Alzir

Some first impressions of the update:

Soldiers are as thick as they look atm, often being seen damaging themselves intentionally just to use the fucking pickaxe, and then charging into the thick of it. You also see them switching to the pickaxe when they’re on low health and on fire despite a medic being ready to heal them, seemingly not aware they can’t be healed with the pickaxe out. Retards…but anyway they’re the sort of players who don’t think about the team, shown by this lack of practice with other classes. The soldier’s new main weapon looks interesting, but I think you need to actually be a good soldier in order to use it, and I still haven’t seen buff banner in play yet. Also, like with all the updates, I’m finding it hard to play either soldier or demoman because nobody is playing medic on the team, leaving me as the mug trying to help the team.

The demoman’s eyelander looks quite good, for public server play anyways, and I’ve been decapitated quite a few times by it. The chargin’ thing is very much like the charger in L4D2, and I suspect this is because the same team who made TF2 made L4D2, and they’ve simply copied the code…still it looks to have comic potential. I haven’t noticed the new sticky launcher yet, but I have a feeling it’s too compicated for most demo’s and most will prefer the normal sticky launcher, which to be fair is in keeping with all of the other class unlocks.

The new maps are good, at least going by first impressions. I’ve always been a fan of 2fort (I’m one of a rare breed) and the new CTF map double cross is quite like it except in two key differences which will result in fewer stalemates. The map is basically two buidings seperated by a bridge, with a gorge underpass and dry sewage pipes providing a lower entrance to the flag. The flag room itself is much closer to the building entrance, compared to 2fort and cp_well, making it easier to reach, in theory. The bridge is flanked by opposing battlements which mean the snipers have a side on view of the main crossing point, rather than facing it as they do on other maps, and this obviously makes it harder for them to score hits. The battlements are also on roughly the same plain as the bridge, though elevated from the gorge.

The new gorge map itself is not quite what I expected, as it’s an attack defend type in the mold of dustbowl, but so far I’ve only played the first stage of it (assuming there are 3 stages). The first cap point is actually quite difficult to take, as there’s quite some distance to cover, and when you do eventually take it, there’s similar distance to travel to the next point, which has it’s cp on a low level, but it does seem quite easy to defend if you have a few sentries. I’m not sure I like this map, as I can see it getting bogged down easily, though my first impression was played with a “team” who didn’t appreciate the importance of a medic in these kind of stand offs 🙄

Found what I was looking for regarding the new weapons:

http://www.teamfortress.com/demomanupdate/index.htm

http://www.teamfortress.com/soldierupdate/index.htm

Some of them are quite funny 😆

Depends where you get it from but it’s still £14.99 on steam for BF2 + all expansions (effectively it’s special forces + bf2 that you’re paying for). Having it on steam saves ever having to worry about the cd key again which is why I got it, and judging from my BF2 points total I’ve almost been playing it as much recently as I did back in the day, so it’s been more than worth the £15.