Team Fortress Classic (1999) and Team Fortress 2 (2007)

2023.04.23
I didn't think to make a TF page because I've been playing it for decades, and it has always been part of the standard rotation. And now that it's not, I can see it again - or, the lack of it.

When Quake multiplayer was a thing, my favorite mods were anything with a grappling hook. It was endless fun to hang from dark spots in the ceiling and ambush unsuspecting enemies. I remember other mods, where you could team play as a heavy, medic, etc. were interesting but they weren't that much fun. Moving the game from Quake to Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic made it work for me, and I spent countless hours on it.

Team Fortress 2 was long rumored, and I think it was somewhat surprising when the Valve Orange Box finally came out. I had no idea what Valve or Steam would become, so I thought nothing of making my Steam name my old gaming clan name, which also reflected my usual class (medic). It could have been worse.

I think I missed the endless grenade spam of TFC at first, but TF2 proved to be the more balanced and fun. Checking my stats now, it seems hard to believe I only have 650+ hours in the game, but this is not the kind of game that you leave sitting idle sometimes racking up the hours.

In the early years it was fun getting new items, but they started creating too many, and it got overwhelming. I think something similar happened with achievements. It's still a fun game, and I'm sure I'll play it again. If I needed the disk space, it would probably be one of the last games to ever get uninstalled.

2023.04.29

Playing just to play, and it's been so long.

Find a game -> Community servers; nice to see the skial servers are still there, and there's at least 5 that are almost full. It's been the same maps for years: payload, 2fort, turbine, dustbowl. Probably a lot of the same players too.

Left 4 Dead, achievement catnip

While looking for more campaigns, I found a map, and found I could play it like a campaign. It's survivor mode! I was thinking about trying that out, but I thought it was online only. I got the Bronze Mettle and Silver Bullets achievements. Which brings me to - who cares about achievements? I should be too old and wise a gamer to fall for this kind of new-fangled marketing, but dammit they work.

When achievements were new in TF2, I could reasonably expect to collect most of them, and it seemed fun to do so. Some were so easy, and some you had to put some effort into. But over the years they've added so many stupid achievements, like ones that you could only get on one particular Halloween, that I gave up on all but the most reasonable ones. There was an achievement for the Pyro, a million points of fire damage, that seems reasonable until you see how slow the progress is, and you realize you are grinding. I'm going for a similar achievement in L4D now, the Zombie Genocidest - Kill 53,595 Infected. While I've been trying out campaigns, I've got it as high as 38k, and that took many hours. I feel like I'm already done with L4D, but I want to get this one, and so it makes me feel like I'm not done with L4D. I don't know if you can call it marketing, since I already bought the game. And I don't know if you can call achievements value-add, because I can't measure if I would have been any more or less satisfied without them. But I can tell it does feed the OCD and hoarding sides of me. At least its not making me fill my house up with junk and counting the same things over and over. But I could be playing something else.

At best, achievements help you gauge your level of expertise in a game, at worst they are a treadmill you wonder why you are on.