Telefragging!

Well, I've been playing Team Fortress 2 for a year now, and as if to commemorate the occasion, something that's never happened to me before, happened today:



Yeah, a telefrag. I dunno if the poor enemy Engie was trying to melee it or something, all I know is that I killed him with my teleporter.
I've always wanted to do that.

And I'm seriously starting to love playing as the Scout. I've enjoyed playing on Turbine (which I previously regarded as completely shitty map), harassing enemies by being all over the place and snagging the intel while everyone was too busy handling the übered Heavy/Medic combo storming in and drawing sentry fire.

Please, dear Valve, give L4D a rest and update TF2 for a change.

I've also played lots of custom Payload maps lately (a Finnish server I find myself playing on these days has several PL customs in rotation) and I'm completely enamoured with both Half-Acre and Mill. Mill especially is wonderful, it's pretty well balanced throughout (although the first stage's last cap can easily get locked down by Engineers, BLU has a bit of a disadvantage because it's hard to form pushes through routes other than the one following the cart tracks) and very easy to look at. I love playing as Soldier and Demo there.
Payload version of Dustbowl is also great, although Demomen can lock the entire first stage down and it usually gets pretty ridiculous with both sides just chucking grenades at each other. I don't think I've ever even played on third stage.
And then again I fucking hate Great Heights (funny that it's got pretty high scores in FPSBanana), because the design is awful. RED has ridiculous advantage through the entire map from start to finish, starting with the horrible design of BLU spawn exits right at the start of the map. And I hate it that there's no collision on the edges of the map, but that might be just me, since Slaver finds nothing wrong with it (he hates the map too, ftr).
The first time I saw second stage I found it admirable that someone had actually used some water (there's this water part in the map, you have to actually escort the cart through the water, which I think is a pretty interesting idea in theory) and was then horribly disappointed because it doesn't work in practice at all. It just gets ridiculously spammy since you can't see into the water OR out of the water. It's a tedious spot in which neither of the teams know what's really happening. It might work if pulled off differently, it's just ... well, personally, and from the viewpoint of someone who has actually done some map designing before, I think the design is sloppy at best. Some great ideas here and there, they just haven't been pulled off very well. I'm not saying that I can do better, we'll just have to see about that. Haha.
So I just usually disconnect when Great Heights comes along, or decide to be an annoying nade-spamming Demo.
I also kinda like CP Freight. It's not that great, it's just ... well, it's like Fastlane. I don't know what makes it so fun to play, I just like playing a game or two there every once in a while.

Speaking of maps, me and Slaver are probably starting to work on our own custom TF2 CP map any day now. My PC can finally run Hammer without choking and dying, so all we gotta do now is sit down and brainstorm the initial design down.

Ahhh and why do I always forget to write about the things that I should? I played the F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin demo a couple of days ago. It was pretty fun, although I found the controls a bit jarring and they still haven't gotten rid of the very basic problem that troubled the first game: it's too goddamned linear. First they spook you a little, then you shoot some bad guys, and then it's back to spooking, repeat ad nauseum. I was hoping the demo would prove that they'd gotten over that, but unfortunately it didn't really seem so.
It scared me a lot, though: the neverending ghost hallway almost gave me several heart attacks, and Slaver actually scared the crap outta me by making some noise with his door totally unexpectedly right in the middle of the intensive spooking part. Fuuuuuck I nearly died.
But I love the sound design! It really crates a creepy atmosphere and while it might seem a bit cluttered every now and then with the music and effects and your character's heartbeats or panting, it just adds to the feeling of urgency and anxiety. I think it's rather brilliant.
And the water effects look really nice!
But the goddamned mecha battle at the end of the demo? It was SO OUT THERE and unexpected I didn't know if I should laugh or facepalm or like it or hate it. It was ridiculous, yet somehow brilliant. I was just running at the bad guys, wondering whether I can STEP ON THEM and SQUASH THEM. I never found out because they died of bullets first.
I don't think I'll buy the game next month (the demo wasn't that much fun), but we'll see, since I really liked the first F.E.A.R. It was a chilling gaming experience even though it was painfully linear, and the action was lots of fun.

Celebrations!

There was a huge Left 4 Dead update just now and I can't stop feeling happy about it! So many changes to versus, Valve addressed basically all the problems I had with it, namely:

- Tank spawns at the same % through the map for both teams in versus mode

Hunter
- Easier to pounce a Survivor who is meleeing

Smoker
- Smoker now has to be killed or the tongue destroyed for the tongue to break
- Tongue attacks that fail to paralyze or hang a Survivor will use the shorter ability delay timer
- Fixed case where you could point at a Survivor but not register a tongue hit
- Smoker tongue does damage every second while dragging paralyzed Survivors

Tank
- Reduced autoshotgun damage against Tanks

So much for unfair Tanks! So much for getting frustrated at continuous meleeing as Hunter! So much for hating to play as the Smoker! I always hated being the Smoker, because I couldn't seem to be able to do SHIT as one. The tongue targeting was horrible, even if the aim indicator was red and the survivor in plain view, I couldn't score a hit. And if the drag failed, it was a bitch having to wait the minute or so for the attack to recharge and trying to change vantage points in plain sight. Dragging survivors long distances felt pointless at times since there was no damage until the drag was complete. Not even mentioning how frustrating the goddamn melee got. All that, fixed!
And autoshotgun was goddamn imbalanced GOD TIER against Tanks: they were dead in a course of seconds if you just ran behind them and unloaded a few clips into their oblivious backs from point-blank range. Yeah. I know it because I used to do it a lot in finales. The assault rifle is my weapon of choice, but whenever there was a Tank coming (and no one had a molotov) I changed to autoshotty and ran after Tanks while they were chasing some other team member. Yeah.

Too bad that I'm leaving for a family vacation today, and won't be able to play and enjoy the changes until some time next week.
Yeah, I would much rather stay at home playing videogames than go to Rome.

Kidding. I'll be off then.

P.S.: We finally completed two campaigns on expert. No achievements, though. Stupid cheat-proof achievements, we even restarted the campaigns once so that everyone saw the intro, but nooo, no one got Zombicidal Maniac or any progress to What Are You Trying to Prove. Sucks. But at least we did it once, we can surely do it again. We even completed Death Toll without restarting even once. That was pretty impressive.

Insert a witty title here

Well, there's always the first time for everything, I guess. I was just playing a match of L4D with a bunch of my Esa friends, when some random guy playing with us asked if we were up for a friendly clan match after the game.
Well, I, for one, couldn't stop laughing at that, although it's understandable to mistake us for a clan. We do wear a tag after all.
So we told him that we're not actually a clan, but if they really want to, we might be up for a game. Too bad only Cedox, Slaverstrike and I were actually online and willing to play, so in he end we had mixed teams with the guys from the other clan.
And I have to say it was one of best, if not THE best game of L4D I've ever played with complete strangers. No one did anything stupid (and no one whined about anything!), the teamwork was excellent on both teams, and the teams were evenly matched (my team won with a hundred points or so in the end). I had lots of fun! Now I'm hoping they would like to play another game some other time, so that we may even get a full Esa team going. Which shouldn't be difficult since there are at least nine or ten Esas at the moment (dammit we could even START a clan, we definitely have enough players, and I don't think we're even that bad. Well, we still can't seem to finish campaigns on expert, so we do fail a bit, haha).
So much for my slight prejudice for clan players, haha.

So, Esas played an unofficial friendly clan match. That's pretty ... far out.

Left 4 Dead is still awesome, although I'm starting to have a serious beef with the melee defense in versus. It needs to be nerfed in one way or the other, I think it would be enough to make it so that it doesn't do damage. Because I'm really fucking sick of trying to jump people as a Hunter, and just getting shoved around a few times and dying FROM IT. And I think it's a perfectly good defensive measure, I mean, it doesn't piss me off to get shoved off, since it's my own damn fault for being obvious enough trying to jump someone when they see me coming, but dying from it? That's too much.
Not even mentioning the infamous corner defenses. Making the melee NOT do damage would reduce the shoving to a mere temporary solution, for clearing way or fending off attacks, which I think it's supposed to be. Now it's the perfect attack against hordes and special infected since they take damage and eventually die if they're being pushed around long enough. I know, we just did it in No Mercy's fourth chapter, during the elevator faceoff. It's lame, I felt bad for doing it, but at least now I know how fucking impossible such defense it is to break, and I know not to do it anymore. It takes the fun out of the game (since I don't really care about winning as much as I care about playing a fair game and having fun). Slaver was cursing at me from his room after we did it, telling me we're complete fucking assholes for doing that shit. Yeah, I know.
Another problem I think should be addressed at some point, is the spawning of Tanks in versus. Because it's fucking unfair when one team gets the tank right at the beginning of the map, and the other team by the end of it. And since Tank IS such a huge tideturner (though it naturally depends on player skills and teamwork too), and if the teams are evenly matched, or the other team is clearly steamrolling, it's very, very unfair if the other team gets the Tank right away. So maybe synchronize the spawning in some way? I don't know. And no, they shouldn't come in the very same place for both teams, because that's unfair too since the other team can then expect it, but ... I don't know. I just think something must be done. I'm tired of hearing the whining it causes, and I'm tired of feeling cheated on by it.

I haven't been writing here for a while, I don't exactly know why. I've been playing lots of Fallout (clocked over 100 hours with Gabrielle, and still there's so much to do! Also started another game with another character, who strives to be good instead of ending up as the Scourge of Humanity). Then I had this irresistible urge to play Kingdom Hearts 2 (I know!) and spent 30 hours with a PS2 controller glued to my hands. And say what you want, but I like that game! It's fun to play.
I also bought Bioshock from the Steam Christmas sale (only five euros for a game like that was almost ridiculous! I had to get it), and I should play that one too.

And I'm finally getting back to playing Team Fortress 2 after a few months of hardly playing it at all. And I've been playing as a Sniper. Which is pretty ... yeah. I'm pretty bad at it, but at least I've gotten a lot better! I came very close to breaking the damage record my little brother did back in the day, and I was even an MVP the other day! That was pretty unbelievable, but you'll understand once I tell you that the enemy team had about four Snipers, and all of them were amusingly bad. I had three of them aiming at me in a nice line, and I headshot all of them one by one, so yeah. They were horrible. And thanks to them, I got enough points in one round to be an MVP. I often get owned by enemy Snipers, but every now and then there's a Sniper who's even worse than I am, and I can usually get a domination on them.

I've also gone from Chrome to being Kromi, which is basically the same thing. Since kromi means chrome in Finnish. And at least there are not that many Kromis running around (not that anyone can mistake me for someone else anymore since I wear a tag these days. Dammit, and it wasn't even a long ago I ranted about not wanting to wear a tag. Oh how fickle I am).
Also it's pretty funny when people pronounce it in English.
Where does the nick Chrome come from anyhow? You see, back in last January when I was considering starting to play TF2, I was actually horrified of playing with strangers, and embarrassed because I had never played an online FPS before. So instead of using the nick I usually go by (Katastrophe), I wanted a new nick so that no one would know it's actually me. Yeah, lol. Zeromancer's Chrome Bitch was one of my favourite songs back then, so I figured that it was a good as name as any (and for the first few days I went by the whole title, dropping the Bitch at some point). And I was planning to go back to Katastrophe once I got comfortable enough with the game. Well, I never did, since Chrome kinda grew on me.

Oh yeah, I'm an obsessive-compulsive screenshot-taker in Fallout 3, so in case you're interested about the first part of Gabrielle's great journey in the Capitol Wasteland, you can read it here. I have another part coming up, since that just basically covers the main quest, and I've had many silly adventures after that.