Team Fortress 2

This year’s Team Fortress 2 Halloween event has been stripped of its cobwebbed shrouds and revealed to be one of supernatural shenanigans: there will be spells, there will be zombies, there will be spooky achievements, and there might owls. (I can’t tell if that’s just for illustrative purposes.) Relevantly: there’s a new King Of The Hill mode featuring a wizard, and a new Man Vs Machine mode where the robots are “800″ zombies, which is called Wave 666. Both look enticing, in a “don’t touch that green glow!” sort of way.

You can read more about it here. And there’s a comic here. And the event kicks off today. Good luck, freemarines!

Valve are looking for community prop makers to furnish the shooter’s October update. From the Team Fortress 2 blog:

Scariness doesn’t just happen, people. It’s serious business. That’s why we’re giving you until October 1st to fill the Steam Workshop with horrifying Halloween-themed cosmetic items. If you’re not an item-making sort of person, you can still keep busy. Why not visit the workshop and rate other people’s Halloween-themed items? Rating terrifying items will also help you build up your resistance to being scared before we unleash this year’s Scream Fortress update.

Thanks to everyone who sent this link in. Now make us some hats.

I finally managed to dodge the queues and get some mano-a-machino time in with Mann Vs Machine, the new game mode for Team Fortress 2. Valve have remixed their combative cartoon shooter so the warring Red and Blu teams are fighting together against a robotic horde. It’s hard. So very, very hard. (more…)

Just when I thought I was out they pulled me back in again. I’d uninstalled TF2 and everything was going well: other games were getting attention, my girlfriend showed me this thing called ‘Outside’, that didn’t have people setting me on fire or asking me to give them stuff, and then Valve announced Mann Vs Machine. I could just give it a try, yes? I can always uninstall it? I knew I was lying to myself, but it needn’t matter: it’s not like I’ve managed to get into a game. (more…)

Here we go! After years of speculation, Valve have finally taken the wraps off a recently-hinted new mode and third faction for their game of ratatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatboomdead.

‘Mann vs Machine‘ brings a co-op horde mode to Team Fortress 2, as five players battle legions of robots shaped in the image of TF2′s familiar classes. They are the Gray Horde, and they’re there for you to kill in incredible numbers. “Band together to survive all of the robot waves in a variety of missions to earn incredible loot and unlock new achievements,” it says here. And you get to do that from August 15th. That being tomorrow. Here’s a trailer for the new mode. It is a good trailer. It has good music. It has a Heavy with a head of steel. It has the suggestion of an enormous foe. It has me thinking “this is probably a very smart way to get people (back) into the game who’ve been put off by the all-knowing frenzy of the devout playerbase.” It also has me thinking “AI officially in TF2? Someone’s going to do fascinating things with that, eh?” (more…)

I, like many of you, have dreamed of creating the next great cinematic masterpiece since I first laid eyes on Kindergarten Cop. Unfortunately, I just never had the tools, so my gift to the world remained wrapped and hidden away. And then I got horribly distracted by Meet The Heavy meme videos created in Source Filmmaker, and that’s a hole I don’t see me digging myself out of any time soon. So my magnum opus has probably been shot by a regular magnum. There is a small spot of good news here, though: Source Filmmaker’s now available to everyone and, more importantly, Valve’s updated it with Meet The Engineer. So hooray, more memes that make me giggle uncontrollably for some reason.

(more…)

When the gentlemen of RPS asked me Wot I Thought about Valve’s now-free team-based FPS, Team Fortress 2, I was busy playing the game, and completely failed to notice their entreaties. They tried shouting and waving over my swearing at a pyro, but my ‘enjoyment exhalations’ – which sound a lot swearing practice and slamming a mouse on a desk – drowned them out. In the end, they had to go into the game and buy me a special ring, a novel item that sends a message through the game, and got my attention.

Finally, with my attention momentarily torn from the game, I agreed it was a fine idea: “Sure, now get out of my way: I can’t see the cart… oh for FU-” *mouseslam* But right now I’m struggling to come up with the words to describe my experience: it’s has been part of my life for years, and writing about it is getting in the way of playing it. (more…)

This is the most splendid of news. If you don’t know Hero Academy, it’s a turn-based, two-player tactical game from the chaps behind Orcs Must Die and if you are now wondering why you haven’t heard of it, it’s because it’s an iOS game. Except on August 8th it’ll also be a PC game, as it’s coming to Steam and allowing cross-platform play. Opponents are played asynchronously, so you take your turn, inform your opponent and wait for a response. This means you can play loads of games at the same time and with its chessy appeal, you’ll probably want to. I shall welcome it to my PC with a smile and, oh look, Valve have provided an exclusive team. Trailer below.

(more…)

STOP: If you haven’t watched Meet The Pyro yet, watch it, for goodness sake.

This morning I found myself grumbling in RPS chat about how news sites were casually spoiling the twist in the Meet The Pyro video, by posting pictures of it. Now I am going to do exactly the same thing, because you really should take a look at the Pyrovision goggles in action. Anyone who logs into the game between now and next week gets a set of goggles that mods the game world to look a bit like the Pyro’s view of things, including shooting rainbows, balloon-gib deaths, and floating pink plushie unicorn. There are some videos of it in action, below. (more…)

Everyone, I have some regrettable news: I woke up this morning with the sudden realization that – in my heart of hearts – my truest wish has always been to lead a life of megalomaniacal supervillainy. So, incredibly long and spellbindingly interesting story short, I’ve wired the entire world to explode. Unless! You can tell me – without glancing about one nanometer below this sentence – what’s come of the Team Fortress team-up between Adult Swim and Valve. Mwahahaha, I can smell your fea– yeah, it’s a hat. Well, damn. I guess I’ll just go back to writing about videogames, then.

(more…)