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.

About L4D, for a change

It sure is a good thing Valve fixed dedicated server searching in L4D. Tried playing a few nights ago, and since I had four friends along, we of course made a lobby to make things a bit easier. I (or Slaver) usually host locally, because our connection's upload rate is pretty okay, and at least my friends hardly ever get any lag, but since the dedicated business was supposed to be fixed (and sometimes Steam decides to kick me while hosting locally, naturally making the server shut down), we tried that.
Did we find a server?
Yes. Once, out of five tries. And we had 170 ping. So matchmaking indeed! Server searching was fucking better before this so-called fix.

And why do people try to invite me to play L4D when I'm in-game? I never really understood what's the point in that. If you see me already playing on a server, what in the world makes you think I'll just jump servers and join your game? I get a lot of invites suddenly, from several different people on my friends list, and for some reason those always get under my skin.
So take note, people: when I play L4D, I usually play with a rather large group of friends (who are people I know irl). So if you want to play with me, drop me a line instead of just throwing a random invite, and I'll see what I can do.

And if there are a bunch of people with "Esa" after their name playing with me, yeah, those are my friends. We decided to start wearing a tag to confuse people (and scare them away in lobby when they join: there are four people in already, all going Infected, and all wearing the same tag after their name. Hehehe) and make it obvious that we know each other and any insults we may fling at each other are not to be taken seriously.
And if you ask, Esa stands for European Space Agency, and yes, we all work there.
(In reality it's just a silly in-joke which really doesn't make any sense in any other language but Finnish. Or, well, imagine replacing a part of any compound word - or in severe cases, any noun - with a very common male name, eg. John. There you go).
And don't mistake us for a clan of any kind.

And while we're on the topic of L4D, I wanna write about another thing. If you, for any reason at all, go AFK during game, even for a moment, TAKE A FUCKING BREAK FROM THE MENU. The goddamn idle mode is there for a reason. Because what happens if, during a versus match, you go to a toilet, or where the fuck ever, and just leave your character standing there? Yeah, we get slaughtered, that's what. Because we have to
a) Wait and protect you in one place, making all of us easy prey for the enemy team, and Director of course thinks that we're bored, and marches out a few hordes to make us feel alive again,
or
b) Run for it and leave you, which gets all of us killed. Because a smart enemy team knows that you, being AFK, are not a threat, and thus goes after US instead of YOU. Because we're one man short, you can't help us, and after we've been overwhelmed and incapped, you're the easy target.
Next time you go AFK without going idle, we're going to votekick your sorry ass that fucking instant.

And why don't people stay together in versus? I hate it when our game falls apart just because one man stays behind for some reason, and then gets assaulted by a Smoker or a Hunter, and we have to go back for them, and then we lose. I'd love to leave them to die because it was their own mistake to stay behind, especially when we make it very clear at the start of the match that we're going to stay together and keep moving, but you know how it goes, it's a team game.
If you're going to heal, SAY SO, so we know to hang back. Don't go after Smokers or Hunters you saw behind us in the distance, just inform the team of the threat and KEEP MOVING. The infected have to keep moving too in order to catch us, so a Smoker hanging back won't be doing much if we ignore him. If YOU go after him, by yourself, you're a fucking idiot, because the Smoker sees you, you probably won't see him or his tongue, and then you're in trouble, and fucking things up for the rest of us. And if you need to do anything that requires you to be away from the keyboard for more than five fucking seconds, go idle. For the love of god, it's not that hard.

And here, have a GTA-style Francis (who's incidentally my favourite Survivor):



I've also been getting back to TF2 and I would appear to be a kickass Pyro (my brand new most kills record is 20) while I've nearly completely lost my touch with both Soldier and Demo (although it is debatable if I ever really HAD any touch with either, oh well).

Oh wtf again...

My final word on the Pyro update is that Pyro is so overpowered that it's not even funny anymore.

Because this is so wrong, on so many levels:



And I don't even have any of the unlockables yet (and I'll never even use the Flare Gun: I love the shotgun too much)! Needless to say, I also made a new max points record for Pyro. It's 21 now. Used to be 11.

Yes, I am actually whining about being good at something. That's a new one.

Pyros! Every-fucking-where!

Okay, the only way to stay alive on TF2 now is to be a Pyro. At least that's the only way I can stay alive right now. Fight fire with fire, you know.

And I can't believe how much I actually nerd RAGE'd after realizing what Valve had done to the Soldier. I read the update message, "Removed Soldier's 40% damage reduction from his own rockets. Does not affect rocket jumps." but I didn't even realise (or think about) what it actually meant until I connected to the server today, saw the amount of Pyros and went Soldier. Because hey, at least before the update I was learning to kill them.
And guess what?
Nearly all my deaths? Suicides. If it wasn't some Pyro chucking my rockets back at my face (thank god nearly everyone is using the Backburner already, but more on that later), it was just me, playing like I've used to, and getting owned. Fuck, I'm so used to just shooting at my feet when a Pyro or a Scout or anything gets too close for comfort, and taking some damage but walking out alive. Now if I do that, I die. Not even mentioning the times my aim is a bit off and I shoot the goddamn wall in front of me and get a crit rocket in the face. Now such mistakes are an instant kill. It will probably take me forever to learn to jump whenever I shoot a rocket close enough to get damaged by it too (it apparently counts as a rocket jump then, I had to do some testing by shooting a wall in front of me while jumping, and I got the same old 40% reduction instead of the full damage of about 80 HP).
And imagine how much that must suck from the viewpoint of the player who was chasing me? They get NO points from chasing me down and actually making me suicide - which is not even their fault, but my own. I think that's kinda horrible. I know, because later on I was playing as a Pyro and a friend was a Soldier in the enemy team, and he was mercilessly dominating me. And after I had tried to kill him a dozen times, always getting owned, I finally managed to kill his Medic and chase him down and fuck me dead: he suicided. And I almost banged my head against the keyboard, because so much for my long-pursued revenge.
So at least Valve needs to do something about that, because it's downright unfair.
And if Demomen don't get the same fucking nerf I'm going to rage some more. Fucking unfair.

Okay, yeah, no one's going to agree with me on this, seeing how everyone else thinks that the Soldier is overpowered, the easy class that doesn't need any skill to be good at, and that it needs to be nerfed hardcore. It took me actually ages to learn to play as Soldier. Maybe it's easy to pick up by someone who has years and years of FPS experience, and be good at it, but I had to learn. And I've had fucking great times playing as Soldier. And it's not the easy class for me.
But yeah, Chrome vs. rest of the TF2 community. Valve did what they thought is for the best, and I want to understand, but it's pretty hard when one of my favourite classes is now nearly unplayable for me. And yeah, I feel quite horrible for whining about this, especially since I've been all "I wish I knew how to quit you!" with Soldier for the longest time. But yeah, it's a complete love/hate relationship. And it doesn't matter what I say, I have over 80 hours as a Soldier, I find myself going Soldier even when I think I shouldn't, so on some level I really must like playing as Soldier.
So I can still feel upset because of it, can't I?

But yeah, Pyros.
I'll just come out and say that Backburner is overpowered as hell. I mean ffs guaranteed crits from the back and +50 HP increase?! I know the tradeoff is supposed to be the lack of the airburst (which, I admit, is fucking awesome, and makes me think twice about starting to use the Backburner), but because the airburst is new and I rarely even remember to use it, Backburner just seems like an upgraded OLD flamethrower that has no drawbacks.
They could do without the +50 HP increase, for real. Both Slaverstrike and my little brother who played as Snipers today noticed that Pyros are fucking impossible to kill if they have the Backburner equipped. 225 HP is just insane. And when I did play Soldier, I am so used to juggling them into the air once, and the second rocket usually killed them. Backburner-equipped Pyros? Fucking unstoppable. Add a Medic and they're seriously invincible. So I needed to juggle them twice, which meant shooting at my freaking feet twice, which usually meant a suicide.
Flare gun seemed to correspond better as an alternative to the shotgun, and I actually didn't have anyone kill me with the Axtinguisher, so I can't really say anything about that. Only the Backburner seems a bit unbalanced, but, uh, I'll probably love it once I get my greedy little hands on it. Maybe I'll become a career Pyro. I mean, I was doing pretty fine without the changes (was I the only one? I never really thought the Pyro was underpowered, even against Soldiers. I died a lot, but once I adapted the kamikaze mentality - that I ambush and I might die, but it's okay - I came by pretty well as a Pyro. Maybe I was the only one.)

At least I was doing pretty well as a Pyro today.



And that was the first time in ages I actually had some fun on CP Well. (Oh! That reminds me, I need to talk about CTF Well once I've said everything I need to about this Pyro stuff!)
I even got some achievements. I have Camp Fire, I Fry (and here I was thinking that there would be no Spies around, what with Pyros having a field day...), Burn Ward, Next of Kindling, Hot on Your Heels and Second Degree Burn. I'm also 13/15 through Fire and Forget, 8/10 through Spontaneous Combustion and Trailblazer, 15/50 through Makin' Bacon (and here I was thinking it would take forever... I would have at least 20 Heavies in this, but more on that in a moment...), about 25/50 through Arsonist (ahihi I dominated one Engineer, and he provided me with at least eight destructions: poor thing had always put a teleporter, dispenser and a level one sentry down when I came around the corner, and the whole little nest succumbed to my flames like a house made of paper), 250 through Firefighter/Fire Chief (...I was on a roll), and some others, but they're not yet worth a mention.
I also spent SO LONG on CTF Well trying to sneak behind enemy Snipers and use the Hadouken taunt on them (whoops! Chrome, acting like an idiot? On YOUR server? It's apparently more likely than you think!), but stupid friendly Snipers always managed to kill them right when I was behind them, readying my shotgun. Damn stupid Snipers!
And in one evening, I learned to use the shotgun. Seriously, I probably killed more people with the shotgun today than I've killed in those 30 hours I had as a Pyro. No, really. Too bad that most of those were fellow Pyros (which I used to be very weak against), so I don't have much progress on Combined Fire yet.
And yeah, about Makin' Bacon... I was kinda going crazy on Badlands. I think I killed about eight Heavies with the axe. I imagine them being beyond pissed: one crazy Pyro kept just ambushing them from behind and axing them to death. I even critted ridiculously often against them. But damn it, Heavies are so much easier to kill with the axe than the flamethrower! Usually they don't even have time to turn around before they're dead meat.
And then I realised that the achievement is named "Makin' Bacon" because I have to kill 50 Heavies with the flamethrower, and went aww dammit. At least I had lots of fun. And I imagine my Medic was having fun as well, following me around while I melée-killed Heavies (Medics liked me today).
Too bad that my axe kills record remained as two, I didn't get Lumberjack.

And finally, the regular flamethrower's new airburst. The best thing ever. It took me ages to remember even trying to use it, and luckily I remembered it just when an übered enemy Pyro was rushing at me. One poof, and flying they went. Another poof, and flying they went again. Goddamn, who seriously even needs Soldiers anymore: Pyros do juggling too these days.
Then I once again forgot to entire thing until I saw a crit rocket heading towards me. One poof, and the rocket chenged colours and I couldn't stop going FUCK YEAH THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER! when I saw the crit hit someone in the distance. Ahihihi. I didn't actually kill anyone with returned rockets although I did it a few times after that (I even started to remember using it after a while), but it's always a blast to see the crit rocket changing colours and directions and at least hitting something. I blasted people away from control points and the bombcart in Gold Rush. I saw a Medic/anyone combo approaching and blasted them once before hightailing and trying to get behind them.
I got killed once with a bounced grenade, though. It sucked, haha.

Oh! Yeah! CTF Well! Is actually fun now! I was really surprised when I saw the changes to it, and I was having a blast playing there! The new central area of the map is AWESOME, and the reduced size makes it easier to defend AND attack. I have to say that it's easily much more fun than 2fort has ever been, seeing that 2fort turns into an insane turtling fest nearly always and on Well there was this INSANE battling going on near the central area nearly all the time, because both teams tried to get control of it in order to get easier access to the enemy base.
Or then I'm just so happy that it's almost a whole new map and you probably know how much I love those.

That's about it for now, I think.
And yeah, I'll be playing as Pyro until there won't be as many around as there are now. And until I get over the Soldier nerf, pick it up again and learn to jump whenever I fire a rocket. Dammit, Valve...

Oh yeah! I also wish they would change the Medic achievements to correspond to the Pyro pack, and the Milestones would come at 10, 15 and 20. Because I'm slowly getting pretty sick of still being two achievements away from the Kritzkrieg, and I still refuse to farm any of them. My pride, it is my downfall.
Seeing that the Medic achievements are so much harder than the Pyro ones. Besides, everyone has the Kritzkrieg and Übersaw already, so it would be just me, har har.

And I fucking hope Soldier gets the next unlockables and achievements. Soldier needs some love after all that nerfing.

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.

<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.