For a three year old game, Team Fortress 2 manages to still have a few tricks up its sleeves mostly thanks to Valve’s penchant for thinking outside of the box. While the additions to TF2 started small with upgraded weapons, Valve slowly built the game up into a more than full-featured title featuring custom clothing, an in-game economy and now a boss encounter.
Yes, you read that right. Valve’s team-based frag fest comes one step closer to MMO territory with the addition of a neutral boss monster named the Horseless Headless Horsemann. When I say “neutral” I don’t mean in the conscientious objector kind of way, but rather that he hates both Red and Blu equally and can only be defeated by the combined might of both teams.
The Halloween update also features a two new community made maps (they’re free, don’t worry) and the return of last year’s spooky themed achievements. Players can now also gift wrap spare items for others, and I can only imagine the disappointed look on Timmy’s face when the bright wrapping reveals the unpleasant surprise of Jarate.
Yet again Valve uses Team Fortress 2 as an experimental platform, and I’d say they’re on track for success once more. I’ll definitely be hopping online this weekend to check out how the Horsemann works in game (and pick up some cheevos and hats) so what about you guys? Anyone lapsed on TF2 but have come back because of the constant love and care lavished on it by Valve? Do you wish that other developers would try something like this in their games?
Source – Team Fortress 2 Blog
I’m too intimidated to get back into TF2. I played it for a couple of months, but once they started doing those massive class updates, I just gave up. I’m not interested by cluttered achievements and trophies.. I just want to shoot some dudes. It’s hard to get into a game when I’m not a regular in a server, people don’t really communicate in TF2 the way we do in CS, and I’m just used to that.
Well, the achievements at this point have pretty much become completely optional Julez – you shouldn’t feel obligated to complete them all as there is no real reward outside of the new weapons, and the game plays just fine without them. Added to this is the fact you can still find these weapons randomly and trade for them, so achievements hardly even matter anymore.
So the objective you desire is still to “shoot some dudes” as you put it, they just keep adding different ways to do it.