Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Tricking out Team Fortress 2

I've been spending a lot of time on Team Fortress 2 since the Sniper vs. Spy update landed and after weeks of playing, I've gotten around to even reskinning several things in my game. Nothing too extravagant, but just little things to make the experience more subtle.

Heatshielding shotgun
This might be a bit much, but since I like playing support engi and battle engi sometimes, I thought skinning my shotgun would be a good idea since I'll really be spending a lot of time with it. Nothing's more rewarding then luring a scout back with your shotgun only for him to get riddled by my sentry.

The Backstabber's knife
The spy is a gentleman first, assassin second, scoundrel third, and a prick fourth. His default butterfly knife seems a bit too plain and out of character for a person of his caliber. When I think butterfly knife, I don't think pinstripe suit. This skin makes the butterfly knife look like the gentleman's sophisticated butterfly knife. The gold band in the middle really sells it.

Four-slot grenade launcher
This is a necessity, not an option to me. The grenade launcher shoots 4 grenades, and yet the model has six slots. This stems from the beta having six slots but reducing it to four when the retail version launched for balancing reasons. There's really no excuse for Valve to simply leave a six-slot grenade launcher shooting four. INEXCUSABLE!

Western revolver
With the Ambassador out, using either the revolver or the unlockable is a big toss up in terms of ability. However, in terms of sexiness, the Ambassador wins hands down. That's why the western styled revolver puts some style into your by-the-book revolver. The Ambassador isn't the only gun that can do engravings!

Whack-on monkey wrench
Short but sweet: monkey wrenches always need to be red. They just look cooler that.

Orange illuminated builder/destroy PDA
Now that this skin is up, I forget what the original PDAs looked like. The big thing is that this skin taught me how to remove the obtrusive option overlay that tells you which number is which building. After you spend an hour playing engi, you instantly memorize how the buttons go (1. sentry, 2. dispenser, 3. & 4. teleporter entrance and exit respectively). These PDAs are skinned so that you cna have a reminder whenever you need it, but with the building hud down, I can actually see trouble heading at me while trying to build. Also, it lights up under low light conditions!

Golden Lady Ambassador
Let's face it; just like the incorrect six-slot grenade launcher, the Ambassador suffers some serious visual problems. There's no hole for the bullets to shoot through, the skin reflects incorrectly sometimes, and the texture of the gun overall is kind of crappy. The Golden Lady remedies those problems and highlights the most important feature of the Ambassador: a gold engraving of the Scout's mom off the beautiful silver finish.

skins courtesy of the fpsbanana community.

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