Getting into TF2 a bit...

... yes, I know: Welcome to 2007, Seth.

I played TF Classic many, many moons ago when it was new and exciting and everyone thought the ol' spray-and-pray in your spawn room with pipe bombs was the single most offensive act a man could execute. When TF2 was announced, I was such a busy person I thought to myself, "There is no way I can buy this game and still have a healthy social/work life." Eventually, my friend Jon bought it for me on Steam, I downloaded it, and I proceeded to have a moment of bright, terrible clarity regarding what I had just done. I put the siren's game back in its box, tucked it under the bed, and tried my best not to think of it as I endured the shakes and hallucinations brought on from the forced separation.

So anyway a few weeks back, I decided to reinstall and try it. Things have slowed down at work, other games are rapidly losing my attention, and I wanted something visceral and violent to enjoy in chunks like I had with Borderlands. I think this time, with less of a frantic need to escape my 60-hour-work-week reality, I was able to approach the game at a measured, reasonable.... oh fuck it's 3am on a Wednesday morning.

The game is comfortable and familiar, like an old denim jacket that has somehow undergone an amazing alchemy to make it no longer musty, dated, and unfashionable. Valve has done a pretty solid job of edging that line between gore and cartoon humor, as well as encouraging serious antipathy to anyone not wearing your colors while not taking itself too seriously. So far, what I've learned -

- A pyro's flamethrower actually has a range of X - 1, where X is the amount of feet away that fucking guy is who would die if you could just get one more hit on.

- Spies have a button where they are able to simultaneously sap all of your buildings, even if they're 400 yards apart, and backstab you from the front in one smooth motion. I don't know where this button is, sadly. All I can find is the "when attempting to kill things, fumble nervously like a boy undoing his first girlfriend's bra."

- I am still pretty good at arcing pipe bombs just perfectly so that I completely miss unmoving targets.

- Speaking of: Soldiers and Demomen, when played by other players, have a 100% accuracy rate on the rockets/bombs they are wildly spamming at random directions. That is to say, the less thought you seem to put into these weapons and merely trust in the Force, the more likely you will catch someone (read: me) as they round a corner at 50 HP.

- There is nothing more amusing to me than the amount of unassisted kills I have racked up on my Medic. When I switch to an actual weapon and attack, there is a 50/50 chance the other guy will simply stop moving, as the player has fallen over his desk in confusion.

While it's been pretty frustrating at points (it's often way too easy to simply die in one second without having any reasonable chance to react or defend yourself), it's been a good time waster overall. Also, there's something to be said for getting messages like "You have been killed by: the assmachine."