Hotfix the Hotbox

Yesterday marked the release of the Sniper/Spy update in Team Fortress 2.

Each update comes with three alternate weapons, one to replace each of your main weapons. There have been updates for the medic, pyro, scout, and heavy up to this point. So that leaves the Engineer, demoman, and soldier.

But right now we're focussing on the two new ones, the sniper and the spy.

The sniper's main weapon is, of course, the sniper rifle. BUT NOT ANYMORE. Now it's a fuckin' bow. Cool. It fires faster, and can pin people to a wall, but it has somewhat less range, so it's more of a medium-combat alternative.

The sniper's secondary weapon was a small machine gun. Pretty shitty, really. Now it's been replaced with a shield that slows you down a bit, but prevents you from being backstabbed. Because the shield is hooked up to a car battery. Backstab = zap.

The third, final, and by far the most fucked up of all the alternate weapons that I have seen, is....Jarate. Like karate. But with a jar. A jar full of urine. You...throw the jar...at...people.

If the pee strikes an enemy, all damage given to that enemy is amplified by 35%, which, TRUST ME, if you've got one guy attacking you, and all of a sudden you're drenched in urine, you're dead. Also, if you use the ancient art of jarate on an enemy spy, he is unable to cloak until the pee wears off.

...you can also throw your pee onto a friendly unit, to douse fires. Or you could have a pyro on hand to hit them with a compression blast. Air or pee. Take your pick.

The spy update is probably much, much, much cooler.

There are three items being thrown in here, two watches and a gun.

One of the watches, when activated, provides you with a brief moment of safety. By safety I mean if somebody kills you after you've activated it, a corpse of you appears on the ground and you become invisible for eight seconds, but when you become visible again, you make a loud noise. But eight seconds is more than enough for a skilled spy to slip away.

The next watch is a new stealth watch. The old stealth watch is activated via the right click, and you're invisible until the power runs out, which it steadily does. The new watch, you can recharge the power by standing still. But that is the ONLY way to recharge it, so if you're in a hurry, you won't get it. But considering that it can be recharged while IN stealth, it's grand.

The third and final update for the spy is The Ambassador. A shiny shiny shiny handgun that excites me in all the wrong ways. Basically, picture a spy. He's behind you. But you've got a couple dudes around you, he's not sure if he can take you all down with just his trusty knife. So he pulls out the Ambassador. It's essentially a sniper rifle in pistol form, with head shot crits and it packs a mean punch. The only downside is that it fires more slowly, and each shot after the first is less accurate. So you're less likely to take down an incoming pyro with the gun unless you get lucky first shot, but it affords so many new stealth options. When you attack whilst in disguise, you break your disguise, and the only surefire way to make the other guy dead was to get right up behind him and plunge your trusty dagger into his back. Now there's another viable alternative, and that makes me a happy spy.

That's all that for the updates to TF2 this weekend, but one day they will fix up the last three classes. Although I have -no- idea what they would give them.

Oh, and before now, alternative weapons had to be unlocked by getting a certain number of achievements. I've got 29 out of a hundred and something achievements at present, and I've only unlocked the flare gun, and alternate to the pyro's shotgun. An alternate that sets them on fire.

Now they've changed it so that it doesn't really matter what you do, you can just...get the items. I've heard of them being acquired during combat, by people both failing and kicking serious butt, I've heard of items being handed to people that are quite clearly afk, and, shockingly, I have heard of items going to people that are SPECTATING the matches. That's just zany.

But right now, nobody knows the system for acquiring them, and there have been reports that there is a minor glitch in it. I for one played for...somewhere between three and six hours tonight, and I unfortunately did not come by any new weapons. Valve seems to have confirmed that yes, there is a bug in the system, and that items should be going out more often than that.

But yeah, all in all it's been a fun night.

And I ended up in third place on my team's score, and the first place guy had been playing on that server for most of the night, while I was fairly fresh. Felt good. I didn't bother trying with the spy or the sniper, I stuck with something I knew, something I was good at. Spraying hot fire at my allies in case one of them was a spy. Spy update, after all, more spies and snipers roaming around than ever before.

Until next time,
I hope they give the Engineers scorpions. I could honestly care less HOW they manage it, but scorpions are always cool. Scorpions.
~Kataron