The Startup of Sim City, Part 1

Sigh... I've really done it this time, I ranted about the game Sim City too hard in some certain areas. The storm has settled and truth be told, It's enjoyable, but the servers were horrible at release but they've cooled down now days after.

I must be honest and say: Why didn't they put up more servers in the first place? 
They started with only 2-3 servers for each continent, from US east/west to EU east/west. Did they really not think about how many people who would log in at the release date and start playing? C'mon we're gamers and we all love the Sim City series, well besides from Sim City 4 and Society...

Let's get this started on how my first impression were:

MAKING A NEW CITY:

Making a new game is quite simple, you can join or create one yourself. By creating a game you got 8 maps (or Regions as they like to call it) from 2 cities to 16.

Different regions have their own set of Raw materials, from Coal to wind power, so choose your city specialisation from what part of the region you're in.

SETUP REGION:

On the Setup region you can name your Region, set up private (invite only) or public, which is an open game and everyone can join.

'Sandbox' mode is pretty much building your city with no limits at all and no disasters can strike your city!

CLAIM CITY:

This is where you start claiming your city. 

When you're playing with friends I'd recommend you to pay attention to the road and railroad connection, because this is how your friends can help you with trading, burning houses, police backup and even workers (there is more they can help you with). The Roads are marked with a white line and the Railroad are yellow. When you start a new game with friends or just by yourself a Road is the safest way to get tourists/employees/new citizens or selling freight and goods. Later in the game you could try to get up a railroad station or even an airfield for carrying resources or people.

Alot of coal on this site.

How to claim a city?

just click on the cyan looking squares on the map and check the information about the site for how you're going to build yours. The white circles on the map are "Great work sites" which needs the following cities to team up to meet the requirements of the building they want. (more on that in next post!)

As you can see "triton valley" got loads of Coal and two bars of water and a full bar of wind power. This would be a nice place for a coal City, mining the resources would bring a lot of money to this city as you can trade with others or even make more advance resources you can sell for more money.

Claimed a City!

PLAY:

There we go! now we've claimed a site for our city and the industrial empire can grow!

Other players can now join your game after you've claimed your city (Pay attention if the game is private, you'll need to invite your friends to the game!)

To summarise:

I loved the whole part of actually playing with friends, but the lack of actually trying to survive on your own by just making one city in a "singleplayer game" is troublesome.

You have issues with having enough citizens to work or buy from the local stores, or even tourists to come to your city to make an actual income. 

This game works best with friends, and so bad at singleplayer it's not even funny.

It's nice that they've pushed the limit on the Sim City world so others can play together, but the small size on the cities makes it nearly impossible to enjoy it later in the game. They have spoken about adding an expansion pack to increase the size but then again... why pay for something like that when it should have already been in the game? I smell the works of EA here... 

Since of this blog post became a "tutorial" on how to start up a game, I'll make a new post tomorrow about the actual gameplay, since it's too big to put in one blog and it will be a huge massive wall of text and pictures.

Monthly Rant: Sim City

Yesterday something caught my eye, something ridiculous about a SINGLEPLAYER game, which I even looked up to until now, has now been ruined so hard I don't even know anymore.

We're talking about the new Sim City, how EA wants us to be always online DRM (Digital Rights Management) for a singleplayer game, it's absurd!

DRM (Digital Rights Management)

Quick info about DRM and the Always Online part in games:

"Many mainstream publishers continued to rely on online-based DRM throughout the later half of 2008 and early 2009, including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Valve, and Atari, The Sims 3 being a notable exception in the case of Electronic Arts. Ubisoft broke with the tendency to use online DRM in late 2008 with the release of Prince of Persia as an experiment to "see how truthful people really are" regarding the claim that DRM was inciting people to use pirated copies. Although Ubisoft has not commented on the results of the "experiment", Tweakguides noted that two torrents on Mininova had over 23,000 people downloading the game within 24 hours of its release.

 Ubisoft formally announced a return to online authentication on 9 February 2010 through its Uplay online gaming platform, starting with Silent Hunter 5, The Settlers 7, and Assassin's Creed II. Silent Hunter 5 was first reported to have been compromised within 24 hours of release, but users of the cracked version soon found out that only early parts of the game were playable. The Uplay system works by having the installed game on the local PCs incomplete and then continuously downloading parts of the game-code from Ubisoft's servers as the game progresses. It was only more than a month after the PC release in the first week of April that software was released that could bypass Ubisoft's DRM in Assassin's Creed II, demonstrating its strength. The software did this by emulating a Ubisoft server for the game. Later that month, a real crack was released that was able to remove the connection requirement altogether.

In early March 2010, Uplay servers suffered a period of inaccessibility due to a large scale DDoS attack, causing around 5% of game owners to become locked out of playing their game. The company later credited owners of the affected games with a free download, and there has been no further downtime. 

Other developers, such as Blizzard Entertainment are also shifting to a strategy where most of the game logic is on the "side" or taken care of by the servers of the game maker. Blizzard uses this for its game Diablo III, citing "a need for an always-on connection" as a "piracy deterrant" and Electronic Arts also is intending to use this same strategy with their reboot of SimCity." - Wikipedia

Always online is one thing.

But having a Queue system on a singleplayer game? C'mon, this is getting pathetic.

Sure it's "multiplayer" in some way where you have a city next to different players and you can sell/buy from them or even send out help when their city is in need.

But you should have an option to have an offline city in case of horrible accident as losing the Internet for a day or a week! It have happened and it happened to me, I lost the Internet for a week and I had almost NOTHING to play thanks to the "Always online" policy the games usually have now.

(I wonder how players will handle it when they are playing a SINGLEPLAYER game and they start lagging because of the masses of players logging in to the servers.)

Back to the point; having a queue system for a singleplayer and a "touch" of "multiplayer" is getting stupid, thanks for the information Totalbiscuit (YOUTUBE VIDEO), I was THIS close to buy the game. On the bloody release day the servers couldn't even handle the players who have bought the Digital Deluxe edition and waiting for the "pre-order early release". 

I even felt it on Origin how it lagged like hell on the Sim City release date. 

Yes, yes, I know. Usually the servers crash as hell on the release day, just look at Diablo III, Release of new Expansions for World of Warcraft etc.

Against piracy.

Apparently the DRM is to "defend" the product from piracy, which then again fails so horribly it's not even funny watching them burn themselves and lose consumers.

We've all heard about PirateBay and the "good" work they do (different opinion, I'll stay neutral on this one!) and how it opens the world for certain people for movies, games, music and other files.

But what really grinds my gear is how narrow-headed-sons-of-..... yes, let's just say EA and others "Always online" gaming companies only thinks about money and how to FORCE the online part on consumers. Haven't they even thought for a second to listen to the customers? Maybe it is overpriced, maybe the Always online part is bad for a singleplayer game, maybe shooting the customer down with DLC's aint the best way?

This is also why I got my thumbs up for Valve, they have offline mode (but a shame, not always working as intended, but it's there) so you can play your games.... offline!

I get it that certain games are hard to play offline if they are almost purely Multiplayer, like Team Fortress 2, but at least they try! 

Not only that but valve tries to make a way for you to sell your "old" digital games you have on steam to friends or to a random person, which makes a lot of big gaming companies boil of anger, because they want more money.

I could go on but I fear I will go out of context and just "personalize" my attacks directly to EA games and before I know it, I got a black van sitting outside of my house.

So this ends this Month's Rant, Maybe it will be more than just 1 a month, who knows what else will piss me off. Oh right, who am I kidding? EA will... and the DEAD SPACE 3 DLC'S THAT ARE UTTER USELESS!

Guild wars 2: Leveling through Crafting

I've covered how to level through with assists and Events, so i might as well just talk about the crafting while we're at it. I'll try to cover it as good as i can! Let's DO THIS!

CRAFTING

Crafting is a great way to level up your character from 1-80, bear in mind you need to level all crafting profession to 400 for this to work. It's also a nice way to earn money by making the items and selling them on the trading post, but you need to look at the price for making it and the price for selling the final product.

There is 8 Crafting professions, and here's the list:

Armorsmith - Makes heavy armor for the Warrior and Guardian class. from boots to helmets.

Leatherworker - Makes Medium armor, Recommended for Thief, Engineers and Rangers.

Tailor - Makes Light armor for Mesmer, Elementalist and Necromancer.

Jeweler - Makes Jewels (duh!) and gems, you'll be making earrings, rings and amulets.

Weaponsmith - This profession you'll be making Two-handed swords and hammers, one-handed swords, axes, maces, spears and shields.

Artificer - Makes  Staffs, Scepters, Focus, Tridents and potions

Huntsman - Makes bows, rifles, pistols, war horn and torches

Chef - Makes Food with boons (buffs), from magic find to power and crit. you can even have tray of food for a certain meal/dessert/snack.

Choosing the correct crafting profession could be a headache at times since your class needs weapons but also needs the armor, or even the Jewels. If it's your first character I would recommend you to stick with at least 1 profession and max it out so you can make gear for yourself and others for a fee, or just sell it on the TP (Trading post)

If you are one of those patient ones who can actually Farm for a Legendary, i would recommend you to do some research on the Legendary you want and how to get it, because every Legendary needs a certain Crafting profession to make the unique item needed to merge it with the rest of the materials needed.

DISCOVERY

Discovering items in the 'Discovery' tab is a nice way to gain a bunch of crafting skill level. So if you miss those 3 levels to craft new items, try to discover as much as you can. 

To be honest, try to discover more than you're crafting the finished products, since they yield more xp for the profession than the items themselves. Also try to get as close to the appropriate skill level you got.

For an example:
If you have 120 in Weaponsmithing, try to make items as close to the level, preferably 100 and closer. 

CRAFTING  FINISHED PRODUCTS

How to craft a weapon or something may sound "simple", but it's more of a chain of items needed. The Chef profession is the perfect example of it, but I wont use that of an example, instead, I'll use Weaponsmithing for now.

If you want to make the "Berserker's Pearl Broadsword (Exotic)" you'll need the "Berserker's Orichalcum Imbued Insciption (Exotic) which then again needs 5 "Orichalcum Plated Dowel (Master)"

So it goes as followed:

You need 5 of these     ------->             To make 1 of these     ---->             Which then makes the final product

So this pretty much covers the crafting part of Guild Wars 2, next time i might talk more about the WvW part and how it benefits your world(server). If you like what you read, feel free to toss it around on the Internet! Share it away!

Guild Wars 2: Leveling through "Questing" and Events

Since I've already started with Guild Wars and the story behind it, I might as well just tell you about the Questing and the Dynamic Events in the game. First of all we got the fresh way to actually level in a MMORPG I've not seen before.

It's not the typical "talk to this guy and grab that book over there and give it to me!", No sir.
It's not even called Questing in the game either, it's called Assists.

ASSIST

Assist are the heart shaped icon on this map. The "empty" ones mean they are not completed while the "full" ones mean they are completed, and you can talk to the NPC who needed the assist to buy equipment, tools, ingredients (for chef profession) and items for a currency called KARMA.





Here you can see the description about the assist in Queensdale. As you can see Farmer Eda needs help with driving the bats and spiders from the orchard, that's simple.
But this is the starter Zone for humans and you need to get used to the game mechanics and what weapon is best for your play style.


Every assist have their own area for where they need the help, some areas are big, some are just small and few mobs to kill and it will take some time to get it done. The Assists may be from gathering items, fixing buildings/items to killing certain enemies.

EVENTS

The orange circle on the map show you where there is an Event, and where the battle or gathering takes place, this is a great way to gain xp, karma, gold, completing an assist or to get items. So if there is an event where you're doing your assist, go for it, you'll hit 2 birds with 1 stone.




As you can see the event description tells us that Farmhand Paris needs help collecting Apples for Eda's famous pies, so this is a great way to assist Farmer Eda (as shown above) and to finish of an event. which means you'll gain Xp, karma and money from the event and the assist.
  

Sooner or later you've figured where the best places to "farm" the events for the certain drops of an item or amount of items as well as the time it takes for the event to reset.
We'll go deeper into that later.

KARMA MERCHANT

Karma merchants are all over Tyria, they are the ones who reward you from assisting them in the tasks at hand or just selling you items because they can.

What is karma?

Karma is one of the currency in Guild Wars 2, you get them by doing Events or Assists, you can trade the Karma in for Soulbound on aquire or account bound items or recipes, like the "Measuring Spoon" which is an Accessory you can put on when you're lvl 4. 

 "Apples in Bulk" in other hand is a Chef ingredient which is Account bound, you cannot buy those for karma and then sell it on the Trading Post (Auction House for players), same goes for all karma items.

As you can see it's rather cheap at the start for items or Ingredients, but this will go up as you get higher level, as in Cursed Shore (lvl 80 Zone) you can get gear for 43000 Karma per piece. it's not that much karma if you've spend it wisely and done a lot of events, but we'll get back to that later where it's good to farm for karma.

So this ends today's Information on how to level in Guild Wars 2, there are more ways I will explain with detail later on. Thanks for reading and if you like what you read, press that +1 And Share this on Google+, Facebook and Twitter!

Introduction to Guild Wars 2

Of all the games we all have to play and stick to, we all knew that sooner or later I had to write something about an MMO, and since it's my blog. I know, I know, I havent been posting this weekend, but to save myself from the rage, Here it is! A Big one about one certain game! I choose Guild Wars 2!

let's start with the first one!

Friday Indiegame: FTL (Faster Than Light)

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."
Ha! well that was fun, no? all right, damn it.

Faster Than Light (known as FTL) is made by Subset Games founded by 2 people with the names Justin Ma and Matthew Davis, both former 2K China employees. This game is their first released title which was the product of a successful Kickstarter campaign which raised over 2000% of their requested budget. How much you ask?

Subset Games asked for 10,000 dollars but boasted in 200,542 dollars instead, using the additional funds on music and more content for the game. (alot of the money went to the Music)

Now then! TO THE BRIDGE!

The game is based on a galaxy with different sectors controlled by different races, coalitions and pirates. The player belongs to a once powerful Federation, which has been weakened by the years of war against Rebels, and it's so severe that the Federation is about to be Destroyed.

The crew on your spaceship managed someone to get theirs hands on the secret Rebel plans that can turn the tide of battle. The problem is that the Federation base is many sectors away from your starting position, and to make it more fun; The entire Rebel fleet are chasing you with a reckless attitude.
Not only that, almost all the spaceship you meet on your voyage wants to kill you and use your spaceship for scrap materials.

OK so that was the story behind it, but what about the game and whatnot?
The first thing that happens when you start up a new game is how you can rename the crew and spaceship, You can change the layout or choose a different ship (although you need to finish the game or do certain achievements to unlock them). All the ships have different weapons, layout and looks. You can choose between Easy and Normal, get used to die, because this ain't a happy place when you try it for the first few times.
The start is in a sector where you have to jump from location to locations until you're at the far end of that sector and to phase to a new one. From time to time you will get some distress calls, ambushes, quests and stores.

TO THE COMBAT! 

The combat in FTL is something new (in my eyes at least), you start with 3 crew members and you need to assign them to different locations on your ship, of course you need a pilot but you also need someone to control the weapons and shield, so you send them all around the ship.

The combat starts with you FTL to a new location, there are times you get ambushed, you got the upper hand or simply the enemy is trying to escape. You have the ship's energy that you need to assign to certain utilities on the ship, at the start you probably need to turn of the power on the first aid station to power up all the weapons for a full attack on the enemy ships or to power up your shield so you can survive the attack. The start is the "best" part since you need to think on how you want to engage the enemy ship.

There is a small speed boost to pick up when you assign people to different posts, for an example how the weapons recharge faster when you have a gunner there, and the shield if you have someone working on that post.

To be honest what makes this game is so addictive, is when you start to play you'll just tell yourself "i'll just play one game" and BAM, you've played through the day/night with no clue of what time it is. After you've failed a couple of times and learned how the game works, you've probably paid attention to how the games you've played haven't been exactly the same, maybe the distress call wasn't there the last time, or how you get attacked by a bunch of pirates so often.
This game take a small time to get used to, but when you do it's a game worth playing forever!

And not to forget the setting, the music, sounds and looks! 
First of all, the graphics are so well done, everything goes so well hand in hand.
The music is really enchanting, when I listen to it while i play i get this wanted feeling, or that I'm in space, ready to fight whatever that's out there.
The sounds are the classic "MIDI" sounds but on purpose, making it even better!

oh great... I started playing it again!
oh well, this should make up for the "Friday indiegame" I hope, and dont forget to +1 the hell out of this one if you want me to keep up the 'good' work ;D

Zombie Games: Left 4 Dead

Right! I got my Coffee and my music, the plan is to make posts about zombie games. So many games, so little time! So let's get this started and hope there isn't a zombie horde waiting for me outside when I'm done!

We've all loved a good zombie movie or TV show, just look at The walking dead; great show and a great game!

But zombie games, we hate them, we love them! We have games that make you a zombie, we have games where you're the survivors. Who doesn't love a great story about a group trying to fight their way through a horde of zombies, praying to whatever gods they believe in to help them reach the safe zone/house/room. Even when the chances are slim that they will survive the oncoming slaughter.

But since I'm a co-op person, I'll be talking about the games with multiplayer/co-op.

Let's start with one of my favorites:

LEFT 4 DEAD

Made by Turtle Rock Studios, Valve bought them during development. Thanks to that it's using the Source engine we all love so much.

"Pennsylvania suffers an outbreak of 'Green Flu'; a highly contagious virus causing extreme aggression, mutation to the body cells, and loss of higher bran functions.

Two weeks after the first infection four immune survivors---Bill, a Vietnam veteran; Zoey, a college student; Louis, an IT analyst, and Francis, an outlaw biker---make their way through the city of Fairfield, only to discover that the virus is creating more dangerous mutations. After narrowly avoiding these new infected, along with horde of others, the survivors are alerted to the presence of an evacuation point at the nearby Mercy Hospital roof by a passing helicopter. Fighting their way through the city's streets, subway and sewers." 

You can read more about it here, although i recommend you to play it rather than reading the wiki and to spoil the story about it all.

What makes this a good game is the mechanic and story, how the co-op works together as you can knock off zombies that's trying to feast on your friend, to even work as a team to take down a huge zombie called 'TANK'. Not only that, the Characters you even have conversation with each other as you were just sitting there watching a movie.

The gamemodes:

Campaign (Singleplayer) - It's self explanatory really, you play all alone but with AI characters who follow you around, they might be stupid but they have the reaction of a snake! The only issues with the AI is how stupid they are when they see a Witch and could get a lockdown on trying to run around her by running in circles (atleast that's what happened to me!)

Campaign (Co-op)  - The cooperative campaign consists of up to four human-controlled survivors who attempt to make their way between safe rooms and eventually to rescue. In this mode, the special infected are controlled by the AI.

Versus - A versus campaign, each team of one to four players plays each chapter of the campaign as both survivor and infected, swapping sides once per chapter. Unlike campaign mode, dead survivors do not respawn. If at least one player-controlled survivor finishes the level, the survivor team earns 100 points as well as bonus points based on their health and the health items in their inventory. These points are then multiplied by the chapter's difficulty level, and the number of survivors who finished. If all player-controlled survivors are killed, the survivor team only earns points according to their average progress through the chapter and the difficulty multiplier.

Survival mode - This is a timed challenge where players try to survive as long as possible against a never-ending flood of the infected. (added in April 2009 in the Survival Pack downloadable content.)

When you've finished all the missions, you can check out the comic.
I do recommend you play it before you read. 
!SPOILERS! THE SACRIFICE !SPOILERS!

LEFT 4 DEAD 2

This is the Sequel of the famous  FPS shooter LEFT FOR DEAD, but now it's about 4 others that have survived the pandemic of an infectious disease that rapidly transforms humans into zombie-like creatures and mutated forms that demonstrate extreme aggression towards non-infected.

"Few humans are immune to the disease, still carrying the infection but showing no symptoms. The Civil emergency and Defence Agency (CEDA) and the U.S. military create safe zone to attempt to evacuate as many American survivors as possible.

Left 4 Dead 2 introduces four new survivors---Nick, Ellis, Coach, and Rochelle, who are immune to the disease and have individual back stories that are provided through character dialogue. While the game is intended as a continuation of the original, occurring one week after the first game begins, Valve decided to create a new group of Survivors because of the change in location."

You can find more about the story here

Now let's talk about the gameplay; they have learned from the bad things from L4D (if there is any!) new weapons and they also implemented melee weapons for those who like to see the heads and body parts fly.

The gamemodes:

Campaign (Singleplayer) - This one is the same as the first game, you play alone with AI  characters that will help you if you get grabbed by any special infected, but they will move so fast you can't even blink before they are trying to save your butt, compared to the first game AI has been improved.

Campaign (Co-op)  - You and 3 other friends fight your way through the infested city to reach the safe zone. With this you will fight AI special infected, from difficulty easy to expert. Easy is too, well, easy! But 

Campaign (Co-op) Realism - Realism is meant for people who play frequently together online. By this it gives the friends a huge challenge on almost everything! You will not respawn (unless your friends have a defibrillator), head shots are instant kills, outlines on friends are gone, the Witch will KILL any survivor they hit, regardless of the difficulty (not on easy).

Versus - Up to four other human players take control of various Special Infected to try and prevent the Survivors from completing a stage. Special Infected are randomly assigned to Infected players; they cannot control the Witch or any Common Infected. Occasionally, as determined by the "AI Director", players will become the Tank. The two teams swap sides once per stage, and are scored based on their stage progress as Survivors. If both teams make it to the safe room with all four Survivors, a 25-point tiebreaker is awarded to the team that dealt the most combined damage as Special Infected.

Survival - A timed challenge where the Survivors are trapped in a section of the campaign map, and try to survive as long as possible against an unending onslaught of infected. This is a great training of communicating with your friends.

Scavenge - A new 4-on-4 mode that requires the Survivor players to collect and use as many fuel cans scattered about a level to fill up a power generator, while the Infected players attempt to stop them

The Zombie genre is one of my favorites, as long as they have co-op in it. Mostly because I like to work together with friends to beat a game, or just to have fun and maybe some scary moments with them! Not only that, I do love the typical zombie apocalypse theme where we're all lost and you have to trust the ones around you to survive.

Yes, you guys are probably mad because I haven't added DayZ to this post, but relax! I will make a huge one about that, just you wait! If not... I bet it wont be zombies by my door, but DayZ fans! (Ha! I'm funny...)

Team Fortress 2

This is the sequel of the great Mod: Team Fortress, originally based on the FPS Quake that came out in August 24, 1996.
October 9, 2007 the game saw it's light once again but now it was a game made by Valve Corporation with a Source engine remake.

Why in the god's name am I talking about a 6 years old game? 
well, because it's still alive with all the hats and updates! They are still updating the game with new game modes, items and maps! The latest update came December 20, 2012. And I bet they got more to come!
Sure I must admit the player rate have gone down since the release but there are still players playing it! And thanks to Valve for going F2P on this game which increased the player rate again.

The story behind it all:

"The game was announced in 1998, and was first powered by Valve's GoldSrc engine, but it changed as it passed through several different design stages. In 1999, the game appeared to be to be deviating from it's predecessors by pursuing a more realistic and militaristic style of game play, but its design metamorphosed over an eventual nine-year development period. The final rendititon sports cartoon style visuals influenced by the art of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell and is powered by the Source engine.
The game itself revolves around two teams, each other access to nine distinct characters, battling in a variety of game modes set in different environments or maps, often with a factory-warehouse theme.

The lack of information or apparent progress for six years of the game's original development caused it to be labeled as vaporware, and it was regularly featured in Wired News' annual vaporware list among other ignominies. Upon its release, the game received critical acclaim and several awards, being praised for its graphical style, balanced game play, humor and for its use of full character personalities in a dedicated multiplayer-only game."

You can read more about the background of it all here (wikipedia)

















What is Team Fortress 2?

Team fortress 2 is a Multi player-only game that is based on teamwork, Attack and Defend,  Control points, Capture the flag, Payload, Payload Race, King of the hill, Special Delivery Or the new "Co-op survival" Mann Vs Machine.

Let's not forget the Cosmetics! You got hats, socks, cigars, backpacks, scarfs, medals, balloons, "pets" and paints, a whole crap of stuff just to make your character look awesome/horribly ugly. Certain items do have a set bonus, but it's not overpowered in any way, like the game Battlefield heroes is.

Let's start with the typical Game play that we have all seen in games:

Capture the flag - This is mostly what I remember from Team Fortress Classic really, Trying our best to take the enemy flag back to our base and defend ours. What really makes this a different type of game play in the Team Fortress series is that you have engineers that can set down turrets that automatically attacks enemies in a specific area, which makes this more or less "challenging" for a fast type of class to grab the flag and run.

King of the hill - ah the typical "hold this area for a certain number of minutes" game mode. Not my cup o' tea, but it works for a couple of rounds before rotating to a different game type. For me it concentrates too much on 1 spot rather than a whole map.

Attack / Defend -  When the team works together it really pays off, especially if you are attacking. This is where it all begins, the RED team defends the points and the BLU tries to take it. There is 2 points total for every "phase" of the map (it might be different on certain maps, Community made for an example.)

Payload - This must be my favorite, BLU tries to push a bomb cart to the drop off point, while the RED tries to stop them. The deal here is that it's not like carrying a bomb to a bomb site like you do on CS, here you need to push a cart that goes on tracks, which makes it more needed for the teams to teamwork to push the payload to the checkpoints and the goal. If the payload is not touched/pushed for a certain amount of time, it will slowly go backwards toward the last checkpoint/start. Beware though! If you are pushing it uphill and die/go away from the payload, it will slide back down to the foot of the hill, which makes it a pain at certain choke points.

Payload Race - 2 teams. 2 carts. Basically the same as Payload but here you need to push your cart as well as stopping theirs before it reach it's goal. in my eyes this is a havoc, because mostly wants to push theirs and ignores the others, which can easily ruined if a player sees the opportunity to stop the enemy team.

Control Points - The goal for this game mode is to capture all points to win, sounds easy enough? Well it's not, both teams start with 2 control points each and 1 locked neutral, after a set amount of time the locked neutral point becomes available and the fight begins. You cant capture a point that is behind the enemy lines, you always need to capture the one closest to yours. Which makes this game mode bearable with the back and forth, even when the fight seems lost you can turn it around. 

Special Delivery - A fairly new game mode for this game, 1 flag. 2 teams. 1 common goal.
The goal for this is pretty much to get the flag to the goal and it's done! Not exactly, it's usually something more horrible than that. Let me explain: When you get to the end, you have to actually wait for an elevator to get you to the top of the rocket, so you can put the flag into it, but wait, there is more! The top needs to be unscrewed, which then again takes time. If you lose the flag, the enemy team can't grab it until it's reset back to it's original place. So this game mode makes it pretty much back and forth pretty often, but not only that, in my eyes the maps are too small for it and too fast really.

And last but not least, my favorite!

Mann VS Machine - oh man, I jumped in excitement when I saw this trailer. TF2 finally had a Co-op Survival part, finally me and 5 other buddies could work together as a team to kill robots and stop them from deliver the bomb to the MANN CO. building. ahem... well there is also public too if you want, but the deal with this game mode is that you got "boot camp" which usually means it's a public server, where you don't get any reward at all if you finish. 

"MANN UP" is the Mann CO. server to earn Tour of Duty loot and bragging rights. By bragging rights they mean the Hats, backs and weapons you have a 100% chance to get one of them if you finish off 1 operation tour. I recommend you strongly to bring friends, bring friends and communicate because some of those waves are so horrible you want to throw a damn coffee mug all over the place when you fail and fail and faaail! Especially with randoms when they are so stubborn on being the class they want when they are the "lone wolf" in a party of 6. it's often I've had to change to a different class because of that.





Let me talk more about Mann Vs Machine and the costs of real money for it:

If you and all your buddies uses a "Squad Surplus Voucher" which gives 1 item per player when you finish off a mission, so that means you will get 6 extra items! 
But before you get excited; MANN UP Ticket costs 0,74 euro and the Squad Surplus Voucher costs 1,49 euro.

Waaaait! Don't rage yet! this is what makes it so awesome! You can trade weapons with other players to get scrap metal, or even scrap your weapons for metal. Metal has become the currency for the game, as long as they got the random item drop while you play. you gain "money" to buy tickets from players, hell you can even buy keys for the MANN CO. crates that drops, it's not often it's any good in them though since it's random drop but you see a list of the things what you can get.

So if you even think Team Fortress 2 is lame because you need to "Pay 2 Win" you're wrong, you're so wrong you should just beat yourself with your mother's frying pan until you see the hospital sign! The only thing Team Fortress 2 is selling is cosmetics, even them are tradeable and dropable.  Sure you got those tickets and keys, but you don't NEED to buy them to unleash a badass weapon, because they drop... and you can trade them... 

But let's see some of the expensive hats/items there is in the game:

HAT OF UNDENIABLE WEALTH AND RESPECT
oh man, i want this hat so bad! This was a reward for completing all 28 objectives in The Great Steam Treasure Hunt.

 
NOTCH!
yes, this is really Notch from Mojang, and this is a one of a kind hat just for him, which makes it really expensive and... well invaluable! it's non tradeable and nongiftable aswell.










THE GOLDEN WRENCH
This weapon got promoted in the Engineer update, players that crafted items at that time had a chance of receiving a Golden wrench. There is only 100 of these.
Official list Here

TEAM CAPTAIN with fire effect.
this beauty got sold for 1500 dollars, DOLLARS!  Why the hell some people will even pay this much for a virtual item is just... strange, well if I had the money for it, I bet i would just waste it as well.