ubercharged.net

Spotted this one linked from the Steam TF2 forums.

Its an excellently produced video, and is a great overview of spy tactics and techniques by Daedalus. Must see viewing for anyone wanting to pick up the sneaky arts.

The always hilarious Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame has cranked out one of his trademark reviews for the Orange Box and its contents over at The Escapist.

His reviews are basically one of the funniest things on the internet, so its well worth a watch.

“Mmmrrrghh rmmrarrr. Mmmrmmrw ggrrmmm!” - Pyro

I love playing pyro. I mean really, whats not to like? His muffled ramblings crack me up. Its kinda like Kenny from Southpark. You can’t really understand anything, but you fill in the details with your imagination, and somehow your brain attaches some meaning to it far more offensive than what it would have been. I’ve attempted to translate, and most of what the pyro says definitely refers to your mother and her choice of romantic partner.

Then you’ve got some of the coolest animations in the game. Depending on your weapon, you’ve got taunt animations with nods to star wars, street fighter, AND air guitar.

And you can set people on fire!

Which is great.

Unless you’re a spy.

Pyros excel at anti-spy patrolling. The flamethrower is perfect for random sweeps if you suspect a spy is lurking around anywhere. Just flame every single person you see (friendly fire is always off remember) to uncover any spies that may be disguised. If you stay aware you can listen for spies cloaking, and you can vaguely see a shimmer when they move. If in doubt, just flame in a circle around you and see if anything catches fire.

Just inside the bottom entrance of 2fort is a perfect spot to camp and intercept incoming spies. Occasionally you can check the sewer entrance to see if anyone is coming in. A random shotgun blast down the tunnel each time will hit any incoming cloaked spies. Don’t engage them at range though - they’ll own you. Retreat and wait till you can engage them at close range (either that or they’ll give up and go back - which is not your problem anymore).

Which is fun for a while, but if you’re playing in a public game then the spies will often get tired of getting burnt, and will switch tactics (or servers) leaving you without much to do - especially if you’ve got an engineer helping you out. A solid defence can be quite demoralising.

This is a bit of a dilemma. You can either change tactics yourself and try something else (maybe go offence, or change class). But as soon as you do, you can bet that there’s gonna be another spy sneaking in. It just takes one to take out your turret defence, and backstab a few decent folk. Eventually it becomes a bit of a chore.

But thats the way the game goes I guess. You really just gotta keep at it like with bathroom tiles. If you keep scrubbing, you can get rid of the built up mold, but if you stop for a while, then you’re back where you started.

Probably the best thing to do while waiting is to sit tight and spend some quality time with your Weighted Companion Cube. This is something you should be doing anyway, as it prevents it forming thoughts of stabbing you, or stealing your cake. Both of which will hamper your mold spy removal work.

Spotted this over at TF2 Fort

A heavily controlled scientific physics experiment to see if 30 heavies lined up on the railway track can stop a train.

The answer is no.

Not a lot is known about the origins of the sniper. We know he’s an Australian, but that’s about it.

We’ve had the ubercharged.net research team working round the clock on this one, and we think we’ve figured it out.

The sniper is none other than Roman Grant, evil leader of the Juniper Creek compound from the TV show Big Love (It’s not your usual gamer fare - it’s kinda like Desperate Housewives, except with polygamy and religious fundamentalism mixed in. I only got into it cause my wife likes it, but its pretty entertaining).

You be the judge, but I think the evidence speaks for itself. Add the glasses and more stubble, and we’ve got a perfect match. We suspect Roman Grant is actually Australian, but had to tone down the accent to get religious cult leader work in the US.

So you’ve been playing TF2 beta since it came out a whole 3 weeks ago. You’ve cut your teeth sniping on 2fort, spent hours baby sitting sentries, and yelled for more medics than you’ve had hot dinners. You’re a hardcore, old school TF2 player. You’re a pro. An artist. A finely tuned dealer of death.

But now the Orange Box is unleashed on the public at large, and you’re staring down a loss of balance with the natural order of things.

What can you do about it?

1. Act all indignant. Valve created this game for you alone. Now all these new kids are coming along and ruining your fun. Bitch, whine, complain about every little thing. Some guy just got a lucky shot on you? Must be a n00b. Make sure the entire server knows about it, and preferably every forum you can think of.
2. Point out your superiority. Tell everyone that you’ve had the game installed since the start of beta. Thats a pretty big head start. If you do the maths, it obviously equates to about 5000% more skill than someone who has only had the game on their system for an hour. You have the power of life and death over them, which you will exercise if they don’t bow to you as a god.
3. More generic point wh*ring. Keep on sniping and laying down turrets. If some n00b manages a lucky shot and takes you out, see #1. Objectives always were, and still are irrelevant.
4. Defense stack! Everyone knows that CTF maps aren’t designed to be won, but as a test of will. Its kinda like soccer. The perfect form has both teams camped up in their own base awaiting the other team to never attack. The loser is the team that has to pee, or falls asleep. Whichever comes first.
5. Call for nerfs/buffs. If a certain class is owning you, its an obvious sign of a defective, unbalanced game design. You’ve played 3 weeks, and you’re a veteran player that knows best. Jump on the forums and demand affirmative action from the devs right away!
6. Decry nerfs/buffs. If they devs do listen to player feedback, and actually do implement changes, they are obviously wrong. Complain and make them change the game back.
7. Misunderstand the classes. Obviously the pyro should be able to take on a sniper in the open, and the scout should be able to outgun a heavy. The flawed game design is stopping you play at your best. See #5 and Demand action!
8. Claim that feature X will hurt competitive gameplay. Everyone knows its all about the pro clan games. If something in the game makes that more difficult then its time to start a forum flame war.
9. Claim that feature Y will hurt public server casual gameplay. Everyone knows its all about the casual public games. If something in the game makes that more difficult then its time to start a forum flame war.
10. Remind everyone how much better it was “back in the day”. Three weeks ago during beta, things were different. It rained unicorn giggles, cats and dogs lived happily together, and players danced merrily into the long summer evenings. Everything was good. Now, everything is bad. The only thing different is the n00bs joining. Make sure everyone knows this. If possible try to maintain a clique of like minded players, and mock any who dare approach.

I can completely understand your frustration. I know its tough, but as we’ve discussed here, there are positive steps you can take to help the situation. With a little effort we can all work together to eventually scare off all the n00bs and reduce the size of the TF2 community back to what it was during the beta - or with a little luck even to what it was like pre-beta!

Good luck.

One of the things I love in Team Fortress 2 is the humour. The “Meet The…” series of trailer videos introducing the different classes shows this off nicely.

Meet The Heavy Weapons Guy

Meet The Soldier

Meet The Engineer

Meet The Demoman

Meet The Scout

Team Fortress 2: Meet the Scout from Hollohill Groge on Vimeo.

Me and a bunch of guys from work have been playing the Team Fortress 2 beta and have been loving it. Sniping, setting people on fire, stabbing people in the back who thought they were our friends, clubbing people who walk slower than us, and then we played some TF2.

We’ve been spending more than a few hours playing each night, and then recapping the evenings play the next day at work over the ritual morning coffee. We talk a lot of crap and have a few laughs about the crazy stuff in this game. So I figured we could post some of the coffee machine conversations online. Maybe someone might find them interesting.

Which is how we got to ubercharged.net - basically a bunch of random ramblings (some of it written sober), about all things related to Team Fortress by professed amateurs.