lit cigarette over his shoulder as he leaves, igniting the Medic’s coat. He straightens his tie before approaching the camera. We zoom out to reveal:
 14. INT — 2FORT, BLU INTELLIGENCE ROOM — DAY — PRESENT The Spy steps through a perfectly Spy-shaped hole already cut in the glass wall between the briefing room and the intel chamber. A Spy-shaped piece of glass is propped against the desk outside. A Soldier, Demoman and Heavy guard the two corridors leading in, all facing away from the Spy, and he mimes an eenie-meanie-miny-moe game to decide who to stab first. He’s interrupted by a sudden pop! as the now huge briefing room fire reaches the Heavy’s ammo belt. All three Blues freeze, and the Spy winces as a rapid series of small explosions causes everyone to spin round and glare at him. Finally, the Pyro’s propane tank blows the entire glass wall out. The Spy stands frozen, mid-flinch, shoulders hunched, face screwed up, as the last fragments of glass tinkle to the floor and the three stare expectantly.
 15. END TITLES W/BOX ART Team Fortress 2, available now, buy it I guess, yada yada.
More Amateur Hour, Team Fortress 2
| ||
| |
Post 500, by Tom Francis: [...] A Stab At Meet The Spy Which, as everyone pointed out, was too long. Then Meet The Spy actually came out, and was more [...]
| ||||
| |
| | |
|
James commenter Mr. Brit comments on 1Fort to point to Ubercharged.net’s coverage of mrfredman’s remake of Team Fortress 2 in significantly fewer colours, pixels and audio fidelity. It touches my soul inappropriately.
More Team Fortress 2
| ||
| |
J-Man: Is it dual monitor friendly? I was horrified when I found out DEATH WORM wasn't.
| ||||
| |
| | |
 Sorry Peanut, I know you were in the middle of your own taunty thing. But I had to try the Heavy’s kill-o-taunt. I’ve also been punching people’s blood out a lot more lately, and can now see the point of the KGB. If you’re not familiar with Team Fortress 2 and its unlockables, that sentence may have sounded strange. Having the Sandvich cleverly lures you into the business of punching, because your fists are now your only backup weapon. That in turn makes you realise it’s more viable than you’d expect, and suddenly the idea of getting a bonus for doing it is rather tempting. Five seconds is a long time in 100% critsville – switching to Natascha and spinning up probably only takes one and a halfish.
More Team Fortress 2
| ||
| |
Little Green Man: Yeah that was an awesome book, but then I love everything you write. And the screenshots were terrible...
| ||||
| |
| | |
|
So the new game mode is a sudden-death single-control point mini-match, suited to fewer players. More like suited to no players! Because of how it might suck! Lol! Seriously, though, I’m guessing the presence of a single control point negates what does suck about Sudden Death: the tendency for both teams to hole up at their base and wait until stalemate is announced. If you turtle up at the point, you can cap it and win rather than waiting for the enemy to come to you. If you turtle up before the point, the enemy can cap it and win rather than coming to you. I’m optimistic.  A delicious new environment for the chaps and Pyro! It’s quite, quite lovely – in some ways, even more stylised than the canyon motif we’ve been stuck with until now. The backdrop in this shot is just a few colours:  I’m a big fan of game environments that can feel cold without just blanketing the whole place in unconvincing snow. This definitely qualifies – can’t you just smell how brisk and bracing that mountain air is? That set of tips from the SomethingAwful testers has now been proven so right that it’s had to be deleted from the Steam forums. In Arena’s case, knowing the broad picture wasn’t very helpful: the details that there’s a single control point, and it can have any number of players, completely change the prospect to a rather exciting one. But if you still doubt that the last Heavy unlock will be a health-restoring munchable named the Sandvich that replaces the Shotgun, you are now officially delusional.
More Team Fortress 2
| ||
| |
DoctorDisaster: All my qualms about the sandvich have been laid to rest. Why?
Because it is HILARIOUS. "My BLOOD! He punched out ALL my BLOOD!" | ||||
| |
A Stab At Meet The Spy
The Best And Worst Of Mass Effect 2
SWAT 4: The Movie
Oh My God What The Fuck Barbecue
Exploded
The Team Fortress 2 Experience
First Night, Second Life
A Life In Questions
Subscribe to all posts