Saturday, August 18, 2012

TF2: Mann vs Machine is live! And some thoughts.

Hello, and welcome to this week's "My worst fears". Subjects: apocalypse in the hands of robotic destroyers and drowning in peanut butter.
So, as you probably already know, TF2's new co-op mod Mann vs Machine launched a little while ago. If you've played Killing Floor, you already know the basic gist of the game - you and few teammates (in this case, teams of 6 members) try to hold back waves of attackers. By killing attackers, you gain money which can be then used to purchase upgrades to your items in between the waves. This new mode is free for all players, though you need to buy a Tour of Duty if you want the "super rare" loot that drops once you've completed the tour.

Just look how smug he looks. Bastard.
So, how's the execution then? It's... nice, actually. It can get somewhat challenging at times, and feels like good fun. The AI of the robots is nothing to call home about, but that's why they are more numerous. And sometimes come in different variations, such as rapid firing or giant. There are also two new types of enemies, tanks, which can take a few cruiserships worth of ammo before getting destroyed, and sentry busters, who seek out engineers' sentries and other stuff and self-destruct among them, taking everything with them. But players also have a new tool to assist them -  a 'flask' of sorts which can be fulled with certain types of one-time use effects, such as getting ubered for 5 seconds, dealing critical damage for 5 seconds, instantly upgrading all buildings to maximum and stuff like that.

As said, it's nothing innovative and it's been done better before, but it's a nice refreshing change of pace to the original TF2 mayhem. Right now the biggest problem is that the official servers are so loaded that it can take between 20-40 minutes to get to a match. You can also try to find servers using the server browser, which can be a bit trickier though.

All in all, it's a free update to a F2P-game and it works, there isn't really anything to complain about. Go try it now!