:D

The Soldier nerf: excellent thing.

Played for a while just now, and of course I went Soldier to experience the Power of Nerfing by myself. Of course, the first fifteen minutes I did nothing but whine about it. I was playing on Gravel Pit, and I don't even know where the ammo pickups are located there (since I usually go Medic on Gravel Pit and so I only know the whereabouts of health pickups), so I ended up scavenging enemies' dropped weapons. 20 rockets is so few. Especially when I'm used to having 40 and hardly ever running out of ammo.
But after I got used to it (got used to setting off to find ammo after a few fired rounds, and not spamming like a nutcase) I realised how brilliant the whole thing is.
Because it really made me stop the senseless spamming.

And I didn't get any worse. Actually it would seem that I got better. :D Broke my damage dealt and destruction records on Dustbowl after the Gravel Pit match. Did a PERFECT capture on Stage One Cap B: charged in through the one-way gate with a Medic who then proceeded to übering me, we took down the two sentries guarding the point, rushed in and capped it. After that I managed to stay alive on Stage Two Cap B for an uncharacteristically long time (I die a lot, and I die fast), taking down sentries and killing the people guarding the point, always rushing back to the building to get more ammo when I was running low. Broke my damage dealt record then, and probably came close to my point record too, because I was killing people left and right, even dominated some poor sod.

Too bad that the game crashed not long after we capped the point (with just thirty seconds left in the timer, whoa) and proceeded to Stage Three, and the new records didn't seem to go to my stats. Hmph. Yeah, I'm playing on my little brother's computer atm. It's old and crappy and paged pool memory problems make the game crash constantly. I've tried to get rid of them, but it still crashes after some time and nothing seems to help.

And my achievements are really broken. I got a progress announcement after the Gravel Pit match that I was 7/9 through Head of the Class and WHAT THE FUCK. I have no idea what classes are not included to that! Seriously, Steam, what's your fucking problem? I was 8/9 through and I thought I was only missing Heavy (because like I told you, for some reason the game didn't wanna include it to the count), and now I'm 7/9. And I apparently didn't have Soldier. Which I had for certain, because Soldier's been my mostly played class during the last two weeks!
Not the first time either: back in the day I got Heavy through some kinda glitch (changed to Heavy in the end of some Dustbowl match, came out of the respawn, died instantly, and enemies capped the point while I was waiting for respawn. And it included Heavy to the Head of the Class and I was like wtf), and then some time later the entire count went back to zero. I suspected it was because of the whole thing with the Heavy, so didn't think about it too much. Anyway, I had to play all the classes again, and got to the point where I am now. And now I'm CERTAIN I got all the classes by playing a complete round with each, so I have no idea why I'm now 7/9 instead of 8/9 like I used to be! Sigh.
This sucks. How can one goddamn achievement be such a pain in the ass? And I thought Impossible Defense would be hard to get!

Ah, and The Slowest Medic Ever story that crossed my mind earlier today, and I thought of sharing: a few days ago I was defending on Gravel Pit. I was a Soldier, and I had a Medic sticking to me. We were heading for Cap A, and there was a huge battle going on. I spotted a Spy cloaking nearby and with all the chaos I lost my Medic (probably wandered off to get a medkit).
And the next time I see the Medic, on the other side of the Cap A area, he's healing a Soldier. With my name. I can understand his confusion, but what the hell, Medic.
I of course start firing rockets at the Spy, who just keeps running in circles and I look at the Medic, who's still sticking to the Spy and healing his ass and just standing there like a bloody idiot while I keep spamming rockets at them. Slowest Medic EVER. It was kinda cute, really. Eventually, like a few seconds later the Medic realises that something's wrong and whips out his syringe gun and starts shooting the Spy, but goddamn.
That was one of the moments when I wished I had a headset. Could've told the poor slow Medic that he's healing a Spy. (I SHOULD get a headset because it would make communicating so much easier, but I'm still not too happy about the fact that you never know what kinda shit people pull off when they hear a girl speaking over the voicechat).
I don't know what was up with that Spy either, I didn't see him making a move to backstab the Medic, although he was just standing there, completely clueless of what's happening. I would've just cloaked and got the hell outta there if the guy with my name turned up and started shooting me, but that's just me. :D And yeah, I would've tried to get that Medic first.

Yeah, I'm off to fight more with the paged pool memory problems, maybe I could get the game run for longer than an hour. I need my daily dose of TF2, neeeeed.

D:

GG, VALVE.

I can't believe that my initial reaction to this was actually RAGE. "FUCKERS ACTUALLY NERFED SOLDIER!" :D
As an affectionate rocket spammer I'm going to be in preeeetty big trouble with OVER HALF OF MY RESERVE AMMO TAKEN AWAY WTF VALVE WTF. I can now fire ten rockets without hitting anything, and with this... I don't want to think. As if I wasn't a bad enough Soldier to begin with! And so much for helping Medics gain their übers if there are no ammo pickups or a dispenser close by.

Okay, silly fanboy-like RAGE aside, this is of course a very good thing. It will end the senseless spamming from aggressive players, and make playing Soldier a bit more tactical than just firing rockets everywhere in the hopes of hitting something.
But still MY GODDAMN ROCKETS, I WANT THEM BACK. I will miss them dearly. :<

"Fixed Engineer being able to detonate buildings that are being sapped"
THANK YOU, VALVE. That's a brilliant thing. I think it was extremely low to blow up your own buildings when they were sapped.

And yeah, I filled a TF2 art meme.

How can you tell when a team must be pretty awful in Team Fortress 2?

When I'm topping the scoreboard as a Soldier.

Or then I'm really not that bad a Soldier. And our team couldn't have been that bad since we weren't completely mowed down. We actually managed to keep enemies away from our last point quite a long time, and epic battles broke out over the second-to-last cap.
This was Badlands, by the way. I hate capping the one point that's high up on the rocks and thinking the coast is clear and jumping down, just to hear the "control point is being captured!" annoucement and see some fucking Scout up there. Argh. More climbing yay!
And it feels pretty good to Dominate the enemy team's highest scorer. Maybe this Sniper could've avoided his fate if he had just charged at me with the kukri, since it seems to be easier to melée me to death than trying to plant one between my eyes.
But! I've learned to rocket jump! I mean at least I get somewhere with the jumps (couldn't get on top of that building on Gravel Pit Cap B although I tried), so from now on you'll be finding me spamming the spawn exits on Gravel Pit right after the setup.
And I've never been as afraid capping a point as I was today on Gravel Pit. I was on Cap A, with two Scouts. And I was a Medic. Just us three. I have no idea how I even ended up there, since everyone else was fighting over B. But we actually capped the point, the badass Scouts owned the one Demo that rushed the point and desperately tried to defend by himself. Had my heart in my throat the whole time.

And my achievements are broken. I played another round as a Heavy. More than that, I played THREE ROUNDS as a Heavy in CP_Well, and didn't get the bleeding achievement! Wtf! D:
Well at least it wasn't so bad after I actually started killing some people (got pretty frustrated at first: I was shooting where people are and couldn't kill ANYONE) and had some poor Medic sticking to my butt and healing me and it helped a lot. At least I didn't get killed immediately. And don't get me wrong, I still sucked. I just... could've been worse. And I might see myself playing more as a Heavy in the future. I hate his lack of speed and I get raped seven ways till Sunday by Spies (I had one Dominate me within few minutes. Seriously, "get out of spawn, get backstabbed," that's how it went. After that I was paranoid and checking my back constantly and shooting at everyone) and I'm an absolutely appalling Medic buddy and I still can't seem to hit people, but... okay, yeah, I've only played thirty minutes as a Heavy, maybe I shouldn't expect to be great at it.
And of course had to experience the dreadful "click click click" sound right in the middle of an über when we were charging for a heavily-guarded point. Oh crap. OKAY NOW WHERE'S MY SHOTGUN.

<3

NERD HEAVEN. I enjoy reading articles like that.

And Meet the Scout.
Fuck, Valve, it was supposed to be every other class but Scout! :D First there was talk of Meet the Sniper, then it was supposed to be Meet the Medic to accompany the new Medic achievements (WHEN are the achievements coming, btw? With Goldrush in March? I want my achievements, Valve!), then there was talk of Meet the Pyro and the whole gender issue, but that had apparently been false information and they were back to talking about Medic.
And now it's for certain Meet the Scout. Right-o.

Lesson no:1

If there's something I've learned from the hours playing as Soldier, it's that never, EVER über a Soldier if you need sentries taken out and things are hectic. Because it's only four rockets, maybe five, and if none of them are crits and the Engineer is camping behind his sentry, waving his wrench, chances are that the über goes to a waste and the sentry stays up.
And it can't be just me, I destroy lots of sentries when I'm a Soldier. Even without an über. But especially on Dustbowl Stage Two Cap B: from this moment on I'm never going to über Soldiers (or Heavies, to that matter) to take down the sentries.
Demomen, fuck yes (I'll have to inform Ville that from now on, if he's a Demo, I'll be trying to über him on Dustbowl if there are sentries up on the last point). Pyros, fuck yes, and if that fails it's my fault for failing to draw the fire to myself.
And dear Medics, please don't über me when you see that I'm reloading my rocket launcher. D:
Also: dear Soldier (or Demoman), if we're camping somewhere safe in Dustbowl, building an über, and I'm healing you, would you please start hurting yourself?
I'm a horrible Medic buddy because I can't seem to look after my Medic at all, but at least I can imagine them appreciating that I'm helping them build their übers by firing rockets at myself (I also hurt myself if I have a Medic sticking to me when we leave the respawn and have a long way to where the battle's being fought). And I don't see Soldiers (or Demomen) do it very often. Which is kinda strange.
But that's what you learn by playing a lot of Medic.

I played a round as a Heavy. And for some reason I didn't get Head of the Class. Goddamn. I don't wanna do it anymore, but apparently I have to.

Ahahaha oh wow.

Okay, the most epic shit ever. This is SO wrong on SO many different levels, and therefore it's awesome:

We were playing in Hydro. I was in BLU, Ville was in RED. I was an Engineer, he was a Pyro.
And I killed him.
With the wrench.
While a Medic was backing me up.

I mean what the fucking hell was that. :D First of all, Ville has a tendency to Dominate me when he's playing against me. I suck with all melée weapons. And a Medic + meléeing Engineer is one of the most absurd combos there can be.

I had awesome times as Engineer just now. Figured out a PERFECT place for a sentry in CTF_Well. Even Spies stood no chance and I was topping the scoreboard for a while. Dominated one silly Spy, and almost got killed really embarrassingly by the same Spy. I was there, next to my sentry, taunting with Ville, who was also an Engineer. And while the taunt animations played through I saw a goddamn CLOAKED SPY jump on my Dispenser and crouch there. Of course went all "OHSHI-" and just as the animation ended, the Spy tried to backstab me from above. End of his story.


Then I annoyed the enemy team in 2fort by camping it out in their sewers. Had a random emergency "OH MY GOD THEY'RE CAPPING THE POINT I NEED TO GET A SENTRY UP RIGHT NOW!" sentry chime in five kills in Granary. Goddamn, the poor little first level sentry was on the middle of the walkway with the huge tubes, next to our last cap. I was running down the walkway when enemies capped our second point, so I had to put the sentry down that instant or the last point would end up capped instantly, what with their insane Scout rushing.
Actually managed to fight them off for a little while. Was kinda awesome.
And I killed disturbingly much people with the wrench. Good.

And there was at one point a BLU Pyro with a name of Frank and I lol'd. Hardcore. It had to be one of our fags, because a coincidence like that just... isn't possible. That was a bit disturbing.

This is what you should expect from now on...

I'm still chickening out of playing Heavy. I'm one class away from Head of the Class achievement, and incidentally that one class is Heavy. Everything in Heavy just puts me off, the speed most of all (I love Soldier, but I'm still sometimes getting frustrated because he's so goddamn slow), and I think even the one round as one will be embarrassing torture for me. Especially if some poor Medic decides to stick to me. Medic's my mostly played class (with 30 hours), and I know noobish Heavies can be the most tedious of them all: chewing through their ammo without hitting anyone, not realising to pick up ammo whenever possible and then having to resort to shotgun when enemies are all over us and thinking they're bulletproof when I'm healing them, thus rushing into a sentry-infested enemy base with some insane kamikaze mentality and then getting angry at me because I didn't heal them.
And I'm quite sure I'd be one of those Heavies.
But it's only a round. Hey, I only had to play as a Demoman for about six minutes before the enemy captured our intelligence four times! Maybe I'll get just as lucky with Heavy!

And yes, before you ask: I'm not a very good player. Not outright BAD, but... maybe not even average. Also depends on the class. I think I'm a fairly good Medic, an average Pyro and Engineer, and a tolerable Soldier (when I'm having a good day) and Sniper. And I'm an absolutely appalling Scout and Demo. As a Spy I'm... I just don't know.
I'd like to play as Spy more. I even said to Ville (my only irl TF2 buddy) before starting to play today that I'd try out Spy. And I went out as a Spy when CP_Well came up.
And I absolutely sucked.
So I changed back to Soldier.
Goddamn Spy is so hard to nail down! I've had some good moments as a Spy, but most of the time enemies seem to see right through me, I fail to sap any buildings, and even botch backstabs on Heavies who're standing still. I don't know how that's even possible. :D Yeah, Spy's one of the hardest classes to master and I shouldn't expect to do well as a Spy after 45 minutes of playtime, but what bothers me is that I'm SO bad that I'm contributing absolutely nothing to my team.
I think I should just stick with Spy and not give up on it after few deaths, thinking it's useless. And only if my team starts whining about my uselessness, that's when I switch back to a class I can play as.

I also don't understand why Soldier's my "it doesn't matter if I suck, this is so much fun!" class. Like I said, I'm only a tolerable Soldier, and that's when I'm having a good day (or I'm playing in Granary. Seriously, there's magic in Granary. Magic that draws all the enemies to where I'm firing my rockets. Especially when it's a crit. It makes no sense that in Granary I'm actually a pretty good Soldier, and then in every other map I just seem to suck). But I like being a Soldier so much that I don't even care. With every other class I change to some other class when I'm having a horrible "get out of respawn, run to the battle, fire a few useless rounds, die" streak.
It doesn't even matter that I can't do rocket jumps! No, really, I can't seem to time the damn jumps at all. It was the best day EVER as a Soldier when I actually managed to jump into BLU's respawn hallways in Gravel Pit cap B (on a first try no less!) and kill a Medic with a full charge before he had the time to hit it.
And I don't mind that I can't do it properly, Soldier's still fun.
And now while I'm at it, here's more examples to make it absolutely clear how bad a Soldier I am: Pyros are my worst enemies. No, seriously. Out of all nine classes Pyros rape me like no other. BAD Pyros, even! Because only the suicidal (or noobish) ones would actually run right at a Soldier from a distance rather than trying to ambush one from behind. And those kill me so properly it's INSANE! Now it's even worse because I have this fear of Pyros and if I see one coming at me I totally lose my shit. :D I try to aim rockets at their feet when they're zigzagging towards me and I never hit and I'm on fire and panicking and backing off and then I'm dead.
So I'm the Soldier who's afraid of Pyros, and can't rocket jump.
And it's still fun!

So I had some usual sucky runs as a Soldier today. It was thanks to me we won a match in CP_Well, though: the enemy had two sentries up on their second cap, and I single-handedly took those down. I died (probably batted to death from behind by some Scout), but teammates capped the cleared point, and a few seconds later the last one. Whoo!
And why is it always me who ends up capturing enemy intel when I have like 40 health left? What happened to teamwork?
And what IS it with these aggressive Snipers suddenly?! Seriously, I had a Sniper dominate me in 2fort at one point. Yeah, I know, not that unusual, I was a Soldier, sure I'm an easy slow-moving target for Snipers... except that the fucker never shot me with his rifle. He was dominating me with the kukri and SMG. That was one of the most embarrassing moments in my life as a Soldier. Luckily I eventually got revenge on him, but still. Goddamn.
And today I had another Sniper come at me with his kukri and melée me to death. WTF! Snipers should stay in kitchen? on battlements at their endless Who's Got a Bigger Sniper Penis battles with enemy Snipers!
No, to be serious, my hat goes off to those Snipers. Glad to see some Snipers doing something else than camping the battlements in 2fort.

I did some ownage as a Pyro today, thankfully (and now, no laughing at my crappy graphics):



I have no idea how that happened (did our team suck?). Insane amount of deaths, wow (and I usually get more kills than assists, that's a lot of assists for me). That's what you get for doing suicide attacks as a Pyro. But I did a really cool capture with Ville (Slaverstrike there) when he was a Medic. Yay us!
...whoa, I just had an idea. If I could talk Ville into being a Medic when I go as a Heavy... maybe it wouldn't be so horrible then. It'd be horrible for Ville, though. :D But worth the try! I can tell him he can just ignore me and change the class if I'm beyond horrible.
Anyway. Hydro is my Pyro map. I LOVE Hydro (people don't really seem to like Hydro and I can't understand why! Hydro's one of my favourite maps, I think only Dustbowl is more fun for me. And Badlands, but that's probably only because it's new) and I always go Pyro in Hydro. I love the ambush possibilities in Hydro, and all the narrow caves and hallways and everything make it perfect for some serious raping. <3 And I don't seem to be that bad a Pyro in Hydro, so at least it works for me. I don't do much capping in Hydro, since I'm a very defensive Pyro (I'm kind of lost as an offensive Pyro, I would never go as a Pyro in Dustbowl or Gravel Pit when playing in BLU).

Also had the awesomest thing happen when playing in 2fort. It's only awesome if you're in the team that does, though. Sneaky Engineers! Too bad we just won, I would've loved to camp it out there and see how desperate the enemy team would get. Tee hee.
No, really, that's really fucking annoying thing to do. But fun, nevertheless, in moderation.
I absolutely hate it when enemy builds their sentries in my team's base, whatever the map. I had one Engineer giving me grey hairs in CTF_Well at one point, fucker was trying to build sentries on our sniper deck. Gladly I ran in while he was at it and could at least inform my team before our base was swarming with enemies.
Thankfully spawn camping is seriously frowned upon and happens practically never, because that's annoying as hell.

Might play a couple of rounds more before heading to bed. Gonna have a loooong day tomorrow.

The First Mandatory Introduction Post

Hi, I'm Kata, and this is my gaming blog.

I say "gaming" although I will probably be talking about all kinds of nerdy stuff that crosses my mind (see: other interests).
But the whole idea of making a blog for my incessant nerdy babbling stemmed from the fact that even I got kind of sick of spamming my own personal blog with lengthy stories about the long hours spent playing Team Fortress 2 and how I owned someone as a Soldier or sucked so bad as a Spy. You can only imagine how tiresome that can be for people who don't know TF2 and have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. So I decided to make a themed blog for my gaming related rants. Therefore this will first and foremost be a gaming blog, and I will write my thoughts about videogames that I am playing at the moment. Simple enough, I believe.
I have to warn you, though: I can be rather verbose.

Well, okay, Sorry, I take that back: I AM rather verbose.

Anyway. Wanna know more about me? I'm twenty-something (older than you'd think), I live in Finland, and I'm a game designer student. I obviously enjoy playing the vidya. I'm by no means a hardcore gamer, but not a casual one either.
I've been playing videogames since I was a wee lass and my parental units got me and my little brother a NES for Christmas. Our Christmas tree was in danger that year, since I couldn't play Super Mario Bros 3 without running and jumping around myself. Lara Croft was my hero back in 1996.
These days I play a lot on my PC (and I'm seriously in need of a better graphics card, try not to laugh at screenshots if/when I post some. Thankfully I'm not a graphics whore and I don't really care what the game looks like as long as I can PLAY it), thanks to Team Fortress 2 being the most awesome online multiplayer shooter in the history of ever. I haven't yet gotten to buying any of this generation's consoles (I am not getting Xbox360 because MGS4 is PS3 exclusive and so I have to shit out the insane amount of money to get the goddamn PS3 even though I really, really don't want to since I'd much rather get the 360. But MGS4 is THE game I've been waiting for, so I am going to play it, and thus need to sell my body rob a bank work my ass off in some shitty job to get the money), so I do all of my console gaming on my trusty old PlayStation 2.
I also have a girly, pink Nintendo DS.
I don't have a favourite game genre, because I play almost anything (RTS is probably the only genre I'm not too fond of). I tend to stick with action/adventure games on consoles, and FPS on PC. My favourite games, eh? The Orange Box, Metal Gear Solid series, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan series on DS, Resident Evil 4, Final Fantasy series (XII is my favourite), Okami and so on.

My other interests include, but are not limited to cartoons and comics (both Western and what you usually call "anime" and "manga"), Asian ball-jointed dolls, music, certain TV series, cosplay and Transformers (the entire franchise from toys to cartoons). I draw a lot, sometimes I write mostly for my own pleasure and I play guitar in a not-very-active band (because our vocalist currently resides in the US).

And if there's anything else you'd like to know, don't hesitate to ask. I'm a nice person, really.