So my eye at last drifted to the bottom left of the screen, where I noted that I too was now a 'retard.' One player on the other team had taken a specific objection to me - a cursory check of the score screen revealed he was one of the six or seven players I was currently Dominating - and was unleashing a storm of horrific invective, predominantly about parental abuse he claimed I'd suffered. They're just numbers, but they make me oddly sad - it's as though someone's stamped LIAR on my Steam page.Īs TF2's achievement system gives only the vaguest sense of progress towards its more long-winded, uber-grindy tasks, my interest and blood lust soon diminished. In TF2 proper I play a Heavy almost all the time, but my permanent record is now dominated by Pyro points. Stood next to a supply cupboard, with my health and ammo infinitely replenished, I spent a few minutes clocking up kill after kill after kill - forever twisting my TF2 stats. So I presumed mega-death was the done thing here - certainly, that steady stream of disorientated spawnees were fish in a barrel, a Pyro's wet dream.
There'd been no explanation as to how this server worked, and the only communication between players involved the word 'retard'. Once I finally managed to sneak to a safe-ish corner, I couldn't help but join the fray. Perhaps these kill-crazed interlopers were simply childish troublemakers, but more likely they were chasing the 1m points of fire damage and 1000 kill Achievements. Other players screamed time and again that those attacking each other were 'retards', oblivious or unconcerned that their unchecked use of this most stereotypical of Angry Internet Man insults made them even more detestable than those they lambasted. Half the time, it wasn't possible to escape this six foot starting area, as I'd be toasted into nothingness within milliseconds. No-one could ever win this map - it was set up to repeat forever.įrom the narrow strip between the start points spawned a constant stream of Pyros - a silent, infinite army. A small pool of water was placed awkwardly in a corner, and health packs scattered in bizarre columns. The tiny, custom map placed the red and blue spawn points right next to each other, removed the wait period between respawns, dropped a single capture point in the middle and placed intelligence briefcases at either end. The server I elected to play witness on was an odd, unsettling place. As the sampling of chat-channel quotes above might imply, I wish I hadn't. I heard about their existence come the release of the Pyro update, and the idea that there were legions of TF2 players grinding away like Lineage players on special maps for impatient unlock-hungerers was so curious that I had to see it for myself. Having been away from the TF2 scene for a few months until very recently, I wasn't previously aware of Achievement Servers. "Scout need 2 kill scouts someone spawn scout" "FOR FUCKS SAKE DONT SHOOT THE FUCKIN ENGI" Whether you agree or disagree with their existence, these beat-the-system servers are fascinating enough to be worth talking about. It's a recounting of the bizarre/hilarious/terrifying experience I had on one of them - yes, my personal reactions to what I encountered do inevitably slip in, but mostly it's a portrait of this unique facet of gaming subculture.
It can also reflect slow moving projectiles such as the Demoman's bombs, the sniper's arrows and the Soldier's rockets. Upon pressing the right mouse button, the flamethrower emits a blast of air that can blast enemies backward through the air, though it won't damage them. The flamethrower has a useful secondary fire (right mouse button) called the compression blast (or air blast) which has a variety of uses. Use the compression blast to reflect projectiles and push enemies.
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