Montana Fragfest

The new Team Fortress 2 update focused on the pyro is the latest in Valve’s series of updates that ruin the game for a good month or so, but then the level of annoyance will slowly taper off. Allow me to brief over some of the bigger changes brought in by the new patch.

The Air Blast

The air blast is a new feature added to the default flamethrower of the pyro. It basically uses 25 ammo to create a short range blast of air the pushes things away. This is a great new addition to the game, because it allows you not only to blast away enemies, but projectile weapons as well. This makes the spy a much more potent defender, because not only can he burn up spies running around your base, but also blast away stickies that a demoman is launching at your sentries. When on offense the air blast is also useful, because you can shoo away enemies coming in close to get just a little bit of distance between you. This works especially well when a medic pops their uber on a teammate. With a couple well placed air blasts, your medic can lose his medigun lock on his target and your team can then help you finish off his teammate then mop up the medic when the uber runs out. You also can air blast rockets, flares, and demoman grenades BACK AT the attacker. Crit rockets are now not such a problem.

Achievements

The pyro update also brought into the game some new achievements, as well as more laxed requirements on getting weapon unlocks with those achievements. The new pyro achievements seem much more “normal” than the medic ones, in that the pyro achievements are much more likely to occur in the normal course of being a pyro. For example, one good achievement is getting a kill by air blasting a crit rocket back at the player who launched it resulting in a kill. Pretty clever and with the new air blast it is an achievement that one would expect a pyro to get in the normal playing experience. This update also lowered the amount of achievements required to get unlocks for both the pyro and the medic, which is nice. It allows the player more of a chance of getting an unlock during normal play, not only through achievement grinding.

Unlocks

The new update brought three new unlocks for the pyro. The axtinguisher, the backburner, and the flare gun. The first unlock is the flare gun which replaces the shotgun. This little popgun shoots a tiny flare out that will ignite enemy players. While no where near as powerful as the shotgun, but it can be a great way to distract some of the lower health classes. It takes some getting used to, as it does arc with gravity and fly somewhat inaccurately, but if you can get it down it can be pretty fun. I’ll often try to use it to set snipers on fire and get them running back to health so i can run in the open without getting slammed with a headshot. The backburner is a replacement for the regular flamethrower that gives you 50 extra health, critical hits when you flame someone in the back, but removes the air blast ability. This weapon gives the pyro more health than a soldier PLUS critical hits on the back! This weapon is great for defense, because you can sneak around to the front of your base and then flank enemies with no problems. Hit them in the back and it’s a sure bet they won’t live long. This weapon is honestly pretty powerful, and I foresee valve altering it slightly in the near future. The last unlock is the axtinguisher. This is a replacement for the normal fire axe and it gives you critical hits to enemies that are on fire, but does significantly less damage to those who aren’t. This weapon is a good for setting someone one fire while they are running towards you and then whipping out the melee when they are up close and personal. Overall, like the medic unlocks, the pyro unlocks do a great job of altering HOW you play the pyro, not significantly altering the way the game is played. It just gives you more options on how to play the class, and doesn’t give the pyro a significant advantage (well the backburner is powerful, it’s not god-like so I’ll let it slide).

New Maps

ctf_turbine

A CTF map inside a large industrial compound. It’s clean and straightforward, making it easy to learn, but its well balanced layout ensures there are still a wide variety of strategic choices for teams to make, and for individual classes to shine. Competitive teams and players have already popularized this one.

This is a capture the flag map with large open areas and a couple sneaky back-door entrances to the intelligence. Overall this map is fun, I don’t personally like it (it just looks rather bland to me) but it allows for some pretty bloody battles in the middle turbine room where everyone seems to meet up with one another.

cp_fastlane

A control point map with five points, in the style of Badlands. Its symmetrical layout provides for high-speed and well balanced gameplay, while the multiple indoor routes, connected to larger outdoor arenas, provide a wide set of interesting and varied combat spaces. The arena-style control points require solid teamwork to capture and hold.

This map is fun and fast paced, although I haven’t played it much so I haven’t made a super-informed decision.

Overall

Overall, I think valve did another great job on this update. They are making the game fresh and interesting, without making big sweeping changes that might anger the community. If you are itching to play with this patch, you can always join up on the Montana Fragfest TF2 Server and own it up with us!

Editors note: A Scout’s Tale for this week will be posted on Friday, June 4th.

Tags: axtinguisher, backburner, cp_fastlane, ctf_turbine, flamethrower, medic, pyro, tf2

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Team Fortress 2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.