All posts tagged Engineer

At long last, Valve has finally delivered the promised Team Fortress 2 Engineer class update!

After slogging through months of other less interesting updates like the Steam port to Mac and Valve's horribly disappointing E3 "surprise" (Portal 2 on PlayStation 3... yawn), the addition of Engineer achievements and unique class weapons is a breath of fresh air. It's the patch that fans have been clamoring for since the inception of class updates for TF2, and it looks like Valve's lost no steam (pun intended!) in providing unique, fun, and rewarding additions to the game.

In total, the new update offers Engineers a new gun, two new melee weapons, a new sentry gun, a remote for sentry guns, and the ability to move placed sentry guns. Additionally included are four maps and the requisite slew of Engineer-oriented achievements.

I'm most excited about the ability to move around already-placed turrets, as well as the sentry remote control. After building a sentry gun and upgrading it to the highest level, it stinks to have to destroy it just to place another in a more active part of the map as the action moves around. Now, you don't have to do this - you just have to be careful when you pick it up and move it, since dying while carrying the packed-up sentry will cause it to be destroyed instantly.

Controlling turrets remotely is also a great addition. Though it takes the slot of your pistol to use the remote control (dubbed the Wrangler), it can be invaluable in helping to keep your construction alive while you run off to do other things. The sentry goes offline for a few seconds when you switch back to controlling your Engineer, but this is only a minor annoyance.

You can read about the rest of the items and maps in more detail at the official Team Fortress 2 Wiki.

I played around with the new patch last night, on the new map, Thunder Mountain, but I actually haven't played as an Engineer yet. Why, you ask? A few reasons.

First, everybody is playing as an Engineer right now. It's one of my favorite classes in the game, maybe even my favorite, but I can't play on a team that is 90% Engineers. The addition of being able to move your turrets around helps make the class play a little better on the offensive, but it's still boring to sit around waiting for sentry kills when everyone else is doing the exact same thing. It also makes each round incredibly hard to win.

Second, since everyone else is playing as an Engineer, it's a great time to be other classes - particularly Spy or Soldier. I racked up quite a few new achievements last night playing as both classes, because right now there are about four times as many destroyable objects being placed in the field than normal. I actually noticed another small downside to the remote-control sentry ability here as well; as a spy, it's a lot easier to back-stab people near remotely controlled turrets because, unless the player who is controlling it is looking at you when you do it, you won't be instantly detected and can escape again much easier than before.

It was also fun to play on the new maps. Almost nobody I was playing with knew them well, so we weren't mired down in the same old tactics you see whenever you play on maps which people have ran through a hundred times.

Overall, the class updates for Team Fortress 2 have added a lot to the game, and I applaud Valve for keeping at it. I hope they continue to find interesting ways to give the game depth and add to the fun. I know one thing for sure: I'm going to have a hard time not playing in most all of my spare time in the coming weeks.

While I simply haven't had time to devote to much Team Fortress 2 lately, that doesn't mean I haven't been interested in it. My game is up to date and ready to play, and I've been keeping up on all the sparse bits of official news, which have been released via the Team Fortress 2 Official Blog.

Their latest announcement reveals a few incoming updates for the Engineer and Spy, as follows:

  • Teleporters will be upgradeable to level 3. As the teleporter is upgraded, the cooldown will decrease.
  • Dispensers will be upgradeable to level 3. They will heal faster and generate metal faster as they are upgraded.
  • Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground.
  • We've made a bunch of minor changes by adding particle systems and upgrading the HUD to show things like deaths by critical hits, players that are overhealed, and giving more information to medics when people are calling for them.

The Engineer is my favorite class, so I'm happy to see him getting some love from Valve soon. I'm not particularly good at being a Spy, but it is one of the classes I generally have a lot more fun with, and I am happy to see this change coming, as this is something I have felt you should be able to do from the very beginning. With all other characters able to pick up dropped weapons for ammo, building, etc. it only makes sense to allow the Spy to pick up these lost armaments as well, especially since the cloak ability replenishes so slowly on its own.

I'm also excited to see the minor changes mentioned in the fourth bullet point. Playing as a Medic should be even better, and it'll be nice to see more information listed on the HUD for critical hits, overhealing, etc.

Just talking about these upcoming changes is making me hungry for some TF2. Maybe it's time to stop working on my new blog layout/games and start doing a little PC gaming again?