Team Fotress 2

[Nick]

Its now free!
Even though I have owned it for some time (orange box) I never really had an urge to try it until now... Perhaps because I perceived it as old and therefor having a low player population. But not the flood gates have opened again!

[Brad]

I've been playing it recently and I have to say I really like it. The various strategies available to the different classes can make for some pretty interesting gameplay. Playing the pyro for instance: you have no long-distance weapons but can incinerate enemies up close. Ambushing people and setting them on fire is fun!

Spys are really interesting too. They can pretend to be somebody on your team and then backstab you, or use a sapping device to destroy turrets and things that engineers build. You have to pay attention when somebody on your team is not acting normally and then shoot them.

I need somebody to come and play with me. We could make an awesome medic/heavy combo.

There are a huge number of beginner players so you don't need to worry about looking stupid, you aren't the worst player there...

[Cody]

I downloaded it a couple days ago and tried it myself. I rather liked it. Problem is that for some reason it refuses to ever detect and servers so I am forced to always play offline with bots. If I could find a way around this issue I would almost try it with one of you two...even though I really suck.

[Brad]

Occassionally you do get games were your team mates are morons and 6-7 of them decide that they MUST play as spies. This makes your team suck really bad and the other team (which Nick was playing on) basically hold them from leaving their spawn point. Even though my team was supposed to be the one attacking! Grrr... A large team can support 1 or 2 spies... but not 7 of them. You also need heavies, medics, demoman, soldiers, scouts, etc...

Anyway, in that situation I think the only thing to do is to change servers. There are a lot of them, and lots of different game modes too.

[Nick]

Jacsveus, you might have an issue with ports not getting forwarded or something. If your router has UPNP try turning it on. Otherwise I am sure one of us can help you figure it out. What do you have for interwebs connectivation?

Occassionally you do get games were your team mates are morons and 6-7 of them decide that they MUST play as spies. This makes your team suck really bad...

That was an interesting game We had mostly demo-dudes on our side, against some (not that great) spies. Occasionally one would get past... but never lasted long alone.  I really suck, but I think I like the game. Too bad it took me this long to try it. Kinda like a mix of Unreal tournament and Counter Strike.

Oh , and Star was playing with us too! She is 'assalassair'

[Cody]

I managed to fix my problem. I originally thought it was some sort of port issue as well, but it turns out it was just a Steam bug. Apparently all you have to do is run Half-Life 2 and it fixes the issue. Not sure what or how that fixes it, but it did. I played a couple games and found it fun even with real people amazingly. If I'm ever not busy and happen to see you guys playing then perhaps I will join you.

[Nick]

Cool. Glad you fixed it. I will have to try the half-life thing, the computer I use at work is doing the same thing. But using the 'play now' button seems to always work.

I am up for games at around noon or one most days during my lunch.

[Cody]

Apparently I forgot to answer the question about internet connection. Supposedly it is a 3 Mb DSL connection. So they claim.

[Nick]

Really, wow. They only offer 1.5Mb here. They could probably offer more, but they just wont sell it to us.

[Cody]

Speedtest.net clocks it at around 1.53Mb so I guess my connection is about as fast as yours. Apparently since we are so far away from wherever the DSL comes from we lose half of our 3Mb. Dumb phone lines losing their speed over long distances. Oh well. It is still FAR better than the dial up we had before.

[Brad]

Today I started playing Scout on control point maps. It was a whole lotta fun. I think I've actually started getting the hang of the class.

I captured all three control points by myself in under 2 minutes once. There what lots of "lol... wtf?" from the other team.
Seems like most people aren't very good at defending their control points. And the last point always goes really quick, especially for a scout.

Also, I can hit people in the face with a mackerel.

In other news, I still suck horribly as a spy. Very few people on valve servers seem to understand how to play CTF. Unfortunately most of those people seem to somehow always be on my team.

[zourtney]

I did it. I installed Steam. I'll download Team Fortress on someone else's bandwidth (like, home's).

Or is this old news now? On to another game yet?

[Nick]

Old by far! But not yet onto another game. Team fortress and dwarf fortress are the only game (other then angry birds, if that counts) that I have played in months.

I am still playing TF off and on with Brad and sometimes Star. Come join us! We could all get mics and be super dorky

[Brad]

Mics would really help the teamwork actually.

Anybody played the Medieval mode yet? It's a control point map which is a castle and you can only use melee or medieval weapons (Bow, crowsbow, etc...) It is an entertaining change of pace once and awhile. Waves of demo knights though...

You do need to have played awhile to collect some medieval type weapons to have many character choices though.

[zourtney]

I was going to create my Steam account, but I want to link it to our PS3 account so I can get a free copy of Portal 2. Dumbly, that requires some action of the PS3 system itself, so I'll have to wait until I'm back in town...