End of the Line Update - Review

[It'sTheMattC]

Making collecting ducks the main aspect of an update for the second consecutive major update in a row is stupid. Alright? Just throwing that out there real fast - these ducks are not even that important in End of the Line, they're minor. The fact that they're one of the core elements of the update so far is just idiotic. And the End of the Line update itself? It really blows. Most of that comes down to... *sigh* the stupid ducks... What kind of thought process at Valve would allow this decision to exist?

Well, that's one of the major problems with this update. It just felt like a dumb mechanic for this update from the start. End of the Line had all the hype and potential it undoubtedly deserved, but in the end it just seems more like Valve wanted to cash in on James McVinnie and his team's success and the update doesn't reflect on McVinnie's team's work. Aside from the cosmetics, but they don't hold special light in the update.

I'm not going to lie, out of all of Valve's updates to TF2 in recent times, this one feels like their worst. The problems are very apparent; nothing I've seen besides the cosmetics actually properly reflect on End of the Line at all, and on top of that there were tons of creative opportunites based on the short - or hell, on trains in general - and there was virtually nothing based on that. The only thing that comes to mind is the train signal melee weapon, and even then it's just a mere reskin. All the possibilities for weapons and we only get a reskin of the stock melee weapon, which is frankly the Valve equivalent of a slap to the face.

Now I don't hate the End of the Line animated short itself because it was actually very good and delivered to its promises as well as keep me interested, but Valve couldn't bring anything to this update that they could have done with any other update. They only seemed to have made this a major community update because of McVinnie and his team's skill and success and not much else besides. It's really telling of how dedicated Valve are to TF2 nowadays when this is the best that they can throw out. I feel that they should just hand the game's updates to respectful and fair members of the community to assess because I genuinely don't think Valve are interested anymore. They promised this awesome update based on a fan-made short and they instead gave us ducks. Okay, that's not a promise, that's a ♥♥♥♥ move.

Yeah, I couldn't find much to like in this update besides the short. I found the signal weapon uninteresting, the use of ducks instead of trains to be a dumb design choice, occassionally there are a few good cosmetics but...the longer I have to see ducks being the focus of the update in-game, the quicker I want to turn TF2 off. And I suggest you revoke your hype train tickets before you even start playing.

[OLDMAN🎅]

thanks Valve you just save me $50 on buying new keys