So I herd you liek updates...

No, I haven't yet played Goldrush or tried to get any new achievements, I haven't even touched TF2 ever since it updated.

Why?

Because the goddamned Valve Land is in GMT-8, and I'm GMT+2. The update came at four in the morning, and I was too tired to play. It was vexing to restart Steam, watch TF2 update, take a look at the list of all the new achievements and then watch bitterly as my friends' names turned green one by one. And I was so tired it hurt.
And I only woke up just a while ago.

But today. Oh boy. I'm finding some Goldrush 24/7 server and playing there for a few hours. Will probably check out my regular servers too at some point. And I will be playing Soldier, and cackling evilly if I can get a ridiculous Medic harem to follow me around.
Yeah, I hear it's MEDICS! EVERYWHERE! so I guess I'll do just what I thought I would and play Soldier and Pyro and Engineer (and Spy fuck yes, now it won't be suspicious at all for a Medic to run around with the syringe gun out. Even a crappy Spy like me could do pretty well with all the Medics around. Especially since most of them are definitely Medicing noobs) for a week or so, and then get back to playing Medic and getting the Blutsauger.
Oh damn, I just realised... Spies are actually going to have even more of a hard time after Medics start getting the unlockables. I suppose Spies will always be holding the regular syringe gun when disguised. Damn. Poor Spies. I would totally feel for them, if I played more as a Spy and didn't think they are a horrible pain in the ass.

And I'm also trying to rope my non-playing friends to join me next weekend, because this is kinda awesome. Lots of noobs around! Hehehe. But yeah, I'm hoping I could get more of my friends to join the game. All you need to do is get Steam!
And I'll have to tell my little brother too, I'd really like to play with him. He'd own me completely (he's been playing Action Quake for ten years or so, and he's pretty fucking good at it), but damn I'd be SO PROUD if I killed him, even once.

EDIT: Oh goddamn, there's a command to unlock all the achievements just by typing it into console. I think it's sad people would actually go down that road with the achievements. I know some of them can be tedious and require some grinding to get, but still.
Just like farming achievements. There are already people running around with Übersaws.

Le sigh.

Why am I not surprised...

So conflicting!

I want the update, and yet I don't, because I'm already sleep-deprived. Please don't come until Friday night (and I'm quite sure it won't come before that. If it comes at all, dammit Valve...). After that I can handle allnighters.
And apparently I have no self-restraint, since I know I have to get up at 7:30 am and yet I still find myself hanging about on the server at 2:00 am. No wonder I'm tired. Damn you Team Fortress 2 for being so much fun to play!

But few nights ago I got I broke my highest score as a Medic. Gravel Pit is starting to be my Medic wonderland, I love being a Medic in the defending team on Gravel Pit.
And yeah I could give ten or so übers with all the healing I do, but like I said, I don't like wasting them. And my new record (18) would've been a point or two higher, but goddamn I got ambushed by an enemy Pyro from behind and died the very second I tried to hit my über (I could blame lag, I'm still playing with a ping of 150 or so). Would've been fourth. And this happened like 30 seconds before the round ended. Was extremely annoyed. I was still an MVP and broke my old record, so that wasn't bad at all.

And I also had some insane combat Medic situations that night. Defended a point on Well by myself against a Demo and a Scout. How the hell do I end up in these situations? (Well, I come out of respawn and go to find someone to heal, and I find no one but enemies, that's how it usually goes). Later on in Granary I was doing the exact same thing, but I was kinda going combat Medic there anyhow. We had a team consisting only of Scouts, Snipers and Spies (and one Pyro, who was extremely suicidal, and I don't like following suicidal Pyros because I get killed so easily), so after trying to heal them for a moment (fucking Scouts, stay still if you want me to heal you! And I don't heal Spies unless they yell for Medic, because I don't want to compromise their disguise by accident) I decided to just fuck it and go combat Medic. Nice to start racking up the kills with Medic, though. I think I killed 10 people yesterday when I was Medic, and that's pretty good. For me.
And I was surprised that we actually won a round with that crazyass team. Four Scouts, three Spies, two Snipers, a suicidal Pyro and a terrible combat Medic. Uhhh, right.
After that round I got a Demoman buddy to follow around. I very rarely stick to Demomen (unless when we're trying to decimate some sentry farms), because they're pretty much screwed when enemies get close to them (and I hate Pyros so fucking much I need a buddy who can take them down before they can get to me, heh), but this time I really didn't have a choice (a Demo or a Scout, hmm...), and he was a pretty kickass Demoman. We took down many defenses together, I liked him.
Just for the record, if you want me to stick to you when I'm Medic, go Heavy. Heavies are my favourites by far. After that I either go for Soldiers or Pyros, usually depending on the situation. I would über a Pyro (or a Demo) for sentry takedowns rather than a Soldier or a Heavy, but I would much rather follow a Soldier around, because they're not nearly as suicidal as Pyros tend to be. And if it's Slaverstrike that I'm healing, I'm quite likely to stick to him exclusively, so you can just piss off if you don't need healing. Because damn we make such a goddamn good team (on top of the scoreboard on Gravel Pit a few nights ago, again).
But whoever it is that I'm exclusively healing, I'll ditch their ass for a fellow Medic in need. Generally I abandon my main healing targets for anyone dying right next to me, unless things are insanely hectic, which is when I take measures and heal those who I think will be the most useful in the situation. Sorry, but I'm thinking about TEAM, not your score. Of course I TRY to heal everyone, but sometimes I can't do that without people dying anyhow.

I'm having too much fun with labels.

Jesus Christ I RAGED last night in Dustbowl.
I was playing in RED, having tons of fun defending and healing people and pushing BLU back into their spawn in Stage Three. And then.
Autobalanced.
I RAGED because, well, I figured I'd end up being pushed back into spawn continuously because that's what RED was doing to BLU. Dominating like whoa. I even thought of going spectator until there's room in RED again, but I didn't want to be a spoilsport, so I just swallowed all the silly rage and started healing people I had been (assisting in) killing before. I'm a good Medic, dammit, I can tip the scales if I really try! We can win this shit!

Except that I don't ever remember having as broken a team. I think we had couple of AFK players, but seriously, I was up there, trying to heal another Medic, an odd Soldier and an Engineer. Those were the only fucking people I saw. And I went back to the spawn to find more people when everyone else died and no, there was no one there. And according to the scoreboard we had a full 12 player team.
Anyway, apparently all the "good" players had left after Stage Two (after all, BLU had got through the first two stages), and, well, I was on top of the scoreboard, and had twice as much points as the next player, 'nuff said.
So I RAGED again. And this time I was so angry that I actually yelled at them. I was just so fucking angry at being switched into such a sorry excuse for a team. Once again I wanted to switch to spectator and go back to my old team, I had friends there and we were doing so well and having fun and...
I don't know if my raging actually made them start working harder or what the hell happened, but suddenly there were a couple of Demos and a Heavy and we pushed the defenders back so that I could build my über without dying and not long after that we capped the first point. We never got the last one, but I actually had fun after the first cap. The team had miraculously pulled itself together! It was great! I felt sorry that I had raged and told the team that they were awesome after all. Because they were, after they regained their composure.
And yeah, I was doing very well for a change, in the end of the round I even had more points than the enemy team's highest scoring player (...and still almost twice as much as the rest of my team...) and yay, I don't actually remember ever being the one with the best score out of all players. I would've got the achievement out of that (except that I think I killed one Spy).
But yeah, this is just one more example how I should never switch back to my old team after autobalance. No matter how bad the things are looking, I can end up having more fun than I otherwise would've had.

I was also steamrolling with Slaverstrike on Well. Again. Look at us, topping the scoreboard.


Was awesome. So awesome. We make good team.

I also Engineered a bit on Dustbowl. Got myself a brand new best score, 18 points, and kills record too. 12 from a sentry, and two shotgun kills, those silly Spies. And I felt like a good person after seeing a comrade being blown into smithereens while his sentry was under über-Heavy fire, and rushing in and keeping the friendly sentry alive.
Also did some experimental engineering on 2fort (because that's what 2fort is for, I hate it so much). And I had this extremely silly Spy trying to cause me grief. Just ended up causing me to giggle uncontrollably. Damn idiot stabbed me TWICE when I was tanking behind my sentry. Well you know how that ended up. Not very well on the poor Spy's part. The first one I understand, because hey, it happens. But after the second time I was having hard time trying to recover from a giggle fit. And later on I dominated the poor sod, and of course did it very gracefully by getting shot to death by my own sentry at the same time. The Spy died from the same goddamn rocket, and I hear the pompous DOMINATION soundclip and see my sentry looking preeetty good (that's my baby <3). What's more, I got a defense out of it, because the Spy was carrying our intel. Nice combo. A kill, a domination, a defense, and yet another deathcam shot of my own sentry.

And actually, right now I'm hoping that the update won't come until the end of the week. Because I have lots of school stuff to do and I don't know if I have the guts to actually sacrifice our project for an insane Goldrush allnighter.
Don't fail me, Valve.

SAWRY!

I could talk about Meet the Scout, but, uh. I liked it, but was kinda disappointed because it wasn't nearly as funny as the other Meet the Team videos (my favourite's probably Meet the Soldier). And I felt sorry for the Heavy, the poor guy just wanted a sammich.
Also my Scout hate is bordering serious nerd RAGE because yesterday I was getting dominated by some badass Scouts. Seriously there's nothing I hate more than a good Scout.
And those fuckers always crit when they shoot me. Even today I was killed three times by a goddamn Scout getting a scattergun crit. Stupid Scouts.


(But I can't help it: he is kinda cute. In some really obnoxious way.)

ANY DAY NOW. The update. Could be today, could be tomorrow, eeee, I'm just hoping it won't take forever.

Anyway, back to our usual schedule of wanton babbling:

I had the most awesome match ever in CTF Well a few days ago. Everyone, and I mean everyone went melée. It's never really happened before in my presence (on the servers I usually play on), some go melée and the rest keep playing normally, and it's really not fair, but that's how it goes. Some people don't have a sense of humour. Anyway, this time everyone went melée. 24 players.
I was Medic because, you know, I'm having the Strictly Medic week. And I was actually doing better than I imagined! Even broke my kills record!
And everyone had fun as far as I know, because after the map changed and we found ourselves in Gravel Pit, everyone agreed to continue playing with melée weapons only. I charged cap A with the bonesaw in hand and still holding onto my über (I was playing in BLU). Felt a bit bad for wasting it completely (ie. never actually using it), but at least I was having so much fun. And we won the round, melée only.
I'm still a rotten combat Medic, though, but that was nice practice.

And we make a good team with Slaverstrike, we were steamrolling in CP Well at some point. He was a Soldier, I was a Medic, and in one life we capped two points, I gave him two übers and we were the round's MVPs. :3
I was also THIS close to übering an Engineer in 2fort, but damn it I died just as I right-clicked. Damn stupid something killed me. It would've been so awesome.

And today something happened that made me grin like an idiot for several minutes. I was playing Medic in Gravel Pit, and we were defending. We had somehow lost B, so I was pretty sure we would lose A too, and then battle it out over C. But as I went over to A, I saw we had a quite solid defense going on there. I was pretty much just running around and healing everyone rather than sticking to one person. And then the time's almost out, there's like 30 seconds left, and then BLU breaks through and goes to cap the point. I try to über someone who dies just before the charge kicks in, and there's NO ONE else around, so I just run away in the protection of the über and go get a medkit. There are about five people standing on the point, I wait for a second for someone to come, and much to my chagrin I notice that my entire team's apparently dead.
So I whip out the bonesaw and charge the goddamn point by myself. Luckily I crit, kill an Engineer before anyone even realises what's happening, and then proceed to waving the bonesaw around and reducing the entire group to half-dead state, and it takes them FOREVER to kill me.
I eventually die, but I'm grinning from ear to ear while waiting to respawn because that was probably the most awesome thing I've ever done. And I watch as my teammates arrive to the point a couple of seconds after my death and decimate the enemies, stopping the capture, and we won the round. If I hadn't been there to prevent the capture for the few seconds, BLU would've probably capped the point. And I was the number one MVP for the round. It really pays off to heal and buff EVERYONE.
The best part? My Medic screamed "MUST I DEFEND ZIS POINT BY MYSELF?!" and laughed like a maniac (I love Medic's laugh) when I charged in and killed the Engineer. AWESOME.
My best combat Medic moment ever.
I've actually never played a game in Gravel Pit so that only B is capped (a shutout I've seen, since I have the achievement). A is such a bitch to defend. But apparently it's possible. We had fuckloads of Engineers, though.

And after that we played in Dustbowl and after capping Stage One, the Heavy I was healing in the previous round tells me that I'm one of the best Medics he's seen on the server (he's a regular, I've been healing him maaany times before. IIRC he was the Heavy I was healing in Gravel Pit when our team was pretty lost and the guy who played the Scout whined that his team sucks). And I start the round by smiling like an idiot.
I'm seriously not THAT good a Medic (not while there are so many better server regular Medics around, even had one in our team), but I'm really happy to hear that at least someone thinks that I don't suck.
Btw, this was after the most risky cap I've ever done, goddamn, I'm hanging around in the tunnel with the one-way door, getting my über up, and the Heavy charges in and immediately out of the doors because the last cap was half-capped, and apparently the defenses were down. I'm THIS close to getting the über, but I decide to follow the Heavy and try to keep him alive, maybe we could cap without the über (besides, points don't cap when you're übered, so while we wait the über to go out, the RED have more time to get on the point and defend). We kill everyone on the point, get on it and cap it. And just as we cap I get the über and naturally I proceed to übering the Heavy for maximum humiliation effect.

I was also practising to stay alive today. There was actually three or four times I stayed alive for three consecutive übers. One of those was an entire Dustbowl round, we defended and won with a shutout (I even joined the game after setup time, so I didn't have the setup charge up when I went to the battle).
But yeah, it seems that three's the magic number, I ALWAYS die after the third über.
And yeah, of course I probably would've gotten six or so übers with all the healing I did in the Gravel Pit match, but I'm not going to waste the charges, that's for sure. And I'm certain that if I use the über to take out an odd Soldier, the REAL attack force comes in right after that and then I don't have the über when we need one. And that's why I also DIE way too often while holding a full charge.

But yeah, I was doing pretty well today, all in all. More of this, and more of melée only Well matches.

I can't stop blogging!

Okay, so I'm apparently going to blog like a nutcase about the upcoming update, but fucking hell I can't help it! News, pictures, videos! In a steady stream! And I'm getting more and more excited with each new thing that I stumble upon!
I think I'm in trouble if Valve Time comes into play and the update won't see daylight in Sunday...

My new favourite thing is this video. (Embeddan gaems! Let's see how this goes...)



First of all, Critskrieg in action! I'm quite disturbed by the un-shinyness of the actual charge. No one's even going to notice there's a critzkrieging going on until they start seeing some Soldier critting nonstop. And that's gonna be horrible with Heavies and Pyros when you can't actually see the crits. All you're going to see is your teammates mowed down. That's going to be nasty.
But yeah, that seemed pretty devastating. Even with the Soldier backing away and reloading at some point, they still killed pretty much everyone there.
(...I'm changing my mind about the Critskrieg again, I might wanna get it after all. If I only could.)

And second of all, and the real reason I can't stop watching the video: Goldrush. I can't WAIT to actually get to play it. That really narrow tunnel after the first checkpoint? Going to be hell. Imagine some critzkrieged Pyro charging the entire escorting BLU team there... and oh man, that map's going to be a real challenge for BLU Engineers. I figure teleporters can make a world of difference after the first checkpoint is cleared. And you'd have to move them up all the time. I wonder how much chaos can one well-placed offensive sentry cause... if an Engie can slip past the defenses... I really wanna see what offensive Engineers can cook up on that map.

Anyway, I just know I'll love Goldrush.

Seriously, people. Christmas.

And Meet the Scout in nine hours on Gametrailers, apparently. I'm actually thinking of staying up to watch it when it comes out. Or then I'll go to bed, have the alarm go off when the video comes out, watch it, and go back to sleep.

Yes, I am that much of a geek.

Also there was an article (which I've seem to lost... no, wait, here it is), where they mentioned that Engineer would be getting some updates too, apparently additional levels to teleporters (shorter recharge time) and dispenser (faster healing).

And uh, I'm going to break my own rules again, but once Goldrush comes out, I'm going to play it first as Soldier. Sorry, me! Because Soldier's safe class, and it's easier for me to get to know the map when I can go where I want to and explore places (I'm a tunnel-vision Medic, I just follow people. I'll never get to know the map that way). Scout would be perfect, but I don't do Scout. I could go Pyro, though, but Soldier's still more reliable for me.

I spam. :3

GodDAMN the Übersaw looks badass. Now I'm back to thinking that maybe I should do the insane grinding to get the thing... just because it looks so awesome.
But ehh I'm not going to bother. I'll get the Blutsauger and that's it.

And dammit, Valve, why is it "Critscrieg" (according to the loadout screenshots), that makes no sense! I'm gonna rage if it stays that way. (The Blutsauger was referred to as "Blutsaugher" in one of the articles, but apparently that was just a typo). Critskrieg, Valve, CRITZKRIEG.

And what is this I read about new classes? Do not know if want.

Medic achievements and unlockables

Okay, right, huge news day.

First the final Medic unlockables were revealed. Then there were actual hands-on impressions about the said unlockables and Goldrush.
And just now, the actual Medic achievements were unveiled.

I've been giddy the whole day, first figuring out if I like the sound of the new unlockable weapons and deciding that I really, really like Blutsauger and want to have it as my new best friend. And now I'm despairing over the fact that I'm going to be lucky if I even get the damn weapon. The achievements are sadistic!

Well, anyway. Cue my long-winded thoughts on the unlockables and achievements.

So like I said, the Blutsauger will probably be my new best friend. I won't even look back at the good old syringe gun once I get my eager little hands on the new bloodsucker. I figure it will support my cowardish Medicing playstyle pretty perfectly.
And I'm probably going to hate the Critzkrieg. I have a hard time staying alive as a Medic, so I'll definitely prefer übercharges over a few seconds of continuous crits but being completely vulnerable. And I'm going to hate it whenever an enemy Medic launches his critzkrieg, as if I wasn't a bad enough crit magnet before!
Well at least I don't have to worry about it too much, because I'll probably never even get the weapon. Ha!
The Übersaw is a bit DO WANT, but first of all it's impossible (for me) to get, and I'm not that badass a combat Medic. I'm not a combat Medic at all (I just lost a Medic vs. Medic bonesaw deathmatch in Gravel Pit yesterday, so...), but even I'd venture out to bonesaw people if it meant getting an über faster. But yeah, never gonna get it.

I was also a bit scared if the new unlockables will screw up the class balance (since Medic is the only class to get new weapons for now), but to me it seems that the unlockable weapons will only support different ways of playing the Medic. Combat Medics will surely appreciate the Übersaw, and those who rather heal people than fight and strive to survive, will find Blutsauger perfect. Critzkrieg is an interesting counterpart to the übercharge, that's for sure, and gives more of a tactical twist to playing the Medic (when to have übercharge, and when critzkrieg? I understand you can change weapons during respawn and in resupply? Just like you'd chance a class), although I can't quite figure how I'D use it to my (or rather my team's) advantage.

And what I find great about the achievements, is that a player who only plays combat Medic will NEVER get the Übersaw of their dreams. Achievements are pretty well balanced, there are some geared towards combat Medics, and some geared towards those who actually do what Medics are supposed to (ie. healing). To get all of the achievements and be worthy of the unlockables, you have to be a well-rounded Medic who's both a teamworking healer and a total badass killing machine. That's awesome, I think.
And I don't think having the Übersaw (or Critzkrieg, and definitely not Blutsauger) tips the balance. Only the real hardcore players will get it, and they will probably play with people who are close to their own level of skill. I don't think I'll be seeing any Übersaws on any of my regular servers...
Yeah, sure, I know, of course some people will get the achievements through setup games, or using bots and keybinds on playtest servers.

I'm not too happy about the slight MMORPG GRINDING aspect this is adding to my cheerful little team-based FPS, but I figure the Übersaw doesn't change the gameplay so much that a team is automatically screwed if the enemy Medic has it, so you don't have to get it to be a good Medic. If you really want it, you'll have to grind, that's how it goes.

And now, the achievements. This is gonna be hella annoying to read, but I'll just repost some of the achievements and add my thoughts.

1. First Do No Harm: Play a full round without killing any enemies and score the highest on a team of 6 or more players.
- Easily done. I don't really kill people as Medic anyhow, so it's easy to just hold myself back if I do get assaulted by noobish Spies. And I've been on top of the scoreboard as a Medic before, so this is going to be somewhat of a cakewalk. Definitely not too hard. With lots of Medics around, though...

3. Group Health: Work with 2 other medics to deploy 3 simultaneous uber-charges.
- I suspect servers will be full of Medics for the next few weeks, so probably you don't even have to coordinate this. Sigh.

5. Trauma Queen: Deploy 3 uber-charges in less than 5 minutes, and assist in 5 kills during that time.
- Tricky, because I can't bleeding stay alive for three consecutive übers. 3 übers is actually my record, that's how long I can stay alive. And it's almost always on Dustbowl Stage Three, playing in BLU. Five assists is going to be very easy. And lol at Trauma Queen, awesome name.

7. Play Doctor: In a team with no medics, be first to switch to medic after a teammate calls "Medic!" and then heal 500 health.
- Oh god, I can imagine the whole fucking team going Medic at once. Sheer luck. Also, a team with no Medics? After this update? HAHAHA OH WOW. Dream on. Will take some time, this one, I figure. :D

8. Triage: Deploy an uber-charge on a teammate less than a second before they're hit by a critical explosive.
- I'll probably get this without even realising it. Or then I'll just keep my eyes open for crits whenever I have a full charge. My crit-magnetism should come in handy, har de har har.

10. Consultation: Assist a fellow medic in killing 5 enemies in a single life.
- I've been assisting some bonesawing combat Medics before pretty randomly, but to stick to one? I wonder where I'll find a badass-enough Medic. I wonder if Slaverstrike can pull it off...

11. Does It Hurt When I Do This?: Kill 50 scouts with your syringe gun.
- I heard there was going to be a "kill Scouts with syringes" achievement and my face went ":D!" because I've actually killed quite a lot of Scouts with syringes (I own Scouts better as Medic than as Soldier...). And then my face went "D:!" when I actually saw that it's 50 fucking Scouts. Right. It's gonna take forever. I have 120 kills as a Medic as of now, and maybe 15 of them are Scouts, 'nuff said.

12. Peer Review: Kill 50 medics with your bone saw.
- And I just lost a Medic vs. Medic melée match. Goddamn...

13. Big Pharma: Assist a heavy in killing 30 enemies where neither of you die.
- SLAVERSTRIKE, WE HAVE SOME BUSINESS TO DO. No deaths. Mindless killing only. Final destination.
Oh I only wish it was so easy and I were that good...

14. You'll Feel A Little Prick: Assist in killing 4 enemies with single uber-charge on a scout.
- I COULD DO THIS WHEN I'M DRUNK. Since I seem to be so fond of Scouts under the influence.

16. Blast Assist: Assist in exploding 5 enemies with a single uber-charge on a soldier.
- Only thing I can say is: MEDICS, don't über ME when you want this achievement.

18. Medical Breakthrough: Assist in destroying 8 enemy engineer buildings with a single uber-charge on a Demoman.
- Seriously, where the HELL can you find a sentry nest like that? D: Even the usually so insane sentry nests on Dustbowl's Stage Two's last point are rarely so large! But yeah, Slaverstrike, you're going to help me with this one too at some point, right? :/

19. Midwife Crisis: Heal an engineer as he repairs his sentry while it's under enemy fire.
- Lol at the name. And as far as achievements go, this one should be a cakewalk.

21. Grand Rounds: Heal 200 teammates after they've called for "Medic!"
- People just need to remember to call for Medics (I actually very rarely call for Medic when I play as Soldier or Pyro. I don't know why, maybe I feel a bit embarrassed wanting to take their time. And I'm afraid they'd stick to me and I'd get them killed, but yeah... I usually head for medkits instead. And now as I think of it, that's really stupid of me, and makes absolutely no sense. What kind of Medic WOULDN'T heal me when I call? And from now on I'll definitely always call for Medics! Help them get the achievement, yes!), and this should be fairly easy to get. At least I always heal everyone in need, I don't stick to just one person unless we're charging.

23. Doctor Assisted Homicide: Assist in killing 20 nemesis.
- Dammit, this would've been so much easier to get back in January when people actually dominated me! I don't really get dominated these days, not as Medic anyhow. I die a lot, but apparently not by the same people, at least not without me getting an assist on them before they can dominate me.
EDIT: And I realised only now that it's possibly assisting in other players' revenge kills, not getting your own revenges. And that makes so much more sense, actually. I'm slow. :nyoro~n:

24. Placebo Effect: Kill 5 enemies in a single life while having your uber-charge ready, but undeployed.
- Oh wow. I've never even killed five enemies in a single life (my record's two, ehh). People are gonna hate Medics when they try to get this. "Alright, I have a charge, I'mma go kill some people now!" "CHROME WE NEED TO GET THIS POINT GET YOUR FULLY CHARGED ASS IN HERE PRONTO - CHROME, THAT IS A PYRO WHAT ARE YOU ... OH FFS." "Hay guise I just respawned lol, let's get that über up so I can try to kill some people!"

26. Intern: Accumulate 7000 heal points in a single life.
- This is going to be another somewhat of a cakewalk. Gravel Pit, RED, good-enough team so that we can hold B, and this should be pretty easy.

27. Specialist: Accumulate 10000 heal points health in a single life.
- If only I could stay alive...

28. Chief of Staff: Accumulate 10 million total heal points.
- HAHAHAHA I HAVE ONE MILLION AND A HALF. I really hope those count towards the achievement.

29. Hypocritical Oath: Kill an enemy spy that you have been healing.
- With my Sixth Spy Sense this should be fairly easy. I want to know that do I have to actually overheal them, or does a quick little heal do the trick?

30. Medical Prevention: Save a falling teammate from dying on impact.
- I'mma just have a friend jump down from Gravel Pit Cap C. Hehe. A Soldier or a Demo, you know, they can shoot themselves until they're veeery low on health, and then they'll jump and I'll just catch them. With the medigun beam, that is.

32. Autopsy Report: Provide an enemy with a freezecam shot of you taunting above their ragdoll.
- I've always wanted to do this! I always forget to taunt ater kills. I've done it ONCE. I was chasing a Scout, who ran into his resupply room, and I fired a crit rocket before the doors closed and I just heard the crit hit and saw a message of having killed the Scout. That's when I taunted. Adding insult to injury, I know how much it sucks to die a feet away from the resupply cabinet (not that it would've helped at all, it was a crit after all...). Evil.

33. FYI I Am A Medic: Use your bonesaw to kill 5 enemy spies who have been calling for "Medic!"
- I love the nod to the Youtube video. But yeah, this is my day job anyhow.

34. Family Practice: Uber-charge ten of your steam community friends.
- I don't even have ten friends on Steam (only eight), but that's actually pretty easily fixed. Circlejerk, I'm looking at you.

35. House Call: Join a game that one of your friends is in and then deploy and uber-charge on him.
- And now I'm looking at Slaverstrike, this is gonna be so easy.

That's a lot of reading.

Anyway, Christmas is indeed coming early this year. I'm still refusing to get excited, because VALVE TIME. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the update comes next week - the earlier the better - but I'm still sceptical. It IS Valve after all.

And here, have a quick Engineer drawing I whipped up at TF2Chan's oekaki board.

A quick observation

I've been playing so much fragging-centered offensive classes that I absolutely suck as a Medic these days. Noticed just now, after I spent Gravel Pit and Dustbowl running around and healing people and being generally horrible at it. I was way better Medic back in January when I was starting to play and was still a paranoid little nooblet Medic, hiding behind my meat shield Heavy and getting absolutely raped by Spies. At least I did my work pretty well back then.

So that does it, I'm going Strictly Medic for the rest of the week. I have to be on my best for the new achievements.

And after that I'm going to have a Stricly Engineer week, because I seem to be a horrible Engie too these days.

And after that I'm learning to play Spy. Seriously. I'm going to try Spy on each map, and I won't give up on it, unless my team starts complaining that I'm useless. I want to play Spy, damn it, but I'm terrible at it, and I always chicken out of actually trying it out more.

And okay, I'm forbidding myself of playing Soldier. I can only play as Soldier if I get completely frustrated (completely frustrated = on the verge of ragequitting) at every other class, or my team has no Soldiers and one is seriously needed. I will tell Slaverstrike that he has to yell at me, call me fat, go into the enemy team and dominate my ass mercilessly if he ever sees me going Soldier.

So, last night

I was looking through my TF2 screenshots and was pretty surprised to see that actually I've become quite a better Soldier during these few months. Of course it would be kinda sad if I hadn't learned anything (apart from rocketjumping), having those 54 hours of playtime as Soldier, but I couldn't actually remember being much worse Soldier than I am now. Not until I saw some scoreboard screenshots taken in the end of January, and remembering that oh yeah, I was the worst Soldier ever before I started getting hang of it in February.

And god did I lol.

Here, this is me as Soldier in 28th of January:


And this is me as Soldier last week:


See any difference? Haha. At least I compensate my (still pretty) insane amount of deaths with actually getting some kills.
That's a pathetic amount of destructions for me, btw, I usually have more than ten when I'm Soldier. I really like to kill them sentries.
Also, I have no idea are those stats any good at all, but I think they're pretty good for me (I'd like to NOT get killed so much, but it would seem that every freaking class crits whenever they fire at me. Especially Scouts and Heavies. Pyros don't have to crit, since they kill me either way, but umm. And I'm suicidal and still making stupid mistakes which get me killed, and that's what proves that I'm not that good a Soldier). And look at it this way: I COULD BE DOING SO MUCH WORSE.

(Oh wow crappy JPEG compression.)

Of teamwork

I've been slipping. Ie. I still seem to babble about games in my other blog, and then don't feel the need to write the same things here as well. I need to be more strict with my own rules, dammit.

But yeah, teamwork. Because I played a game today in Hydro with RED being extremely stacked, which naturally resulted in BLU being steamrolled round after round. I was playing in BLU, because I always play in BLU in Hydro (I still play Pyro in Hydro almost always and I've got used to using all the routes from BLU's perspective). I wasn't too pissed off about the stacking (less so than usually) because I was doing fairly well and I got rather lot of defenses and revenges. And I actually felt like I was for once actually contributing something to my team, as hard as it was when we got mowed down continuously. But at least I was helping to fight them off.
But yeah, spent quite a lot of time dead (you know, kamikaze Pyro), and started to get pissed off at my own team by watching them play.
At one point I was watching how a group of RED people were storming the point, and my team mates were just STANDING there, away from the point. Some of them were shooting (Snipers with their pea shooters...), and some just simply stood. I wanted to grab my mic and scream my head off at them, "GET ON THE FUCKING POINT!" but it really wouldn't have helped, you know, me being dead and all. Jesus Christ. I can understand Soldiers and Demos standing away from the point and spamming their 'nades and rockets at the people standing on the point, but even that won't help as much as actually getting on the point. I always try to get on the point and fire my rockets there, even suiciding to kill them off and stop the capture.
After a while I witnessed another display of wonderful teamwork: I'm spectating a Pyro chasing down a Soldier. Nothing unusual there, except that at the same time there were two RED people standing on our point. Good going there, Pyro, nice to know that frags are apparently all you care about. I can't be the only one to stop whatever it is that I'm doing and turn on my heels if there are people standing on our point. Especially if I'm Pyro: I don't HAVE to chase anyone down, if they're on flames, they usually retreat and won't chase me down if I turn tail.
And lastly I saw people running away when there were people standing on our point. WHAT THE FUCK. I watch the point being capped and my team mates just turning away from it and running. They see people on the point, they hightail. Seriously guys, if they cap the point, it's humiliation time and you're gonna die either way.
We also had three Engineers, and at the start of each round ALL OF THEM placed down their sentries. Then they fought for the metal while oncoming enemies just promptly disposed of the three measly level one sentries and proceeded to capping the point. Jesus Christ, guys, would you think TEAM for once, put down one sentry, build it into a level three one all together in a matter of seconds, and THEN start putting down the other sentries? How fucking hard can it be? But noooo, I need it to be MY sentry, they need to be MY kills, I don't get anything for helping other Engies!
I want to change teams, go Spy and rape them and all their sentries, goddamn.
And how stupid can they be for not to realise that their little level one sentries won't hold? If they won't hold and enemies can push continuously, they won't ever get a chance to put the sentries back up again, and so we have three useless Engineers running around shotguns in hand, and then the point is capped. And they will not get any kills whatsoever. Goddamn.

But yeah, I'm the one to talk, I've been sucking a lot once again. Or that's how I feel, I can be on top of the scoreboard and still feel like I'm doing horrible. I should probably lay off playing as Soldier (I've clocked 54 hours as Soldier, which is kinda creepy. I'm not supposed to play it so much! It's by far my "MPC," Medic coming in second with measly 38 hours).
I found it ironic how a few days ago I was playing Engineer on Dustbowl, we were in Stage Three and defending the last cap. And I was doing horrible. I had a sneaky sentry up (after I had tried to get it up on my usual spot on the ledge on the right side of the cap point and ending up with tiny little sentry pieces flying into every direction every fucking time I tried to put it up. People were screaming at us Engies to get sentries up, but what the fuck I can't get my sentry up if you don't give me some suppressive fire! If that fucking Soldier keeps shooting rockets at me freely from the other side of the bleeding map, I can't get the sentry up! I should've yelled at THEM to keep them suppressed for the ten seconds that I need for getting the sentry up, but I'm a jovial player, and I don't yell at people. But once again: TEAMWORK, PEOPLE!), which went nicely unnoticed by the übered people storming the point. So I get killed by something, and as I'm waiting to respawn, I watch in awe as I completely own the people who just stormed past and tried to get the point. Five kills and two defenses. While I'm DEAD.
That's just about how useful I was that day.

And while we're still somewhat on the topic of teamwork, I have one more example to tell you.
I was playing in Gravel Pit one day. I was attacking, playing as Medic, had a nice Heavy buddy to cling to. We got A, but B was preeetty heavily guarded. Not much sentries, just so much people. There might've been some stacking involved, but anyway. So we're camping in the respawn hallways with the Heavy, waiting for my über, and the Heavy informs everyone that we have an über soon, that everyone should come with us and attack B when the charge is ready. I get the charge, he tells everyone that okay, we're going in, and then we go in.
And there's no one there.
Except for the entire RED team.
You can probably guess how well that ended. (Hint: not very well.)
After a while some guy on my team whines that his team sucks. I check the scoreboard and the guy is there on the bottom half, playing a Scout. Playing a Scout when we're trying to get a point that has incredibly strong defense, yeah, no wonder our team sucks.
But yeah, those who whine the most are usually the ones with the least skill.

This blog undoubtedly proves my point.

We never got B, surprise surprise.

And my computer caused me some serious grief yesterday. I was playing in Dustbowl, and for a change I was doing well, and then the game suddenly crashed, proclaiming some sort of engine error about failing to lock vertex buffer. I connected again, played a game in Gravel Pit and then it was back to Dustbowl, and the game crashed again. Then I went to check Steam's troubleshooting guides and verified my game cache files like they suggested. No defragmentation. I deleted my game folder just in case and then checked how much paged pool memory I was using, just in case. That turned out to be not the problem, as I was using only 80. So I was hoping the verifying would do the trick, and later connected to the server to play some more.
And the game crashed in Dustbowl again.
That's when I simply gave up and went to bed, pissed off as hell. I had no idea what the problem was, I've never gotten any game crashes before this, the GCFs were alright, it's not paged pool memory, and I'm not running any of the anti virus programs that supposedly meddle with Steam (I'm using F-Secure).
And today I started playing, just to see if the problem was still there before starting to send angry emails to Steam's support, and played two hours without any crashes. The problem was gone.
I have NO IDEA what the hell caused the problem, maybe the game was just having a bad day, or something.

And now my friend is playing, so I'll just jump in for a moment and hope for not-stacked teams.

Yes, I'm counting days for Goldrush. Must not get excited yet. Remember Valve Time, Chrome, remember Valve Time.

Dr. Feelgood + Medic = good times.

More custom map experiences, and also more gaming while drunk. It's disturbing how I'm not actually much worse player when I am drunk (when I play as my strongest classes, that is). This time I didn't even get shot to death by my own sentry!
And it's always entertaining to look at all the screenshots afterwards, and not remember doing this or that. Oh, I actually KILLED someone when I was a Scout? Oh I capped the intel twice in one life? That's kinda cool. I capped the intel when I was a Heavy, what the shit?! Goddamn I shotgunned a lot of people when I was an Engineer.
So yeah, was drunk, and actually played as classes I don't usually play as. I was Scout for a pretty long time, I think. Then I wanted to be a slow-ass fat Russian, and played some time as Heavy. Then I even went Demo, and that was a disaster because I can't play as Demo even when I'm sober. Oh dear.

Also had to go Medic at one point when Mötley Crue's Dr Feelgood came up on my playlist, and it was a bit too amusing to pass.
That was kinda horrible, though. "Oh, I have an über, didn't even notice! Let's go then, Scout!"

But yes, customs.

Played on 2fort Classic v2, and that was just horrible. I don't know if it's like the real classic version because (like I said) I haven't played TFC, but nevertheless the map was awful. I didn't do the mistake I did with Classic Badlands, though, and actually paid attention that the actual cap area was on battlements (good girl, you get a cookie for that).
Also, the map's ugly as fuck, but I suppose the map version is not final and the textures are eventually going to be replaced. The map is also confusing as hell because the textures look the same everywhere. Took me a minute to get out of my damn base, even though the map's quite similar to the 2fort I know. At least I hope the textures are going to be replaced, because it's gotta be one of the ugliest maps I've ever seen. Uglier than that horrible Ataraxia, for sure.
And what the fuck's up with not being able to get through the water without suffocating?

Another new one was 2fortified v1, which was quite a lot nicer map. It looked very nice (okay, I really like aesthetically pleasant maps, is that a crime?), but it was pretty confusing too. It's always such a blast to just suddenly bump into enemy intel while exploring places, and then have no idea how the hell to get back to your own base. But yeah, it was one of the nicer customs I've played on, would play on it again (hopefully when I'm not drunk as a duck).

I also played another game on Impact2 and apparently on Shock as well. What I remember from Impact2, is that it's much more fun when there's more people playing (no shit!) and healing Scouts while Dr Feelgood played. And getting dominated by some badass assault Medic and Jesus there's nothing I hate more than getting dominated by meléeing Medics.
And what comes to Shock... I really don't remember anything except being a Medic and staying alive for two consecutive übers. I suppose it didn't last for very long? We even had more people playing, so I should've paid some attention, but I seriously can't remember and I don't even have any screenshots of it (which means that some mod changed the map in the middle of the game, because otherwise I would've had the auto screenshot of final scoreboard).

But yeah, I guess that's it.

Oh it's April already. Goldrush month!

Anyway. Haven't been around, and my misadventures in TF2 can be easily summarised as "lots of sucking." I had a few pretty cool moments, like the epic Engineer cappan gaemz when we were playing in 2fort after a server crash and it was basically four against three, and we had three Engineers (I, and two of my friends). I got my sentry up in ramp room, and then I noticed that one of my friends had just gone and taken the intel.
I thought "I wanna do that too!" and so I started out towards the enemy base. My friend passed me by on the bridge, carrying the briefcase, all "'ello, old chap!" and I continued my perilous journey to the depths of the enemy base.
Well long story short, I also capped the intel, and we regarded it as a THING OF BEAUTY, doing two consecutive captures as Engineers. And then we got our asses properly kicked before we realised to change classes and start taking the game a bit more seriously. It was fun, though, as long as it lasted.

Finally got SOME reason to write, because today I played on some custom maps. I've been sticking to official Valve maps all this time (I have my misgivings about custom maps: no matter what people say, I will think that they suck, without exception), I think CP_Labor is the only custom map I've ever played (and I hate it, stupid linear map). But I've been getting SO tired of both Wells and 2fort, and I honestly would rather play any shitty custom map than the billionth round in Well or 2fort. I'd even play duel_duel2.

So the first map I played on, was called CTF_Impact2. Seemed like a pretty basic CTF map, and I generally dislike CTF. Well, okay, I don't dislike CTF, I just prefer control point maps over it. Or maybe it's because there's only two official CTF maps and I hate them both? Anyway.
Couldn't really experience the map to the fullest, because we were basically playing two on two at that point, and I just concentrated on being a serious thorn in one poor Engineer's flesh, and dominating another equally as poor Soldier.

The second was called Shock, and it was a control point map with two capture points. The second one's locked until the first one's capped, you know the drill. I actually quite liked it, but I'd like to play it with more people. We were going three on three, which was kinda amusing, since the first point is so close to attacking team's respawn, and the second point is VERY close to the defending team's respawn. So the match consisted mostly of lots of standing around doing nothing. :D
I was playing Soldier, because it's the one class I don't have to know the terrain as well as with some other classes (the thing I hate about new maps is that I'm SO LOST at first), and it's kinda pointless being a Medic when you have only two team mates and one of them is an Engineer stuck in defending the last point, so. Apart from the Engineer we had a Heavy.
And the enemies had gone with a Demo-Engineer-Spy line-up, and I had my friend (the Demo) cursing at me through Steam's chat that WE'RE ATTACKING THREE ON THREE AND WTF WE HAVE AN ENGINEER AND A SPY, and I was like yeah, especially the Spy's kinda cute. How the hell did he think he will get away with ANY disguise when we have three people in a team? Oh lawdy. He did backstab me once (and I saw him get the Heavy a couple of times, just before I gibbed him), but I don't have eyes in the back of my head, so.
But yeah, a huge CP map is huge, and three on three got pretty boring after a while, so me and my friend decided to go MELEE ONLY. Too bad our team mates didn't appreciate, and I had the Engineer trying to shotgun me when I ran at my Demo friend with the shovel in hand, and he nailed me with the bottle when I was down to 40 HP. And the next time my team's Heavy kept ruining our nice shovel vs. bottle deathmatch. Phooie.
Well, our teams probably hated us, because BLUs were just trying to cap the last point and would've probably appreciated the help of their very capable Demoman, and RED was trying to defend and while I'm not really good player, a trigger-happy suicidal Soldier on the point wouldn't have hurt, but instead we were just frolicking somewhere in the happy melée land.
Well, I had fun.
But yeah, I want to play on that map again, preferably with more people.

Third map was Ataraxia, another CTF map, and I hated it. With burning passion. So cramped and confusing! And it was somehow ugly. I don't want to talk about it, it was horrible. I totally loved the air vents, and managed to sneak into the enemy's intel room a few times from there, completely unnoticed (and then they started building millions of sentries in there, bastards).

The fourth was Badlands Classic b3e, which is naturally a CTF map. I've never played TFC, so I have no idea how similar it is to the old Badlands, but can I just say this? I'm SO glad the new Badlands is NOTHING like this one. D: The map is SO confusing! It looks very pretty, though. But yeah, it took me several minutes to find to the enemy base (I thought I found it a couple of times, only to realise that it was still my own damn base), and finding the intel was preeetty tricky, even with all the huge signs on the walls. I basically used just one route during the entire game, thankfully enemies never found out, I would've been pretty easy prey.
And then I managed to actually get the intel. I was running towards our base (I was a Pyro), following the "intelligence" signs and ending up where our intel is.
But it won't cap. I'm standing there like wtf why doesn't it cap, and my team's screaming at me "CAP IT! WHAT'S GOING ON, CAP IT ALREADY!" and I'm like oh god what the fuck am I broken. And then one Scout stumbles by and is like FFS CHROME FOLLOW ME, and then leads me out of the pit and back to our respawn and a goddamn different capture area. Facepalm.jpg.
HOW COULD'VE I KNOWN? D: I don't know if it went like that in TFC Badlands!
I was pretty embarrassed, but it was a winning capture, so there was no harm done.

And now I know. And knowing's half the battle.

So, it wasn't that bad a first touch at custom maps, but I'm still looking forward to playing on a TRULY good custom map. We'll see, and I'll keep you up to date.

And now one of my Steam friends is asking me to play with her, so I guess I'll jump in for a moment. I should be sleeping, but I can't say no to her.