Team Fortress Tuesday: Love and War Update

I haven't been playing much TF2 in the past few months, because there really hasn't been much new stuff to do. Mann vs. Machine is stale, and there haven't been any new weapons added to the game since 2012.  Sure, there were new maps added, but they really weren't.  They were just made official, they've existed for years beforehand.  All the big updates of the past 18 months have only added hats.  Hats are nice, but they don't make the game more compelling to play.  So, since my computer is old and slow and there's nothing really new for me to accomplish, my play time has definitely decreased as of late.

But finally, after many months, new weapons have been added to the game.  The Love and War Update added 5 new weapons, and it also brought with it a dozen new equipable taunts.  There's also a whole new 15 minute long video, which is pretty good.  Not great, not my favorite TF2 related video, but it's solid.

There were a lot of things in this update, but the biggest were the taunts and the new weapons.  I'm not sure how I stand on the taunts.  I like some of the new ones, but I don't really agree with the fact that you can now do partner and group taunts with the other team.  Which is funny considering how often I just stopped playing the game because some Heavy was sitting in a corner high-fiving.  But before, those moments where you and the enemy would just stop were spontaneous, and the game wasn't built around doing that, so it felt fun.  Now, with this stuff built into the game now, I feel like if I see people conga-ing along, I can't do anything about it, because killing a defenseless person just isn't any fun for me.  If they're not fighting back, it just feels wrong.  So, I don't know about the taunts

As I said, there are five new weapons, and I'll start with the two I care about least.  The Back Scatter is for Scout, it has only four shots loaded and is a bit less accurate, but if you're close and behind an enemy, it does minicrits.  It's okay, but I don't play much Scout.  The Classic is a new Sniper rifle, it lets you charge a shot independent of scoping it, so you can headshot while maintaining full view, but it has to be fully charged to headshot at all, and it does less damage on bodyshots.  It's not really very good, and I really dislike playing Sniper, so I won't be making much use of it.

The B.A.S.E Jumper is for Soldier and Demoman, and it's basically a parachute.  When you're airborne, you deploy it, and you fall less quickly.  You can open and close it as often as you want in the air, which lessens the fact that you're kind of a sitting duck up there.  I haven't actually used it in an actual server, but it seems like a nifty thing, and kind of fun, especially with the next item.

The Air Strike is for Soldier, and it's the item I've used the most.  You start off with three rockets loaded, one less than stock, and those rockets have less splash and less damage that normal.  But, when you get a kill, you can hold one more rocket in your clip, up to a maximum of eight.  And when you're airborne, the rate of fire is significantly increased.  It's so satisfying getting up in the air and launching seven rockets at the enemy, even if those rockets aren't particularly good.  That's the thing with the Air Strike.  It's a ton of fun to play around with, but it's not as good as it sounds.

The Tide Turner is for Demoman, and it's probably the best weapon added.  It gives 25% resistance to explosives and fire, worse than the Chargin' Targe, but it does give you complete control of your charge, and if you get a kill with the charge in any manner, you can charge again instantly.  It's just as fun as the Air Strike, with the added benefit of being somewhat effective.  It's a little less good now that stickies have been reverted, but that's a whole mess that I don't want to get into since the change was reversed.

So, the Love and War Update: good video, not sure about the taunts, decent weapons that aren't incredibly annoying to play against.  Not a bad update.

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My Hike This Weekend

I went for a hike this weekend.  Shocking, I know.  Lots of people go on hikes, I went on one just a couple of weeks ago.  This was no ordinary hike.  My brother needed a 20 mile hike for a particular Eagle-required merit badge, and he couldn't go by himself.  I did the same thing when I was in Boy Scouts, and since I do so much walking anyway, I got to go with him.  There are people out there for whom a 20 mile hike would not present a significant challenge.  People who are in good shape and who work out actively.  People who do marathons and such.  I am not one of those people.

Luckily, the C & O Canal National Historic Park, which is nearby, has a very long and more importantly very flat trail so that we could hike 20 miles straight without turning around or climbing any mountains.  We started at 10:45 AM on what was actually about as good a day for a hike as you could hope.  70 degrees, sunny, no humidity.  And then we walked.  And walked.  And walked some more.  I walk around frequently, and I can go on some long walks.  Covering ten or so miles isn't much of a problem for me.  At about the ten mile mark, I was feeling a bit tired and sore, but nothing too bad.  Unfortunately, ten miles was only halfway.  The second ten miles is the real test.  And boy, do your legs hurt.  We made it though, finishing up the hike at just before 6 PM.  Considering the lunch break we took, we did the 20 miles in just under seven hours, which is about the same pace that I did it the first time.  I think I'm getting better at it, I got enormous blisters the first time, but nothing this time.  I can still feel the soreness in my legs though. 

Was it fun?  Well, I'm not entirely sure.  Does an abundance of pain sound fun?  Not really, but the sense of accomplishment at having done the hike again was nice.  But please, I don't want to do it again.  It's terrible, hiking that far that quickly is brutal.  So, that was my weekend.

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Legend of Korra Season 3 Trailer

I'm a big fan of the Avatar shows, both the original and Legend of Korra, as I wrote about nearly a year ago.  So, I try to pay attention to any news related to the show.  Apparently several episodes were leaked, so a trailer got released.  There's no premiere date, but hopefully it'll be coming soon.  It looks really cool, a lot of airbending going on, which I'm quite curious to learn about.  Seeing as this is one of the few new shows that I watch, I'm looking forward to new episodes.

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Thoughts on Half-Life 2 Episodes

Well, that's it then.  I've played all the main Half-Life games, and now I, just like millions of other
people, get to wait for a game that may never even come.  I really hope that we do get a Half-Life 3, just to complete the story, because there's nothing worse than an unresolved plot, and Episode 2  concludes with a big plot twist.

I enjoyed the Episodes, but I did not like them as much as the full game.  I wanted to consider Episode 1 and 2 as a full, standalone game, but I couldn't do that.  That's too bad, because it would have helped the immersion factor immensely.  You progress through Episode 1 so fast it never has a chance to really suck you into the world.  I got through it in less than four hours, which is about the same amount of time I took to play the original Portal game.  That still managed to be immersive though, because it was very minimalistic, where as Episode 1 is not.  Just as you start to get invested in the game, it's over.

Episode 2 is a bit better, because it's longer.  At just under 6 hours, it is more of a very condensed
game than the first episode.  It has a definite beginning, middle, and end.  Unfortunately, the ending of Episode 2 is basically, "Insert sequel here," as a major character dies and the situation goes from bad to "Oh crap."  Episode 2 was released in 2007.  It is no 2014, and as far as we know, we are no closer to that sequel now then we were seven years ago.  I feel sorry for the people who played Episode 2 back when it was released and have been waiting all this time.  It wouldn't be so bad if the Half-Life games weren't some of the most critically acclaimed video games ever.  But they are, and now, I have to wait for Half-Life 3, just like everyone else.

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Trademarking Pi

Apparently not even mathematical constants are safe from copyright laws.  Someone got a trademark the symbol for pi followed by a period, which is silly to begin with, and is apparently very determined to keep their trademark.  Now, I don't really care about this shirt store that has a bunch of pi shirts, but this entire thing is just baffling.  How could the U.S government give a trademark for that?  Are we going to have issues using the pi symbol in mathematics now because it looks suspiciously similar to this guy's trademark? 

Honestly, this sounds like a made-up story, and it might be yet.  I hope it is.  But I trust that particular news source, and considering all the details, I don't think it is fake.  I think this is only going to apply to shirts, I don't think we'll have to find a new symbol for pi because it got trademarked, but really, that symbol should never have been trademarked in the first place, in any capacity.

On a completely unrelated note, this is 100 posts for this blog.  It may have taken 321 days to get there, but considering there was basically a four month gap of absolutely nothing, and that I've split my content into three different places, it isn't terrible.  Just thought I'd point that out.

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