I’m not particularly creative, which is perhaps why I really latch on to creative ideas. This group of folks, for instance, who did an awesome of recreating the cast of Team Fortress 2, right down to the number of grenades on each side of the demoman’s outfit.

Sure, there might be a few inconsistencies, like having girls in there or a white demoman, but it’s not like the same official TF2 shot (seen below) doesn’t have some, too. (Scouts don’t have that SMG-looking gun anymore.)

Didn’t I say hang in there?

Valve have made known that an update to its Orange Box for Xbox 360 has been made available via Xbox Live. I believe this is the second update to the Orange Box for the console. The update addresses mostly issues regarding the Team Fortress 2 multiplayer component of Orange Box. Here are the changes:

• Reduced network bandwidth usage in multiplayer.
• Improved overall game performance.
• Arranged search results to favor preferred host conditions.
• Improved searching for ranked games.
• Addressed a possible false report of too little storage space on larger hard drives.

The issue of ‘lag’ has been a common problem to many Xbox TF2 players since the game went retail. This update will be of great interest to them.

So there you go. Support your local Sentry Gun by clubbing a Spy in the head.

Valve have released an update to its zany yet addictive multiplayer component of Orange Box. Sorry, Xbox 360 Orange Box owners, I don’t think this update applies to you. Hang in there…

Coincidently, I think this marks the first update to TF2 as a retail product. Regardless, there are a ton of changes here – too many to list directly. You can check them out after the break.

Read the full article

As those of you who listen to our podcast already know, we’ve spent some serious time with Valve’s The Orange Box lately. In an effort to convey our thoughts on it to you, we’ve gathered the comments of a number of our writers together in this round table review.

If you’ve been living in a cave in what will be Islington in about two million years, The Orange Box is Valve’s latest release. It contains not only the eagerly awaited Half-Life 2 Episode 2 (along with the original Half-Life 2 and HL2: Episode 1), but also the newest iteration of the multiplayer classic Team Fortress. As a bonus, Valve’s packed in the first-person puzzler Portal. What can you expect from The Orange Box? Check out our thoughts after the break.

Read the full article

Koroush Ghazi has slaved away at yet another guide to tweaking the most out of your system for your favorite game. This time, Koroush revisits and updates his now legendary Half Life 2 & Source Engine Tweak Guide. However, do not shrug this off as some mere update:

This guide has been significantly updated as of HL2: Episode 2. Importantly, the tweaks in this guide also apply to every other Source Engine-based game including all Half Life 2 variants, CounterStrike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Vampire: The Masquerade, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. Make sure to refer back to this guide for updates.

Koroush has, as usual, put ALOT of effort into detailing all the in-game settings of the Source engine. We are sometimes given screenshot comparison results of the different values and a brief explanation of what they mean. Not stopping there, Koroush gives us valuable command line parameters for launching our favorite Source based game. Tired of hitting ESC on that TF2 intro video? Well, get rid of it with a simple command line parameter. Then we dig into the meat of the whole guide: the massive library of console commands or command variables (CVARs). This is where the heart of the true tweaker resides. It may seem daunting at first, but Karoush at least provides a small explanation as to what each setting does. Want to see your framerate? Want to see a graph of your network traffic? Want to bind more than one button to an in-game action? All are found via CVARs.

Yet again, Karoush has done an excellent job by finding morsels from every nook and cranny of the current Source engine. This is one serious overhaul I highly recommend worth checking out.

Via TweakGuides.com

The 9th installment of the Go Team! series of Team Fortress 2 class critiques has been posted at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. These sort of mini-editorials are a cute and sometimes humorous look into the depths of each of the TF2 classes. This latest (final?) installment covers the Spy class, probably one of the more controversial classes in TF’s history:

Team Fortress is a team-based game, reliant on close co-operation between a group of individuals for a common goal. Generally speaking, a team who works together towards the common goal will beat a group of individually better players who are playing individually. They may get more kills, but they’ll lose. This is heartwarming. This is also a little saccharine. Spies make things more complicated, more interesting. Your relationships with your team-mates are more sophisticated than almost any other multiplayer game, just because your team-mates… well, they may not be your team-mates. They may just be waiting for you to turn your back before sliding a blade into your back. They’re Judas to your Christ – the betrayal entirely necessary for the story to be as interesting as it is.

This often misunderstood and underused chap is favored by the laid back gamer who isn’t exactly in it for the numbers. Relying on tactics that many new (and old) TF players would consider “ethically” wrong, the spy gets the job done by getting his hands dirty – up close and personal. In the hands of the right mastermind, the Spy is ironically the most formidable class in TF2. He gets in your head. Messes with your normal game tactics. Makes you do crazy things that would otherwise be considered acute paranoia. Spies are, as RPS’s Kieron Gillen so accurately puts, “a necessarily awesome evil.” So why is it that this so called “awesome” class is so verily hated? In my mind’s eye Spies are the unbalance and chaos to a genre that typically disguises itself as order and balance. I love the spy, yet I hate him. Spies keep us on our toes. Even the more experienced and skillful TF players get lulled into their “comfortable” game mode only to be outwitted by the evil genius behind the screen laughing at them. Yes, I have cursed him oh so many times. But at the end of day when I reflect upon the misery I was bestowed, I come to a single conclusion:

“Spies a frackin’ awesome.”

Anyway, go read RPS’s psychoanalysis of TF2’s Spy. It’s quite a fun read. And if that whets your appetite, check out the 8 companion articles in the Go Team! series.

Wow, three updates in three days. Valve isn’t holding back on the TF2 updates here lately. Quite a few changes this time:

• Added option to change Field-of-view, between 75 & 90, from the Options->Multiplayer tab
• Added option to disable Player sprays
• Fixed flamethrower hit detection
• Increased flamethrower damage at point blank range
• Demoman grenades (not stickybombs) no longer explode on contact after the first bounce
• Fixed a startup crash
• Fixed a case where players could get stuck in tc_hydro
• Fixed player movement prediction errors
• Fixed third-person sniper aim animation not matching player’s view exactly
• Fixed achievements and stats being awarded when watching other player’s demos
• Fixed rare server crash due to data corruption in networking
• Fixed a case where some sounds had incorrect volumes

This must be the Pyro tweakage hinted at earlier. Time to get your BBQ on.

Also, it looks like we’ll be getting a Meet the Demoman video soon. Love those things.

Via Steam

Apparently Valve was not content with the updates made to TF2 earlier, so they have released yet another update to the ongoing Team Fortress 2 beta. The updates will be applied automatically via Steam. Here is a list of the new updates (fewer than the last):

• Added Team Fortress 2 events and cameras to SourceTV
• Fixed memory fragmentation crash
• Fixed prediction error that caused jittery sticky bomb launcher behavior
• Fixed rare crash when creating muzzleflashes

Looks like more stability offerings and SourceTV support.

Via Steam

Valve have just released the 3rd update to the ongoing beta of Team Fortress 2 that started early last week:

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

12 more days until *poof* Orange Box appears on retail shelves. Can’t wait to experience the magic first-hand.

Via Steam

If you’re unlucky enough to have played on a Team Fortress 2 server with friendly fire on, you know what a drag it can be. Getting shot by teammates to see if you’re an enemy spy (making the spy extremely overpowered), getting torched by your own pyros… it’s not a great experience. But, according to CVG, Valve never intended for friendly fire to so much as be included in the game as an option. So, it would make sense that the fact that friendly fire slipped in as an option in the beta would eventually result in seeing said “feature” removed.

Developer Robin Walker, quoted in a post on a German gaming forum (credible, I know) stated, “TF2 was never intended to be played with FF on. It was an oversight … It’ll be going away shortly,” which is what began the speculation yesterday that the feature would be yanked.

Blog Rock, Paper, Shotgun is reporting that it has received confirmation from Walker saying that he did email the German website stating that the mode was never intended to be in the game. So, is that enough confirmation for you?