A robot has dropped a churro. The tasty Spanish treat tops off my Tank class character’s life bar, and I push deeper into the blue team’s territory, rending more automatons with my railgun as I go. En route, I pass a teammate dumping minigun shells into Monday Night Combat’s adorable mascot, Bullseye—a guy in a plush, smiling suit that dances through the arena and bleeds coins instead of blood.




Monday Night Combat imagines a hyper-consumerist, hyper-violent future where cloning, corporate sponsorship and genetic enhancement combine to produce a future-sport—a hilarious vision that influences every aspect of its design. At first touch, the cartoony, six-on-six, class- and team-based shooter may appear to be a Team Fortress 2 knockoff. The game's six classes are all doppelgangers or amalgams of TF2 classes--like the cloaking, backstabbing Assassin or the the healing gun-toting, turret-dropping Support class. But when the action begins--and a sleazy announcer calls out a line like "It's Father/Daughter Day here at the Dome! Good to see so many dads in the stands sharing a day of mortal combat with their little girls," you know you're in for something different.

A big slice of MNC’s originality comes from a cross-pollination with the mechanics of Demigod, a DoTA-style strategy game that many of its developers helped create. Every minute or so, both teams’ bases churn out a wave of AI-controlled robots that march in a pre-defined path toward the enemy base. The carnage and attrition these minion-bots create is my favorite thing about MNC, and it almost creates two simultaneous, parallel modes of combat that players can participate in. I can wade into the crowds of marching droids anytime I want a break from hunting players, and I still feel like every bot I blast is moving my team an inch closer to victory. Reinvesting the cash I earn from killing bots to build turrets around my base, unlock jump pads scattered around the level or upgrade skills produces—like in DoTA games—creates an economy that I want to participate in. I’ve never played a shooter like it.



It also feels like a fairly careful port from Xbox Live Arcade to PC. MNC's beta period tweezed out the frustrating insta-deaths I experienced during the pre-release (many of the grapple moves--fighting game-style grabs that lock you and your enemy into a set animation--now only take a 1/3 or 1/2 chomp out of your life bar). There's a command console, too. More importantly, characters handle perfectly with a mouse and keyboard--the sense of friction you have against the environment when spin-turning or executing a jetpack dash as an Assault class feels just right. These gameplay elements have definitely received some PC-specific attention, though a few ghosts from the XBLA version still lurk: HUD logos and menu items take up valuable screen real estate, the server browser doesn't currently exclude servers that have a mismatched version, and the Call of Duty-style gamertag banners that you earn for completing achievements are still at the low resolution from the console version.

My other complaints are modest: the character classes aren't as lovable or expressive as I wish they were, the single-player content boils down to set of (admittedly challenging) player-versus-bot survival events, and some weapons feel hollow (the Tank’s jet gun barely animates when it spits out its player-immolating laser beam), but this barely erodes at the sum of dynamism and humor MNC puts forth. With five mostly-similar maps, it may not stand in with the longevity of your primary FPS, but at $15, it's the best-available diversion to the 300-plus hours you've put into the shooter you're growing tired of. MNC also has the distinction of being a game where you can fire a grenade that coats an enemy's screen with ads for genetic enhancements. Go buy it.

Monday Night Combat is now available on Steam, and to make it's launch a little more interesting, some cross-overs are happening between it and Team Fortress 2. Read on for details on the bonuses.

“Purchase Monday Night Combat on Steam by 10.00am PST February 1st and get access to Monday Night Combat content in Team Fortress 2 and Team Fortress 2 content for Monday Night Combat,” say the game's developer Uber.

Players can earn six new Honors by playing a character wearing TF2 gear in Monday Night Combat. A seventh viral Protag - MNC Fever - can only be earned by killing a player equipped with it. Initially the development team will be the only players in possession of MNC Fever.

The crossover gear for MNC includes equipment from Team Fortress, among which are the Sniper's stylish hat and the Pyro's gas-mask.

Gear available for Team Fortress 2 is more limited than that of MNC, but is made up of a small selection of clothing including a baseball cap and some socks.

The Xbox 360 version was well received, and has been on the platform since August. It's available on Steam now for £9.99

Richard Cobbett goes back to school to face an old fear. The Witch has returned, and she wants your soul. Or to see if you can handle basic literacy puzzles for six-year olds. One of the two.

Hers is the face that haunted a thousand nightmares. Hers is the laugh that chilled the blood of almost every child during the decade that taste forgot. There was no running from it. There was no hiding. If you were at school in the 80s, facing her was as close to a rite of passage as figuring out what the older kids were actually doing behind the bikesheds. She was Freddy. She was Jason. She was the blood-soaked murderer in your older siblings' carefully hidden videos. And at some point, your teachers would nervously plug in your school's single BBC Micro computer and make you dance for her amusement.

She was... The Witch. And if this blocky cyan face means nothing to you, know that across England, a generation of gamers is even now crawling back into their skins after seeing it. Oh yes...





Back in the 80s, computers were rubbish and expensive. Most schools only had a handful - inevitably the BBC Micro, which was built by Acorn Computers for a BBC-operated programme called the BBC Computer Literacy Project. The BBC Micro pre-dated the more popular ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, and was the first 'real' computer that most kids got their hands on until at least the mid-80s. Most teachers were completely clueless about them, and in my school, they were generally kept out in the hallway where they wouldn't scare anyone, and used for exactly three things: writing simple programs in BASIC to make it print "WILLIES!" a thousand times, very primitive word processing, and playing games.

Of course, by 'games', we're really talking 'edutainment'. Obviously, there were plenty of BBC Micro games out there, but they were deemed far too frivolous for school use. At least, until someone inevitably came in with a disc of pirated ones, like Frak and Repton. That usually took... ooh, whole seconds!

Of the Approved Games For The Improvement Of Young Minds, there were four that most people knew of: Podd, in which you gave orders to a tomato man to see if he could do them ("Podd can Dance" he was okay with, "Podd Can Shit Himself" wasn't likely to happen, no matter how often kids tried), and three adventures from a company called 4Mation: Dragon World, Flowers of Crystal, and Granny's Garden.

Of the three, Dragon World was by far the easiest. A typical puzzle was working out that "Nogard" is "Dragon" backwards, and that love and friendship are the greatest of all treasures - a heartfelt sentiment that taught young kids everywhere the true meaning of the word 'bollocks'. As for Flowers of Crystal, it was just... insane. I remember much of the game, but I can't for the life of me explain what the hell it was meant to teach, how you were meant to work anything out, or... or anything at all. Maybe I'm just thick.



Last, but by no means least, there was Granny's Garden. It was aimed at ages 6-10, and for the most part, not very difficult. This is the one that absolutely everybody remembers, if only for The Witch. Make a mistake? The Witch would get you. Trip a trap? The Witch would get you...

But why mention it here? Isn't it a BBC Micro game, and thus by definition not a PC one? Yes, but 4Mation is still around, and still distributing it - both a modern update, and an emulated version of the original. The classic game, running on your PC. How can anyone put a price on nostalgia like that?

Oh. Turns out 4Mation found a way. And it's £15. Grr.

(They also sell Flowers of Crystal for around the same price, adding "which is less than the price it originally sold for!" Okay, fair enough, it's cheaper than it once was. It's also a game from 1983. Not exactly the greatest deal this side of a Steam sale, even if it does come with the full extras.)



Granny's Garden is an odd title, since as far as the game's concerned (until the very last line), you're actually a noble adventurer questing through the mysterious Kingdom of the Mountains in search of the King and Queen and their missing children. This made lots of kids scratch their heads at time, wondering just who this Granny was. Was she the witch? No. The whole thing is a game being played by a couple of her grand-kids to entertain themselves in her apparently phenomenal garden full of caves, huts and dragon cities, but you'd only know that if your teacher bothered to read the manual and tell you.

Said manual is actually pretty ballsy, not just for all the typos (including talk of kids' "motovation", the game's "grate" features and the "Wiched Witch"), but for a whole section that suggests teachers actively think up explanations for the game's nonsense logic, like why one character eats keys, how the hell an apple can kill a snake, why a witch's broomstick simply appears out of nowhere for one puzzle, and most incredibly of all, why a Chinese caricature called Ah-Choo keeps sneezing. "Is it Asian flu?" it asks.

Sigh. Somewhere, Gene Hunt is grinning. Still, never mind. Onward to adventure!

The first puzzle really sets the tone. Here it is.



Did you solve it? No, you didn't. It's pure trial and error. Welcome to Granny's Garden.

Probably the oddest thing about the game is its bizarrely authoritarian tone. At least, that's how it feels to me, although it could well just be my bad memories of Miss Wood's classroom. Miss Wood was five foot of evil wrapped in the stolen skin of a bitter old bitch, but she provided my introduction to this game, and so it's hard to play without thinking of her voice narrating it. "Do you want to go into the cave?" the game asks. NO, you type. "Yes you do!" it informs you. "Do you want to help the King and Queen?" NO, you protest. "That's not very nice!" it snaps. "Do you want to help the King and Queen?" And so on.

Basically, Granny's Garden is a SEE ME note carved into my soul. Your nostalgic memories of it will probably be different, because it was quite a small class and I'm pretty sure you weren't in it.



Much like Miss Wood, whose catchphrase was "It's a disgrace! A disgrace!", Granny's Garden has little tolerance for stupidity, real or imagined. The puzzle above is the first real one (and bear in mind that this is a game for kids). What's the password? Get it wrong and it patiently tells you it's written on the wall. Get it wrong again and it tells you to look for the blue letters. Get it wrong a third time and it just tells you the answer outright, but still insists you type it in yourself. Otherwise, how would you learn?

(In Miss Wood's class, it was funny to pretend not to be able to solve this. Just stare at the screen for several minutes, lost in deep thought, trying to unpick it and savour her frustrated fury at not being able to shout "It's FIG! FIG! Are you blind AND stupid? FIG!" Sigh. Good times. Good times...)

Inside, the Witch has set some Traps. One of them is fairly obvious - a red broomstick. Do you take it? "Silly silly silly!" the game shouts, summoning the Witch to tear off your flesh and make a puppet out of your still quivering bones send you back home. Fair enough. Red does mean danger after all.

Unfortunately, the other traps... make much less sense. For instance, there's a snake in the basement. You have a stick and apple in your inventory. Throw the stick? Oh, you idiot. You blundering arse. "The stick was an evil magic wand," the game chortles, like the most punchable kind of Dungeon Master. Think you can do better in the Kitchen? Just try it. "There is a huge cooking pot hanging over a very hot fire," the game teases, whistling innocently. "I wonder what is in there. Are you going to look in the pot?"

Well, a pot seems safe enough, right? It may even have a spell in it that I can use later. So, yes, Granny's Garden, I call your bluff! YES, I say. I am going to look in-

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" laughs the game, summoning the Witch to curse your family with branded images of your screaming face on their buttocks send you back home again. It doesn't even explain why. Was the Witch in the cooking pot? Was it alarmed? Doesn't matter. You're done.

Having defeated the snake by throwing an apple at it, which makes a green broomstick appear elsewhere in the house, which turns into the missing princess Esther when you take it... or something... it's onto the next challenge. This one is set in the Giant's Garden, and is much more fun. Guided by a talking toadstool - just roll with it - you have to use a set of animal friends to find the next kidnapped child, Tom. There aren't any Witch attacks in this bit, which helps, and it's an entertaining concept. Need to cross a pond? Call the giant butterfly. Need protection? Climb into the snail's shell, and don't think too carefully about it. Need to get past a dog? Get your friend the bee to sting it, oblivious to the fact that you just sent him off on a suicide mission and are therefore a stupendous dick. Ah, well. At least it died a hero.

Garden crossed and Tom saved, your next mission is in...

Oh. Oh dear. The City of the Dragons. Apologies on behalf of the 80s...



Ah-Choo sets you a challenge involving feeding baby dragons, which is far, far too hard for the age-group this game was made for. Even sillier, he makes the greatest mistake a game for kids can ever make - letting players type things for the characters to say. In this case, he wants to know what your favourite food is. Whatever you answer... oh, who am I kidding? Here's every playthrough ever:



Cheery racist caricature out of the way (and in fairness to Granny's Garden, this was in no way unique - the popular kids TV show Knightmare had its own, even worse example in the form of a trader called Ah Wok), it's onto the thing in the world more terrifying than the Witch.

Welcome to The Land of Mystery. You will come to know it as "Hell".



I know what you're thinking. Doesn't look like much. Don't be fooled. This is, without a doubt, the single cruellest, nastiest, most obtuse bit of game design in the history of adventures. It's the interactive version of the teacher's cane. It is the puzzle box that Satan would make to prove his existence to a skeptical world. Torture. Genocide. The Land of Mystery. Debate over. Dawkins, get in the Poo Lake.

The only way to complete this section is pure, bloody-minded trial and error. Go to a location in the wrong order and the Witch shows up to grind your bones into bread that weeps as she slices it with her serrated scalpel send you home. Solve puzzles in the wrong order and you'll lose the items you need to win the game. To get the water to put out the forest fire for instance, you have let a monster eat a key you found... but if you do that, you can't get into the Castle. The Castle isn't actually your final destination. Instead, it's a tower that you're not actually told about, up in the Forest. And if you try to go to the wrong destination at the wrong time, oh, you poor, poor fool. "That was not a good idea!" the game chides, giving you a big squelchy, terrifying face full of cackling Witch horror. How I hate the Land of Mystery.

Need more proof? Here's its most infamous puzzle.



THE CORRECT ANSWER IS "YES". See, if you say 'Yes', he admits he doesn't really eat people at all, and you get to collect a stone you need from his hill. Say 'No' and he just chases you off. As far as lessons to kids go, this really is right up there with "Strangers often have the best candy."

Being Hell, there's no saving in the Land of Mystery. Every time you snuff it - and you'll snuff it a lot - you have to go back to the title screen, hear a few bars of classical music, enter a password, be told the names of the kids you're trying to rescue, watch a magic raven slooooowly welcome you to the Land, and then retrace your steps and try and work out how to avoid screwing yourself over this time. For instance, go to the Witch's Cottage, and you're given two options - to take a key from outside and leave, or venture inside. Inside, the Witch is just sitting there with a cake in her hand. You're given the option to take the cake... but no explanation at all of how you'd actually get away with that. Since earlier in the game you could die by looking into a cooking pot or throwing a stick, surely this stupidity is suicide?

Nah. You just pick it up and walk out. Of course, try to walk to the Lake afterwards...



BUT YOU WERE IN YOUR COTTAGE! I WAS THERE! I TOOK YOUR CAKE!

Back in the 80s, this is as far as I ever got - not really because it was hard, but because a little cartoon of the Witch labelled "Miss Wood" led to the disks being put away forever in favour of silent long division exercises. Replaying the game now, with a pen and paper to get through Hell, I finally saw the ending. Was it worth waiting about twenty years? Probably not, no. Still, at least it's a game I don't need to regret never having finished. And I can finally put the cyan-drenched nightmares to rest. At least, for now...



Or, if you were in Miss Wood's class, an hour of silent long-division. Sob.

Steam forum member 'thedefiant' – student Christopher Wyant - used Valve's FPS as a medium to display an art project for his university degree. In an attempt to create some kind of mad feedback loop that'll doom the whole galaxy, he set up a server in TF2, displaying custom sprays of ceramic pots. Having taken screenshots of the carnage that went on in the serene virtual gallery, he then set up a real gallery in Auburn University, displaying both pictures of the ceramics in-game as well as the actual physical ceramics themselves. Everybody present at both events had their brains explode.

As making people's brains explode is an unusual thing to do, especially with art, we asked Christopher directly what his motives were.

Why did you decide to do this?

Christopher Wyant: This whole idea of community and the effects community has had on this project really tied my artwork together and allowed it to exist. I have always wanted to put my artwork into a game. It was just a matter of timing and developing a good portfolio to place into the game.



Why TF2?

Christopher Wyant: The community and the tools valve has given us to easily accomplish our goals. I really enjoy the setting of the game and all the customizable characters. Without these characters, I feel my virtual gallery would have seemed stale and bland. The characters in TF2 are really expressive and I had a lot of people at my exhibition looking in amazement and laughing their asses off because the characters are believable.

Just like the polycount pack, placing my work inside of the game fused both my artwork and the game.

How does the PC facilitate art?

Christopher Wyant: For me the PC allowed me to create a virtual gallery, bring all my friends and the community into that space, and then show the world. Digital work is like no other medium. Because this work is virtual, I am able to share it with the rest of the world faster than any ancient Roman potter could have dreamed.

As a ceramic artist I have to look at the historical context of my work. Why should my art be relevant in a contemporary setting when people have been making pottery for thousands of years? By placing my pottery into a video game, I hoped to bridge this vast gap in time.



Do you see gaming and art intertwining more in the future?

Christopher Wyant: I think that it should and will. Unlike non digital artwork, the digital must be accessed and not just observed. Things like the wii controller, playstation move, and Xbox Kinect are allowing users to access these game and interfaces in a more intuitively. The sad part about all those devices is the fidelity of movement controls which will eventually break a person's immersion.

On 2Fort as a scout with a mouse, keyboard, and a force of nature I can jump from my battlements into the water, back up to the ground from the pipe, then onto the enemy battlements all while only moving my mouse maybe a few inches. This is not possible with any other controller and probably never will be until I get a Playstion 9 (as seen in this old PS2 advert - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rSchSyYdH4&feature=related).

This same problem of movement controls and intuitiveness in the gaming community is also one of the things holding back both game development and art creation. I think that the intuitiveness of model/texture creators and development kits will be what will drives art/game interaction. What I fear though is that if we do make developer kits easier to use will they be just as powerful of tools. The only analogy for this would be Maya is a mouse and keyboard, and Spore creature creator is a Kinect.

Do you want to do more in this field?

Christopher Wyant: I am currently in the process of creating a second virtual gallery. I am in the process of curating artwork from the gaming community via the tf2 art/video sub-forum.

Artists are strongly urged to submit any type of artwork (any 2 dimensional art, and 3 dimensional models as long as they follow the submission rules detailed on the forum post. In the future I hope to be able to learn the modeling tools so that I might be able to create and place 3d modeled pottery and other models into the game.

A recent update to the Team Fortress 2 beta gives players the ability to test out their weapons they've created for the game as Valve reveal plans to introduce more tools that will make it easier for players to contribute their own items.

User contributed items and weapons have made up a significant amount of the new items that have been added to TF2 over the past few months. Most notably, the Polycount Pack added a host of items and earned community members a nice wad of cash. Understandably, many players have been hoping to replicate their success. Many are hard at work creating their own items for the game, but have been forced to resort to hacks and workarounds in order to see their items in action. With some help from the recently added AI controlled bots, Valve have introduced map that will let players test their new models.

Full details on how the new system can be found on the Team Fortress 2 blog. Valve also mention that they're planning to release more tools in future to make creating new weapons easier. For more information on creating and submitting new items, check out the official Team Fortress 2 Contribute! page.

Their dedication to the Team Fortress 2 community makes Valve's online shooter a blast.

Online shooters don’t evolve. They land on your hard drive, and if there’s a bug, or a new map, or a new gun, the developers or publishers might stick out an update. But they are as is, and they’ll eventually tire me out.

This was how I expected it to be when Team Fortress 2 launched in October 2007. And back then, at first glance, it was just a brilliant shooter. A few maps, nine classes, lots of fun, and I’d be done with it in six months. Even as I was enjoying playing the Spy, the invisible weakling capable of terrorising teams only when their backs were turned, I was wondering what game was next.

Make the Team
As it turns out, “next” was TF2. In January 2008, Valve showed me the new game mode, Payload, and the initial designs for the Medic update. As much as they’d perfected the game to the point where they were happy to release it, millions of people playing it had exposed weaknesses in their impeccable design.

This is why I still play Team Fortress 2. Valve’s unhappiness with their finished game means I’m never more than a couple of months away from a new reason to play, an extra gun to gain, a different map to explore. The classes have evolved: The Spy is still a weakling, but a new watch allows me to stay invisible as long as I need to. A new knife steals the disguise of the player I just stabbed. A Fez makes me ultra dapper. Every class has a similar story: the Demoman can be a grenade spamming death machine, or a head-lopping front-line warrior. The Sniper’s bow encourages him to wander the map, string drawn back, ready to one-hit-kill jerks.



The announcements of these updates are events in themselves. Everything Valve does has to be entertaining, including creating week-long reveals of what they’ve been working on. They’ve hid the Spy’s update in the Sniper update, having him slowly uncloak on the webpage; they set the Demoman and Soldier to war with each other, battling for the highest kill count.
New ground
Valve have changed the game so much, introducing crafting and a microeconomy, that it’s no longer just an online shooter: it’s a place where they experiment with the community, taking the game to places that you could never have imagined when it launched. Every change brings new life, new challenges to overcome if they’ve updated a class you don’t play. It’s now full of gnarly little encounters: Snipers were given a shield that protects them from a Spy’s backstab, so I got proficient with the Spy’s powerful Ambassador for headshots. Demomen now have a speed boost that they can use to charge into battle with their giant sword, but a Pyro’s airblast can frustrate the raging Scotsman by knocking him back the way he came from.



Which has resulted in my favourite game of the past three years, and nothing being able to topple it this year. I play mostly on the PC Gamer TF2 server. It’s a pub, but with plenty of regulars. When we started, 2Fort was where we spent most of our time. Now it’s the various payload maps that make up the most popular battlegrounds, Heavies can heal themselves; Scouts are hitting people with fish; people are trading weapons and hats. I’ve pushed that bomb cart countless miles, ridden on top of it pulling dramatic poses; I’ve dived in behind it as it was about to tip into a hole full of explosive barrels, stabbing everyone. I’ve flailed, missed my stabs, ran away from angry Pyros into a sentry gun’s range, raging as the kill cam zooms in to show a dancing Engi behind his little nest.

I’m there after every update, and as long as Valve keep updating it, I think I’ll keep coming back.

The Team Fortress 2 Christmas event launched this weekend giving everyone a chance to celebrate Christmas in true Team Fortress style. The update adds a new medieval, melee-only map and a series of mysterious festive crates that can be unlocked to reveal new items, which are also available to buy now in the Mann Co store. It's all in the spirit of Australian Christmas. What the hell is Australian Christmas? Read on for details, and an overview of the new items.


It's all explained on the official Team Fortress 2 blog. Australian Christmas seems to be an excuse for everyone to meet up in a castle and bash each other. The new arena is a control point map is set in the ramparts of a medieval fortress. The catch is that everyone playing has to use melee weapons. The frenzied scenes of players running in small circles trying to decapitate each other are only improved by the the addition of lordly language to everyone's text chat. Verily, 'tis hilarious.



The update adds three new item sets for the Heavy, the Medic and the Demoman. You'll find the stats of each item listed below. All the Christmas items are for sale in one £19.99 bundle, or you can pay £29.99 and get the Christmas items bundled in with the Polycount Pack. Below you'll find an overview of the new items along with descriptions of their special abilities.
Medic
Amputator

A medieval bonesaw
On taunt, applies a healing effect to all nearby allies

Crusader's Crossbow

A medigun mounted onto a crossbow stock
Fires bolts that heal team mates and deal damage based on the distance to the target

Berliner's bucket helm

Medieval helm

Item set bonus

Medic wearing all items will regenerate 1 health every second

Heavy
The Brass Beast

Gleaming brass minigun
+20% damage done
50% slower spin up time
-60% slower speed while deployed

The Buffalo Steak Sandwich

A great big hunk of steak
When consumed, temporarily increases movement speed.
All damage dealt and taken will be minicrits
Can only use melee weapons

The Warrior's Spirit

Hand mounted bear claws
+30% damage done
-20max health on wearer

The Big Chief

Native American Headdress

Item Set bonus

+5% critical hit damage resistance on wearer

Demoman
The Loch-n-Load

Double barrelled grenade launcher
+10% damage done
+25% projectile speed
-60% clip size
Launched bombs shatter on surfaces
+25% damage to self

The Ullapool Caber

A stick bomb that is also a melee weapon "a sober person would throw it"
No random critical hits

Scotch Bonnet

Riot gear helmet

Item Set Bonus

+10% fire damage resistance on wearer

A series of festive crates will also be dropping from now until new year. To open these crates you'll need to buy a festive key from the Mann Co store for £1.99. The crates will contain a random surprise, so far people have reported receiving rakes, candy canes and occasionally, one of the new Christmas weapons. The festive crates will disappear on December 31st. All festive keys will revert to ordinary keys come new year's day.

For more Team Fortress 2 Christmas happenings check out the Killing Floor goodies that were recently added. Have you played the new map? Let us know what you think.

Valve headquarters is full of secrets, and there's a constant stream of spies trying to infiltrate the inner sanctum. This is why Valve have splashed out on an extra bit of security for their lobby, a life size sentry gun from Team Fortress 2, complete with motion sensors. There's a video below of the sentry gun in action.

The sentry gun was built by the WETA workshop, a design and manufacturing company that has created props for the Lord of the Rings films and Avatar. Now they've turned their attention to Team Fortress 2, and created the remarkable machine shown in the video below.

Valve's department of mad scientists have decided that they need more guinea pigs on which to test their insane schemes, and have decided to launch a Team Fortress 2 public beta. The beta will play host to massive game changing experiments and will let Valve test out new tech without breaking Team Fortress 2 proper. Read on for details on the first round of changes in the beta, and details on how to sign up.

These are the changes for the first beta release.

Three Natascha variants:

40% damage
25% damage, -25% health
Spin-up/down time increased, slowdown-on-hit effect falls off over distance.

Map changes:

cp_granary: new entrance added into the RED and BLU mid ramp room.
cp_5gorge: 5 CP version of cp_gorge.

Misc balance changes:

Players being healed by a medic are immune to movement-impairing effects generated by hit-scan weapons.

In future we can look forward to "higher level, game-wide experiments", like doubling all player health. The beta should prove to be an interesting insight into the ideas Valve have for Team Fortress 2's future, and also a good excuse to play TF2 with some crazy rulesets. The beta can be installed directly from your Steam games library, so it's dead easy to jump in and test the new changes. Full details on the beta launch can be found on the Team Fortress 2 blog.

For more on Valve's plans for Team Fortress 2, check out part one and part two of our huge Valve interview. What do you think of the first round of changes, and what rules would you put into the beta?

Team Fortress 2 isn’t entirely about hats. Somewhere within is a game you can be good at. Some people are better than others. TCM Gaming have been sitting at the top of nearly every professional TF2 gaming league for the past few years, and as such they’ve managed to accumulate a vast sum of knowledge on how to not get yourself stabbed in the back, headshotted, blown up with a cluster of stickybombs, or killed by a sentry gun over, and over, and over again. They explain exactly what to do, and what not to do, below.




1. Stick together
It’s not called Team Fortress 2 for nothing, and so it’s hardly surprising that you’re probably going to need to work as a team. But what does ‘team’ even mean? Matthius ‘Zerox’ Kühl thinks he’s figured it out. “Six individually great players won’t make it to the top unless they learn how to play together. It is important to attack and retreat as a group, help each other out or know when to flank the opponent during an attack. You have to learn how each player in your team thinks and reacts to certain situations and use it for your game. Therefore you also need to know how to play the other classes. Only when you understand the pros and cons of the classes your teammates have to deal with can you help them out or time your actions right. But even if you know your mates for years, you will never be able to read thoughts. That's why it is essential to tell everyone what you are doing or what you are gonna do.”


2. Find a team you can be friends with
Chums. They’re the best. They buy you a round when you are too stingy to buy one yourself, and they ubercharge you that second before you were about to die. Or they don’t, and you don’t speak to each other for weeks. “There are several ingredients to a successful team,” Says Jim ‘XMan’ Maguire, “but one of the most important one's is friendship, and actually enjoying each others company. Whenever we have a big game, be it online or LAN, I always tell the guys to go and enjoy their game. If you’re having fun you play with passion rather than repetition. All the skill in the world means nothing if you hate what your doing.”
3. Turn down the graphics
Aww, man, you just died because you couldn’t render that crit rocket fast enough. You need to upgrade. Make sure everything is running properly. Maybe even buy a new mouse. It’s ok, Zerox can help you out. “You have to have a good system to run TF2. This game is very demanding on CPU power and since it is essential to get the best response and feel from the game, even in the most frantic mid-fights, you need to have good hardware or tune down the graphics to run the game at the desired fps rate. What you will also want to do is turn off any unnecessary graphic effects like HDR. They draw to much power from your PC, but be aware that you don't disable effects which give you additional information, like shadows. Something that takes time to find is your own personal setup; the right mouse, mouse mat and sensitivity can make a lot of difference. There is a great deal of choice on the market so you need to find out what kind of settings you prefer.”
4. Buy a Headset. Use Intelligently
You know what I really hate? I hate it when the only thing I can hear in a game is the excellent voice acting of the TF2 characters. Sure, they’re funny, and they usually help communicate what’s going on, but they’re not people, and people have a larger, more eloquent vocabulary. It’s the truth. “Communication is a key element to winning in any clan you join.” Says Ahmed ‘Byte’ Fansa, communicating to me. “Make no mistake this game, when played at the top level, is very fast, so don't forget it's not just one player. It’s six ones. That's six different thought processes which may need to be communicated. So when one player starts transmitting useless information it scrambles other, IMPORTANT messages that may have been transmitted yet not picked up due to other useless comms. My best advice would be to keep it simple, keep it smart. Never repeat your communication more than two or three times.”


5. If you're practising a class, try deathmatch
Apparently it takes 10,000 hours to truly master something, so my paltry 300 hours of TF2 played means that I probably need to put in some more practice if I want to reach that high watermark. But it’s not entirely about how much you play, so much as how you play, says Byte. “The problem that some players feel is that they put in the time, but the fundamental difference is they use the right practice. There is no point in learning something if the method is incorrect, as it will in the long run be worse off for you. So if you are to dedicate time make sure you do it right and find out the proper techniques of achieving what you want to achieve. In the case of Team Fortress 2, if you are trying to master your own class individually then you should be thinking of playing on some death matching servers, watching some demos of the top players in that particular class, and then watch your own style to see how you can adapt and change.”
6. Earn Some Repute
Don't fall in the trap of talking your way through the community rather than showing your skill. Keep your mouth shut and buckle down. That’s the advice Byte gives when it comes to actually breaking through into the ranks of the TF2 professionals. “Reputation is key part of a player's profile being accepted in the community and being well known. My best advice would be to stay quiet, and build up your rank via your skill and own doing. This method is the hardest way to get recognized and have a great reputation, but then again think about it in life since when has getting a reputation ever been easy? No pain no gain."
7. Think, don't just shoot
You know that time you got sniped because you forgot there was a sniper up on the balconies in 2Fort? That was because you didn’t have sufficient Game Sense. Same thing when you didn’t realise your Buff Banner was charged, and your entire team got slaughtered. Byte let’s you know about the importance of Game Sense. “When you execute a certain game sense movement with your class, it can be the difference between winning the round or losing it." So what's the best way to improve your game sense? "There is no clear cut answer to the question as it requires various other elements being learnt properly. This includes dynamic play/awareness/anticipation. The game sense is like the outer bubble of your entire career in Team Fortress 2, sure you can have the aim, sure you can have the position and you can even have the advantage but what is the use if your game sense lets you or your team down?”
8. Learn to dodge
Just as important as killing the other guys, is avoiding taking damage, and being in the right place at the right time.“Practice your aim, movement and Rocket/Sticky-jumps," advises Xerox. "A Demoman for example should not arrive late to a mid-fight or half his team will already be down. Just as important as aim is dodging. The less damage you take the bigger your chance of winning your fights. Experience obviously plays a huge role in increasing your skill level. Playing with and against good players will improve your aim, game sense and confidence over time. I like to train on death match servers you can test different settings and its a good way of warming up your aim before matches.”


9. Adapt And Evolve
You’re going to have to adapt, and learn how to react to the way your oposition is playing. XMan says you need to be constantly shifting strategies. “You will quickly find that other players and teams watch your every move and try to devise ways in which they can best you. Be prepared for other teams to have done their homework on you and to have prepared an Anti Strat to your winning play. The ability to adapt your tactics mid game and to change things up without losing your stride is the mark of a true professional. This could mean mixing several plays together randomly to achieve the same result, but keeping your opponent guessing is the key.”
10. Do Your Homework
No one ever said it would be easy. Part of being a professional means doing actual work, which means you’re not just going to be playing games all day. Sometimes you’re going to have to watch games. I know, life is tough. “To get the edge over other teams you need to figure them out. Specifically, prepare for the matches you have ahead, study your opponents tactics by watching demos and discuss them within your team. Spending half an hour on your server, going through the map-specific tactics is sometimes more valuable than an evening of pickups. It is easy to check out games from top teams and use their tactics for yourself but without understanding them they wont work for you like  they do for others. That's why being up to date is essential. Even on old and well known maps the game play still develops. If your opponent comes up with a strategy that you have not seen before it won't be easy to counter it on the fly during a match.”