The Pyro is one of the best starter classes. The flamethrower can kill relatively easily. It is often said that the mantra of the Pyro is W+M1, which is so true. A newcomer to Team Fortress 2 can do alright with the Pyro with no strategy but with a strategy, the Pyro can be an essential class to any team.
So, down to the meat of the Pyro. His or her, we’re not sure unless there has been some news that I don’t know about, if so comment! His or her main strategy is, ambush. The Pyro’s flamethrower doesn’t have very good range yet it is very powerful. Using flanking routes, a little bit like the Scout can benefit your team immensely. Especially if you have the Backburner which gives you 100% crits if you flame your enemies back, it is extremely important to attack from behind, especially if you need to take down a Heavy.
A more supportive strategy is called spy checking. This is very important when protecting the objective or your Engineers nest. Spy checking involves you puffing or full on flaming your flamethrower in areas that are vulnerable to your team, for example a capture point, the intelligence in CTF, an Engineers nest or even spy checking around a Heavy and his pocket Medic to make sure they don’t get killed when making an important push.
These tips are more for fighting against other players and helping your team mates with your compression blast. The compression blast is a blast of compressed air that can either push enemies back, reflect rockets and other projectiles and extinguish team mates that are on fire. Pushing your enemies back can be extremely helpful, even if you die it’ll give time for other team mates to push the enemies back even more. It is most effective if you push a Medic away from his Heavy. The Backburner uses a lot of fuel when using the compression blast so use it wisely. Extinguishing your team mates is extremely important. I can’t even count the times I have ran circles around a Pyro to try and get his attention to put me out and I die. Extinguish team mates, it makes you more useful and you get points for it.
One last tip, if you are going head to head against a Pyro, keep your distance and get out your shotgun, unless attacking from behind and you have the Backburner or if you catch him off guard, burn him up. It is harder to burn a Pyro because of his/her protective suit.
I have recently been getting into more PC games, partially so I could play with friends and partially because every game developer decided to release their games all at the same time at the end of the year. Anyway, I upgraded my piece of crap computer to a better one, not exceptionally good but pretty good to do what I need it to do, I’m not a PC gamer so I’m not going to shed out ridiculous amounts of money on a computer.
My friend told me that I must get Team Fortress 2 because it’s ‘amazing’. I remember seeing this title in a store a long time ago, probably when it just came out and I thought it looked pretty damn awesome but I never played it until a few weeks ago, and I have to say this is one of the best multiplayer experiences I have ever had. Team Fortress 2 is so much fun despite the high learning curve of each class.
I love the way this game looks. I have never seen a game that looks cartoony and fun yet so amazing and hard. Most of the classes actually take skill to master unlike in COD when anyone can have at least a small amount of success. If you’re one of those douche bags who run around with Ghost, Second Chance and a noob tube then this game might not be for you.
Each class is made up of a primary weapon, a secondary weapon and a melee weapon, some classes have more things, the Engineer has another two spots to create and demolish buildings and the Spy has an extra slot for disguises. Each class is different in it’s own way, they all wield their own weapons. The Soldier has a rocket launcher, shotgun and a shovel, the Scout has a Scattergun (shotgun), a pistol and a baseball bat, the Pyro has a flamethrower, a shotgun and a fire axe, the Demoman has a grenade launcher, don’t worry, it’s not like the noob tubes in Call of Duty, the grenades don’t explode on impact unless they hit someone, a sticky bomb launcher which can be detonated at anytime and a whiskey bottle, the Heavy has a mini gun, a shotgun and his fists, the Engineer has a shotgun, a pistol, a wrench, a PDA to create buildings and another to demolish. The Medic has a syringe gun, a medigun which heals people and a saw. The Sniper has a sniper rifle, a sub machine gun and a sword. Finally, the Spy has a revolver, a sapper which destroys buildings, a knife to backstab and finally a book of disguises.
These are all the vanilla loadouts of the classes, these slots can be change to different weapons, e.g. the Scout can change his secondary to a jar of milk or different energy drinks, the Demoman can have a range of different swords. There are a lot of items that I’m not going to go into because it would take forever.
Even though there is a learning curve on this game, there is a class for everyone. My favourites are the Scout and the Soldier. The Scout is definitely one of the hardest to master along with the Spy. The easiest is the Pyro, you’ll often hear people say W+M1, the mantra of the Pyro. If you play this game you’ll understand.
One thing I love about this game is that it is so balanced, there is nothing in this game that I’ve really gotten worked up about or that’s made me rage quit, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever raged quitted from this game. I have shouted at my monitor because of Spies killing me a lot but then I stop and realise that the Spy class is really hard and either they are too good or I’m not playing right. Obviously Jesus made a really good comment on this game, ‘The moment you start making your vanilla weapons looks bad is the moment you have an unbalanced game.’ This is so true and Team Fortress 2 doesn’t fall into the unbalanced category. I still use the vanilla Scattergun for the Scout, I used the vanilla rocket launcher for the Solider for a long time, I use the vanilla syringe and medigun for the medic.
This game was recently made F2P, you may be called a F2P noob when you start, somehow I didn’t. A lot of people complained that they bought the game the day before it went F2P but to be honest, it’s worth the $10 or £10 or €10. There are a bunch of benefits to upgrading to a premium account, you can trade with other players, get more inventory space, that was the big one for me. I went into the store and found a cheap item that I wanted and bought it, it cost me 74 cents to upgrade my account. I have hardly covered anything in this article, maybe I’ll do another one on each class, discussing strategies and ways to play each class. There’s no reason not to try out this game, it’s free!
My first Call of Duty game was World at War so I started when COD still ran with basic 3, 5 and 7 killstreaks. When MW2 if you sucked nut sack you were left watching kill cams over and over and over again. I wasn’t that great on World at War, I had mixed results in MW2 and I only started to get mostly consistent scores in Black Ops. MW2 was the beginning of the killstreaks, Infinity Ward finally released the potential of the real gamers in the community by allowing them to get killstreaks up to 25 kills. I was very inconsistent in MW2 so I pretty much ran the whole time with 3, 5 and 7. When Black Ops came out the made it so you couldn’t unlock killstreaks with other killstreaks e.g. you couldn’t use your Predator Missile to get a double and unlock your Harrier Strike. Personally I really like the new system, you can only unlock killstreaks with your gun, grenades, melee and equipment. It’s a lot more fair and it doesn’t create ridiculous amounts of death and destruction.
Black Ops might be the most balanced Call of Duty so far but it does have its slight problems. The randomised scoped shots with a sniper is extremely annoying and I don’t even quick scope. If you don’t know what that is, Treyarch made it so for a small amount of time when you first scope in your shot could go anywhere in the hip fire sights to bypass quick scoping. In my opinion they’ve made it more unrealistic. One thing that everyone hates, except for the douches who do this is, stacking up RC-XDs then spamming them, one after the other. I recently had a match where I got killed by the same guy with both his RC-XDs in a row. You’re pretty much guaranteed to get a kill with an RC-XD, maybe 80-90% of the time. Everyone has the period where you use RC-XDs and I pretty much got a kill with nearly every RC-XD I had. Obviously I came to my senses and put 8, 9 and 11 on. I hate RC-XDs and I know people are going to use them, especially low level players but it really annoys me when a prestige 15 player stacks up remote controlled cars filled with explosives and obliterates me on an 8 killstreak. With Hardline all a noob needs to do is get 2 kills! 2 kills! And for bad player who most likely isn’t getting high killstreaks and dying a lot is going to stack up loads of them and just mess the other team up!
Treyarch have done a pretty good job at making the game balanced and fair but if you can spam something so much it makes the player consider stopping playing the game then there is a serious problem. Make RC-XDs like a 5 killstreak or something! At least the stacking will stop a little bit. All I wish for in MW3 is that they keep the balanced game and increase the amount of killstreaks, if I’m having a good day I’ll get blackbird, chopper and dogs in most of my matches. I don’t usually go higher than a 15 killstreak but it would be nice to have the option. I hope Infinity Ward don’t go over the top with the killstreaks like in MW2, not only do they need to keep gun damage balanced but they need to keep the killstreaks balanced, in MW2 you could have Harriers and Pave Low absolutely raping everyone on the server. Another huge thing I would like to see is killstreaks only by weapons etc. If not it’s going to be death and destruction and that can be fun but not when it goes over the top. Keeping the COD currency would be nice, that was widely accepted in Black Ops and I would be pretty pissed off if it were to disappear. More guns would always be nice, especially submachine guns. Maybe it’s just me but most of the subs in Black Ops aren’t that great, the best are probably, AK47u, Mac 11, MPL, PM63 and the Kiparis, there are other good ones but those ones are the ones that are the most consistent for me.
Battlefield 3 will most likely blow MW3 out of the water because all CODs are the same even if MW3 learns from past mistakes. As long as they keep it balanced and fair and try not to underestimate killstreaks to avoid stacking and spamming then it’ll be a better version of the same game they’ve been making for the past 10 years or so.
The Impossible Game isn’t impossible. I have watched videos of people completing it, sadly I haven’t completed it myself. When I first bought the game I spent the better part of 3 hours playing the game and over 400 attempts trying to complete the game. There was a lot of shouting and screaming but after a while I noticed that the thrill disappears eventually but it doesn’t make the game any less boring.
If you explained this game to someone who had never played it or heard of it they would say, ‘Oh, that sounds easy!’ Well it’s not, even though it’s not impossible it’s damn hard. The aim of the game is to complete the level by jumping over spikes and jumping on bouncy blocks to avoid falling into a pit. If… scratch that, when you die you are placed back at the beginning of the level. Easier said than done. The attempt counter at the top seems to make you play it more and more or maybe that’s just me…
The music in this game is incredible, I love the music in this game and it syncs with the game as you progress through the level. It starts off calm and once you get to the harder part of the level the music picks up. The song is called Fire Aura by Kid2Will and I downloaded it straight after playing it.
I was really surprised to find an actual good indie game on the Xbox Live Marketplace, most of them in my experience have restricted so much content that you just don’t if it’s worth buying or most indie games on the Marketplace are just plain bad, I pray for the day when Minecraft comes to console.
I bought this game when it came out and I loved it. Me and my friends would role in a squad raping everyone. We had plans for world domination, we would all have our class that we played as, it was very organised and it worked well. The game is extremely different from COD and if you like first person shooters and you’re getting bored of COD this is a great change. Eventually my friend persuaded me to come back to Modern Warefare 2 because he didn’t like it.
Admittedly, the single player isn’t as good. The storyline lacks the imagination of the Call of Duty series but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. The game itself looks amazing, the landscapes are beautiful. The single player might not be as good as other FPS games but there are definitely parts of the game that you won’t find in any other FPS. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 makes up for the single player with it’s multiplayer. The multiplayer is by far the best online experience I have ever encountered. Sure in Call of Duty there are loads of options and game types but you won’t find the maps, and the cooperation of the players in this game. The game doesn’t focus on kills and deaths, more so on points gathered. I enjoy games like this because you don’t get so frustrated when you die or become a different player when you’re on a massive killstreak. Instead of building up kills you are encouraged to gain points by either repairing vehicles, destroying vehicles, planting bombs, defusing bombs, healing, reviving, giving people ammo etc.
This brings me on to the classes. The multiplayer is divided into four different classes, Assault, Engineer, Medic and Recon. As an Assault your goal is to rush into the battlefield and kill. Killing isn’t everything, dropping ammo packs will also give you points, when another player is low on ammo they can resupply by walking over it. As you may have guessed, you can only use assault rifles as an Assault. As an Enginerr your job is to drive the vehicles. The vehicles being, tanks, quad bikes and helicopters. As a Engineer you can have a gadget, a drill that allows you to repair vehicles and this also gives you points. You can only use sub machine guns as an Engineer. As the Medic, your objective is to heal and revive. Healing works in the exact same way as resupplying as an Assault. Reviving brings people back from the brink of death and can potentially give you a lot of points. The Medic can only use light machine guns. I usually hate LMGs but they are really good in this game. As the Recon you are supposed to take people out to aid your fellow players on the battlefield. In my opinion there are only three good snipers in this game. They are all bolt action, the others have horrible sights and are semi automatic, one is full automatic. As a Recon you can call in mortar strikes and throw motion mines which help your team mates. Sniping in this game is insane. The sniping in this game is like no other. It’s not like in Call of Duty where the snipers are basically used like M14s. You actually have to snipe, you have to think as a sniper and when you get that kill from across the map, it is extremely rewarding.
Another thing that puts this game above others is the use of vehicles. You can drive a range of tanks, helicopters, quad bikes, boats, jet skis and humvees. The vehicles like tanks and helicopters can dominate if put in the right hands but if you aren’t an experienced pilot of gunner you are not going to last in a vehicle. Experience does play a key role when lethal vehicles are involved. Another great thing in this game is the UAVs. Instead of just calling one in, you use a stationary computer to fly it around, call in Hellfire strikes and shoot enemies if you have the right specs.
This game is severely underrated in my opinion and a lot of games are taking credit for things that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 have brought into the gaming world. Homefront for instance the Parrot Drone is pretty much the UAV in Bad Company 2. There is also a version of Conquest and Rush mixed into one game type in Homefront. I don’t know the name because I have no intention of playing Homefront, I haven’t heard great things about it even though I was excited for its release. Conquest in Bad Company 2 is when you capture flags and Rush is when you destroy things called ‘M-COM’ stations and move up the map when two are destroyed and repeat. Homefront act as if these things are new but they aren’t and now Homefront are taking credit for it when Bad Company 2 have already done it.
I have recently started playing this game again and I am loving it. Battlefield 3 is coming out and I am very excited for its release. The online can only get better.
midnightgames 