4AM. Insomnia. What to do? What to play?

Team Fortress Classic for the first time ever apparently.

I booted into a populated server. People and bots harmoniously obliterated each other until a vote was held and all the bots vanished. Only humans remained, "hawing" as they jumped and "gah-ing" as they died.

I used to play the ♥♥♥♥ out of Team Fortress 2. I still pop in occasionally but avoid 2fort because I HATE it with a bloody passion. It always felt like you're fighting tooth and nail to make any sort of progress against and with people who are TOO into it for it to be fun. My friends LOVED it so I would grit my teeth and mostly Engineer camp in quieter areas because I just hated the whole loop of the map that much.

This is relevant because, cosmic joke of jokes, the first map I encountered was 2fort. *sigh* But I ended up appreciating the experience of the foundation. Maybe I would have hated it too back in this game's heyday like, maybe it suffered from the same stalemate and bottnecking commotion. But with a handful of people where no one was blasting ♥♥♥♥♥♥ music or shouting racial slurs into their over-cranked mic, dare I say it was... pleasant? It was a little odd seeing the framework skinned 'primitively' as I was used to the sort of rustic set dressings and plentiful details modern 2fort has but I think the sparseness helped me understand why the loop is satisfying. The map has good bones. Modern 2fort is visually a lot and coupled with the fact it's always a full map, it definitely could use some room to breathe. Especially from cheaters who shoot you through the spawn room's door.

As for feel of play, DOOM, Quake, Wolfenstein come to mind. Maybe not as sluggish as my memory says they were but I also wasn't super big into gaming yet, or shooters for that matter. My friends would drag me into gaming cafes for Counterstrike and such and I grew to appreciate the quickness versus the killness. Killness is a word now. :p

Anyway, I think it was on Well I noticed a sort of swinging jazzy footfall pattern on some of the metal scaffolding. Like your dude was dancing through life, (or death) and it made me wonder if anyone has taken it and made a track. That discovery was more exciting to me than figuring out how to lining up Demo's bombs just right or mowing down a flag taker. It's probably odd to be appreciating ambiance and texture over kill counts and such but that's who I am when I'm not being coerced into competitive ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. :p

Speaking of classes, the Medic (my preferred class) was really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bizarre. He felt like a different class though I think he still has his needle gun of doom but the projectiles are triangular which like... That's fine. 1999 graphics, what are you going to do? But what really threw me was healing. No healing visual, no charge, no uber, just a box that you have to be close enough to your target that their readout pops up in the lower left corner of the screen so you can initiate healing. Maybe it's because this was my first time playing but it was finicky as ♥♥♥♥. People jumping all around and you have to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ glue one eye to the corner to know you're close enough to activate and the other is watching madmen be mad. Chameleons would love this class if they could play video games. I'm sure of it!

Anyway, I really enjoyed comparing the two in my mind's eye. TF2 provided a refreshed update on a lot of fronts but I can appreciate a right click for a whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ drop down menu. You need to build a sentry? Right click. Call for Medic? Right click. Change your character? Right. Click. However, pressing Y and not being able to see what you're typing until after you hit Enter, is criminal but perhaps that was just the quirk of the server I landed on.

2 hours to run around and give the whole roster a test drive, enjoy some levels in a new olde scope, and even capture a flag or two with a chill and ancient vibe. It may not have cured my sleeping troubles but the distraction it provided woke me up to some fun.

Edit: Cleaned up a few typos. We'll blame soup brain for those. :p

This Game is good I like it

This one was a classic. The sniper red dot was really intuitive and fun to use and shoot with. The fact that you actually had to charge up a shot in order to hit a hs was kind of cool, it discouraged spamming and cheats. But now there are no human beings alive that play this game, and all the lobbies are full of bots or are modded.

It was fun while it lasted. The funny thing on here is that the medic can spread plague. I thought that was ingenious.

The demo pack correctly planted can breach walls. The engineer emp grenade is lowkey the most underrated item in this game. Try using the concussion bomb with the medic and jump boost too. The problem is youll be dizzy after you use it.

Used to have engineer contests to see which turret could kill the most people. Wed repair them non-stop and sometimes the results are surprising.

Spies are kind of hard to catch, so keep a count of how many of each role-skill you have.