Over the last weekend I’ve tried to obtain all the new weapons so I can live up to my journalistic responsibility to you, my dear half dozen readers . This included some idling as well as some good ol’-fashioned achievement whoring, but eventually I’ve got them all together. So now it’s time to offer some first impressions on the new toys Valve has given the Engy with his class update. Short Recap: The Frontier Justice Replaces Shotgun. No regular crits. Mag only holds half the ammo of the (...)

As expected shortly after the 100th wrench was dropped the Engy Update went live! With that the seventh class update was applied, concluding the update round for the last remaining class. Of course the update went live in the middle of the night and I was far too tired to give it a glimpse. Especially since all I could have done was to look at the new maps, since getting my hand on the new weapons was likely to be a more lengthy process (or so I thought). So this morning I took half an (...)

Okay, I admit I was too tired to wait for the 75th wrench to drop and went to bed before the next update news were released. Don’t think I’ve actually missed much. Maybe my still sleepy eyes failed to register a 3rd unlock. All I saw was the introduction of another PL map, Hightower. At least I think it’s another PL map. The respective blog entry managed to be very confusing on that, talking about a new PL map as if they had not already presented one I came to believe was called Upward. I (...)

Very late last night the 50th Wrench was dropped and soon afterward the Engy Update pages revealed the 2nd unlock of this class update. It’s called The Wrangler and replaces the pistol. The Wrangler acts as a remote control for the sentry; with added bonus. While using the Wrangler the sentry no longer acts automatically (comparable to a plane’s autopilot: the human pilot flies the plane or the autopilot, but not both at the same time ). Which already manages to confuse me in regard of (...)

Okay, Ladies and Gentlemen, the wait is (almost) over; the Engy Update is approaching fast. Yesterday the pages for the Engy Update on the blog went live; finally making the update official. Of course the revelation of the pages were preceded by a mystery of actual golden wrenches dropped on a small number of players, a number which slowly increased in the evening. Finally the Engy Update page shed some light into that mystery. Over the next four days 100 people will receive a numbered (...)

Of course this shape looks suspiciously like a wrench. I know I’ve cried wolf before, but it appears the engy update is finally drawing near. In the recent blog Valve has published another comic, dealing once more with the (fictional) history of TeamFortress and the conflict between the Mann-brothers spanning many decades, this time shedding light who three generations of engineers have been involved with it. More backstory is revealed [1], we see glimpses of Saxton Hale and the (...)

So here I was, expecting the Macupdate actually  being the prelude to the engy update. Okay, that assumption was probably quite naïve to begin with. Valve released the game on a new platform, and maybe they were (for once) smart enough not to rush into other things, but instead waited to see how this new branch is doing, if any problems occur or bugs pop up needing fixing. Also that update was released just before E3, so I guess the guys of Valve had other things on their minds as well. (...)

Allow me to go slightly off-topic for a moment ... Valve has introduced Portal 2 on the E3. Not much of a surprise since this was very much expected, though people hoped it would still be released in 2010. Now we are looking at a release date of 2011 (which is generous enough to even work on Valve Time). But looking at the teaser and especially on the in-game videos (some of I’m not sure if we will actually recover in the final game since they could just as easily be proof-of-concept (...)

TF2 can sometimes be a little like Real Life™. There can actually be too much of a good thing. Not to mention too much of a bad thing. And since it’s “too much” even the good thing becomes basically a bad thing, savvy? IMHO that applies very much to the numbers of specific classes used in a TF2 game, because - as indicated above - some classes are either too effective in higher numbers or not effective enough. A very good example for the “too effective"-category are naturally our two (...)

Okay, no new info yesterday. So unless we are all mistaken and the engy update isn’t due yet (let’s face it, just because Valve showed a new shotgun in a movie doesn’t necessarily mean they intend to append the engy update immediately) it would suggest a different time frame for the proceedings as we were used from the last updates. At least the new comic (btw: awesome as ever) on the macupadate pages suggests continuation, so there’s bound to be more. Mayhaps Valve intends to turn all this (...)