Hey, what do you know, I carved out some time to update my Living in Oblivion blog. Now stop bothering my about it for a couple days, okay?

Read the new entry, Hounds From Hell. And then read it again, because who knows when the next one will be?

Tom Francis, of PC Gamer UK and Pentadact, is a finalist for the Games Media Awards for Best Specialist Games Writer - Print.  Congrats, Tom Francis!  It couldn’t have happened to a more talented, clever, deserving Tom Francis.

My first exposure to the writing of Tom (Francis), that I’m aware of, was his Oblivion review in PC Gamer UK in 2006.  I’d heard some good things about Oblivion, and some bad, but I honestly didn’t think I’d actually buy it.  I’m generally not into the whole swords and scorcery scene in games.  On my lunch break one day, I’d gone to a shopping mall to pick up the latest issue of the magazine.  I was flipping through it on the way back to my car, and saw Tom’s Oblivion review.  I read it right there in the parking lot, then walked straight back into the mall and bought Oblivion, which has become one of my favorite games of all time and the inspiration for that blog I never update.

Tom made an interesting choice with that review — instead of writing in broad terms about the game, he actually described several of the side quests in detail, almost like a journal.  Sure, they were spoilers for those quests, but they painted such a vivid picture of the game that a more general overview, the kind you find in most game reviews, ever would.  I think it was a pretty bold choice of his to present the review that way, but I daresay it paid off — it says something that I even remember a single game review from almost three years ago.

And that holds true for his writing in general.  It stands out.  It’s creative.  It’s memorable.  With our mutual fondness for TF2, he and I often cover the same topics on our blogs, but whenever I read his take on things, I feel like a rank amateur (which, technically, I am).  I think, “Dang.  Why didn’t I write it like that?”  And then I curse his name and pray for the worst punishment I can imagine:  someone replacing his QWERTY keyboard with with a DVORAK, rendering him incapable of intelligible communication with the internet.

If you’d like to vote for Tom, and believe me, you do, you can cast your votes by e-mailing the GMA at the address provided here.

At some point yesterday the details of the Heavy Achievements appeared on the update page.

My personal favorites:

Show Trial: Kill an enemy with a taunt.

I know a lot of people will grind most of the achievements (I know I probably will), but I’d encourage everyone to try to get the taunt kill in a legitimate game.  Getting the pyro taunt in a real game was tough, and a lot of fun, and not just for me.

Own the Means of Production: Remove 20 stickybombs by killing the Demomen who produced them.

The icon shows a stickybomb being split by a lightning bolt, so we thought maybe the Heavy’s new gun would have sticky-busting properties, but now it doesn’t appear that way: you just have to ice the demoman and make his bombs vanish.  Can do.

Rasputin: In a single life, get shot, burned, bludgeoned, and receive explosive damage.

This is just plain genius.  If only an enemy medic could poison a sandwich, they’d have all the bases covered.

Spyalectical Materialism: Kill or assist in killing 10 cloaked spies.

Again, this led to some speculation of a new Heavy weapon that would have spy-revealing properties, but it looks like we’ll have to do with plain old bullets.  Not a problem.

Heavy Industry: Fire $200,000 worth of minigun rounds in a single life.

Don’t worry, it won’t take long.  More info here.

Konspicuous Konsumption: Eat 100 sandviches.

Yes, there are apparently actual sandwiches.  And they can apparently be eaten.  But what is the sandwich, exactly?

Is it a medkit he can carry with him and munch on when he’s running around without a medic?  That would certainly make him more viable when he’s on his own, though self-healing does tread on the medic’s toes a bit, which is one of the things Valve was hoping to avoid.

How would he carry the sandwich with him?  Would it be the alt to his shotgun?  Or is he still getting a new shotgun, and this will be an all-new standalone item?

If it is something he carries with him, will he just get one per life?

Can he move while he’s eating it?  Can he swim within a half-hour of eating it?

Maybe the sandwich will just replace those floating medkits scattered around the map, and he won’t be carrying it along with him?

Will it simply boost his health, or will it somehow make him stronger?  Faster, maybe?  Perhaps make him grow a mullet to protect him from headshots?

These questions, and the details of the mysterious new game mode will be revealed on Monday and Tuesday right here.  And shortly thereafter, here.

The next element of the Heavy Update has been revealed, and it’s an alternative to the minigun called Natascha.

Natascha deals out 25% less damage, in exchange for slowing down any player taking damage from her.  So, if you’re a Heavy who has trouble with quick-footed strafing Pyros or Scouts who dodge in and out of range, this might be a good alternative for you.  Less damage means they’ll take longer to kill, but slower targets means they’ll be in range longer.

Truthfully, I’m not nuts about the idea.  TFC had several weapons that I didn’t care for, like drug darts and that screwed up your perception and caltrops that slowed you down if you walked over them.  I think it’s a slippery slope when you start affecting how players play the game.  It’s just not fun being handicapped by an enemy.

Still, the page says it only slows you down “for an instant” so perhaps it won’t be as annoying as I’m imagining.  Plus, the Pyro’s air compression blast can restrict your movement, too, and I haven’t found that an annoyance at all.

Wednesday’s Heavy Update has appeared, and it details Valve’s new Payload Map, Badwater Basin.

Promising more open areas, fewer bottlenecks, and more vertical gameplay elements, Badwater is also a single-stage map unlike the multi-stage design of Gold Rush.

Shacknews is the best gaming site ever, and I’m not just saying that because I’m currently trying to get a job with them.

It may seem like I’m saying they’re the best gaming site ever simply because I’d like them to hire me, but I can assure you that my independent study of gaming sites and how one of them is like totally way better than all the others, which I conducted mere seconds after learning Shacknews was hiring, was completely coincidental and impartial and required me to examine many, many gaming sites, nearly two of them, in fact, and said study is entirely unrelated to the fact that, if they were to hire me, I’d do an excellent job of blogging about games for them and would promise that, while on their payroll, I would never, ever craft ridiculously long and grammatically incorrect sentences like this one.

Anyway.  The Shack reports this morning that Spore has gone gold and is, as we speak, being burned onto discs and put into boxes and we’ll actually really truly get to play the damn game on September 7th, which is just a few short weeks away.  Well, technically, they’re standard-sized weeks, but saying they’re short might make them go by more quickly.

Hurray!  I don’t know about you, but for the past year it’s felt like Every Game I’ve Ever Wanted has been coming out A Few Months From Now.  And now it’s almost A Few Months From Now!  Finally.

Jesse Henning of GameCyte just sent me some mail about a fun feature they’re running: a Heavy Achievement Speculation Contest.

They’ve put their heads together and come up with a guess for each of the Heavy’s 35 shadowy, unknown achievements.  All you have to do is read their guesses and make your own guess as to how many they’ve gotten right.  A sample:

Achievement: Party Loyalty
Suspiciously Revealing Filename: tf_heavy_defend_medic
Rampant Speculation: Get behind me, doctor! Now, it’s one thing to get kills while assisted by/assisting a medic, but here’s the thing — there are some achievements here which have “assist” in their names, while this one explicitly says “defend.” Our guess? This achievement will be granted for stepping into the line of fire for 10 medics who are taking damage from the enemy. DE-FENSE! *clap clap clap*

Whenever Valve releases the full details — which is also when this contest ends, so don’t waste any time entering — they’ll see how many they got right and which guesser of their guesses wins.

There’s even a prize: a free copy of TF2.  Granted, if you’re into TF2 enough to guess about the achievements, it’s probably because you already own a copy of TF2, but through the magic of Steam, you’ll be able to gift your winnable copy to anyone you like.  It’s a great way to get a buddy into the game with you!

Head on over to GameCyte, take a look at their guesswork, and enter the contest.

As some have now noticed, examining the file names of the Heavy’s achievement icons sheds a little light on what the achievements actually might be.

For instance, “Class Struggle” is “tf_heavy_kill_medic_pair”, and “Crock Block” is “tf_heavy_survive_crocket” (ie: crit rocket).

More intriguingly, in fact, most intriguingly, is “Konspicuous Konsumption“, whose icon shows a dinner plate and utensils, and is labeled “tf_heavy_eat_sandwiches”.

There will apparently be sandwiches, now? If I know my gaming lore, food = health (except in Burger Time, when food tried to kill you), so perhaps there will be a replacing of the standard heath packs with hovering, rotating sammiches? I like.

No idea if other items from the “Meet the…” movies will be making it into games, such as the Engineer’s guitar or the Sniper’s bottles-o-urine, but if they’re adding sandwiches to the game, can piss bottles be far behind?

Day 2 of Heavy Update news has hit.

It details the new melee alt for our favorite Russkie: The Killing Gloves of Boxing!   If the Heavy punches someone to death while wearing these gloves, he gains five seconds of crit attacks with any of his other weapons.  Wow.  That’s Heavy.

The page also gives us the names and icons of the Heavy’s 35 achievements, but no further details on them.

My friend Mark, aka Zompist, has recently joined the ranks of TF2 players. This pleases me to no end.

Zompist, a soft-spoken writer, intellectual and linguist, seems more likely to be at home in the turn-based world of Civ III than embracing the twitchy carnage of TF2. And it’s only when someone new joins the fray, such as in GF TF2, that I stop and realize how absolutely confusing the game must be to someone who hasn’t been exposed to it before.

I mention this because Zomp brings up an interesting and valid point in his post here: there’s no TF2 tutorial. There’s no real way to learn how to play the game without playing it. Sure, you can load a map locally, run around in it, and maybe try out the weapons a bit, but it’s hardly a tutorial.

So, how about it, custom map makers? Anyone interested in maybe designing a small tutorial course, with a little area for each class, perhaps with some sort of pop-out targets newbies can shoot at? Perhaps some practice rocket-jump, sticky-jump, and double-jump areas? Some bots to shoot at you while you try to take them out or backstab them? Some helpful text pop-ups to teach you the basics? I think it might be a neat idea, and something new players might find handy to ease them into the chaos of the real game.

Since Valve is including custom maps in their releases these days, it might even make it into an update someday. Heck, maybe it’s even something Valve would like to design themselves. Or, maybe it’s something that already exists, and I haven’t seen it yet. Let me know if you have.