After being out of town mopst of the weekend I finally got to spend some time with the new Team Fortress 2 Sniper/Spy update last night. I was able to burn through a bunch of the easy Sniper and Spy achievements and what do I have to show for it? Absolutely nothing. The new weapons upgrade system is lame. Players who were just taking advantage of the free weekend were getting all the new weapons where the people who have been playing all along would get duplicates of weapons they already had if they were lucky enough to get anything. The old system of completing a bunch of achievements to unlock better(?) weapons was fine but a bunch of whiners that didn't want to put in the time to do them get their way with this new random weapons system. I use to be able to play a certain class and work for specific achievements to unlock that new weapon that would allow me to work on the next set of achievements using that. Now who knows when I will get that new bow or bonesaw. And the whole trading system that is suppose to be coming soon is stupid. I play to play. Not to sit and barter with people. If I start receiving duplicate weapons, they are all going in the trash. I like that Valve listens to the fans but now that they have started coddling to the slackers that don't want to work to achieve stuff I feel the game has jumped the shark and it's time to move on to a new game.
It's another Team Fortress 2 FREE weekend as Valve Software rolls out the Sniper and Spy updates. There's a bunch of new content including a new game type and free hats! Download the game now and play all weekend for free and if you like it, you can pick it up for a limited time for only $9.99!
Shack News has word from Doug Lombardi of Valve that the upcoming Team Fortress 2 Sniper update will also include new Spy content too. I am personally not a big fan of either class but I will give them a try. I kinda like the way the long bow is looking so look for me on the servers sporting that. You can also search around the interwebs for the 'Meet the Spy' video that was leaked over the weekend. It's another great video but not in the same style as previous 'Meet the...' videos. Anyway, the Sniper/Spy update is looking to be released on Thursday so maybe we will see a free Team Fortress 2 weekend for all you slackers that haven't picked up a copy yet.
The DOH! Network will be down tomorrow while Southern California Edison turns off the power in the neighborhood to do some maintenance. The site should be back around 5 or 6 pm when power is restored.
Valve has released the first official Sniper update info page and it features a longbow. This is was better than another rifle. I am psyched to check it out when the Sniper update launches. I dug the compound bow in Gears of War that I never finished because Dom is no help against Raam but that's for another time. This update is already looking like it is gonna be another great update. If only more developers would take more pride in their products like Valve does with theirs. Now if only they would give more info in the Steam Community xmls like all of your friends so the achievements page I'm working on shows more than 6 friends. Then again, the page is already really slow to load so if you were to check the achievements of 200 friends it would probably DoS their servers. I'll have to see if I can streamline it somehow to not hit their server for so much info.
If only the other players could be as cool as Valve. I was told in a server tonight that I was f'ing useless because a medic ubered me and I didn't attack the uber heavy going the other way but instead chose to attack members of the other team that I could hurt. Am I wrong in thinking that it is better to attack players that you can kill than get the attention of a player that I can't? Then when both our ubers wear off, I can go after him if either of us live that long. I was also called useless last night when I tried to defend the teleport entries. Everybody was blaming the engineers for not building teleporters but we couldn't keep them up long enough because of some spy hanging out in the area that would sap them whenever he could but when I try to keep those safe I'm a newb. Maybe if you guys would try harder to move the cart than worry about what I'm doing, we could have won.
should do some Spring cleaning on the server and gaming machines today. I was just looking through all the game servers I have run in the past that I will probably never play again. I don't need Battlefield 1942, 2 or 2142. You can't find Soldier of Fortune 2 anywhere anymore unless you are willing to pay more than you could get Team Fortress 2 for. I don't think anybody besides me and BongoBoyLA played on my Call of Duty server and I didn't even play on the Call of Duty 2 one. Don't need Quake 3 or Open Arena now that there is Quake Live. Quake 4 demo is history. I can't get Tribes 2 running so that's out. Unreal Tournament is under $15 on SteamPowered.com so I'll keep the full version server around and toss the demo server. The original F.E.A.R. doesn't get much play even though that is free.Get rid of that one. I don't run the Counter-Strike Source server so that's out. I'll keep Half-Life 2 Source deathmatch around since that's free. So the only servers I should have taking up disc space will be Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, TrackMania United Forever and Unreal Tournament 2004. Including all the server install filess and patches that should clear up a ton of space.
I just noticed I never ripped my Violent Femmes CDs to MP3s. Need to do that and add it to the SqueezeCenter playlist.
Click here to check out GameRiot.com's interview with StarCraft II Lead Producer Chris Sigaty talking about the upcoming StarCraft II beta and what testers can look forward to.
It looks like Duke Nukem Forever In Development is no more. Word over on ShackNews is that publisher Take-Two is not going to foot the bill for any more development of the 3D Realms project. A source close to 3D Realms has confirmed that the studio has been shut down. That's too bad because it looked like the game was finally coming together.
The blog over on TeamFortress.com has been updated with a new post about the upcoming sniper update. It's pretty much just talking about the thinking going into the new weapon without revealing too much.
I saw by way of ActionTrip.com that Blizzard is now taking sign ups for the StarCraft II beta test. Get all the info over on the Battle.net forums.
DOH! Valve is taunting me by extending the Freaky Friday free trial of Left 4 Dead until today because they know it won't run on my current machine. Shaka's having the same trouble and we both have ATI cards. Could that be the problem?
ShackNews has an interesting interview with Valve's Robin Walker on the recent Team Fortress 2 update and upcoming Sniper update. They discuss the possibility of detaching the unlockables from achievements and deleting weapons among other things. Personally I like the way the game works now where you have to work for those better weapons. You can still do a lot of damage with the default weapons and it makes it that much more rewarding when you get those new weapons but too many players are crying that they don't want to wokr for their stuff. Typical mentality of kids today. Maybe they should change the game to say 'Great Job!' instead of 'You Lose!' at the end of a round so they don't feel like losers.
Speaking of Team Fortress 2, I have to print out some of these Team Fortress 2 papercraft characters and build them. They rock!
I finally received a beta key for EA/DIce's Battlefield Heroes. Haven't had a chance to check it out though. The word from .GrinderRobot is that you have to go through five logins before you actually get to the game. And then once there, he wasn't all that impressed with it. Maybe I will try it but I'm diggin' Team Fortress 2 so that has been consuming most of my time lately.