You’ve Got To Keep Moving, Boy

So, TF2 was patched. As you probably know. It’s already been discussed on many good blogs.

New medic weapons and achievements, a new map, and most importantly new melee weapon animations. Now you can do a double-handed kukri swing!

I’m not going to copy/paste all the details, but they’re all on the Steam news page for your perusal.

I actually really enjoy Goldrush. It has a Dustbowly quality that appeals to me. And the new achievements are awesome. At first it was possible to unlock them with console commands, but Valve patched that after a few hours. Good thing too, I was getting sick of there being a cacophony of celebration sounds every six seconds.

But Gold Rush, yeah. It is Gold Rush, not Goldrush. I like it. I was especially impressed by how Valve incorporated Ep2’s cinematic physics into the end of the map. When the bomb reaches the end it falls into a pit and explodes, pretty awesomely too.

However most of my post-update playtime was spent grinding for medic achievements, which personally I don’t have a problem with because it actually takes a lot of effort. Not least trying to get people to co-operate. There’s one achievement to heal 10,000 points in one life, and I heard many a groan of anguish as someone was inadvertantly bonesaw’d at 9800.

After about 4/5 hours total play I have the Ubersaw and I feel… meh. I realise that I didn’t want the weapons for their usefulness as much as just fulfilling my completist needs. Which sucks, really, because that’s not the goal. And I am really a completist. I can’t think of a game I’ve played that I haven’t made a concerted effort to reach 100%.

Madlep seems very angry with Valve for making people do achievements to unlock the weapons, and to some extent I agree with him. I’m kind of torn between my desire to unlock everything (I’m glad I don’t own an Xbox 360, or I’d spend all my time getting achievements), and the fact that, as a PC gamer, I’m used to free, no-strings-attached content updates and I don’t appreciate having to make extra effort to get things that should be mine.

The upshot is that even if Valve continue with this achievements for unlocks system, I’ll still keep grinding despite my previous reservations, just because I have a strange need to 100% complete games.

To be honest, I shouldn’t begrduge Valve the props they deserve for this update because a whole lot of work has gone into it, and it’s natural that not everyone will be pleased - that would be impossible. Whenever I have a minor gripe with Valve, I just remind myself that they’re not EA: they do care about their product and it’s community.

So I’ve made up my mind: I like this update. And Valve. And TF2. Obviously.

A little side note: I like the fact that the Ubersaw fills up with team-coloured gunk when you’re ubercharge is charged. A nice touch.