Montana Fragfest

While most of us were expecting to see the fourth installment of the Sniper Update today, Vavle pulled a dirty move and announced that we were actually getting The Spy Update this cycle.

The Dead Ringer Spy Watch

The have brought back the feign death ability from Team Fortress Classic with the Dead Ringer Spy watch. What this watch does is feign death when you are hit with a body shot, leaving a fake dead body on the ground and cloaking you for 8 seconds.

While it’s great to see the feign death ability come back, I just don’t see a large amount of practicailty of it.

The Cloak and Dagger Spy Watch

Not really clear if this is an unlockable or just a replacement of the regular spy watch, but it allows the a cloaked spy to stop and recharge their cloak. As long as they stand still their cloak will recharge.

This will make quite the change for spys, allowing them to basically remain permanatly cloaked throuhout an enemies’ base.

Valve release part 3 of the Sniper update and the new weapon is: The Razorback. What does the Razorback do you ask? It shocks the hell out of spys who stab you with it on (also in the process heating up their knives for a bit making then unable to stab). It’s downsides? Slows you down, destroys itself when shocking a spy, and I’m assuming will take the place of either your kukri or your submachine gun.

I think it’s useful, but not useful enough to give up a gun or melee weapon. What are your guys’ thoughts?

The second installment of the sniper update came today. It’s addition? A new gameplay type. Basically a payload cart race, which sounds interesting. They also dropped two new arena maps (boooooooring). Check out the update page for the specifics, tomorrow’s reveal should be MUCH more interesting.

Those crazy TF2 folks at Valve have sprung upon us The Sniper Update by revealing a sniper unlock: The Huntsman. Sounds like the huntsman will be similar to the Sniper Rifle (charging shot, headshot are crits) but has the ability to pin them to the wall if you don’t hit the head. The downside will probably be that the projectile (an arrow, duh) will probably have a noticeable speed and arc.

Should be exciting, although the fallout from the scout update has barely susbsided and I still don’t have that damn Sandman.

Tell you what, I’ve been a fan of the Battlefield series for a long time. Didn’t play much 1942, but I’ve played the HELL out of Battlefield 2 and loved every minute of it. As you all may know, I also happen to love Team Fortress 2. These reasons are why I was so excited to hear about Battlefield Heroes. With the announcement of an expanded public beta yesterday, I couldn’t help but sign myself up and give it a review.

The Good

The game look great. Very stylized (like Team Fortress 2), good sounds, great models. I like the “gain points to buy new items” aspect, because it encourages players to play consistently to buy and keep better weapons. Besides the pilot there are two extra seats on planes, and by seats I mean you sit on the wing and shoot at people.

The Bad

The game has no focus. The loss of the mini map makes you feel like you are just one guy running around a field. The weapons dont’ feel like they do damage (except to you, of course), and you feel thrown into a game with no teamwork whatsoever. My favorite ability in the Battlefield games was the ability of teammates to spot enemies for you. They have removed this from Battlefield Heroes and without this it is VERY hard to find snipers (and trust me one good sniper can just wreck a spawn) or let your pilots know where enemy planes are. There is also no voice chat or commander, which makes it TERRIBLY difficult to coordinate a team.

The vehicles are TERRIBLE. When flying a plane you have no clue where the other planes are and no seeming way to gain an advantage on them. The tanks just seem silly and without the mini gun for the driver there seems to be no good way to kill infantry with it.

The sounds get annoying QUICK. They tried to make the sounds as cartoony as possible, but I can only hear the sad trombone sound (only much higher pitched) so many times before I want to choke myself with my mouse cable.

The Ugly

As it stands right now, I would pass on this game. It just feels too disconnected. There is no teamwork and therefore it’s just another run around and shoot things, only this time you are stuck in a cartoon.