Team Fortress 2: Halloween 2012

I'm not a very big fan of Meat Fortress 2. I play it very infrequently, basically only coming back to it whenever there's a major, game-changing update (or whenever friends try to drag me back), and then quickly lose interest all over again. It's like an old acquaintance whom I occasionally speak to out of a sense of obligation, but I don't really enjoy doing so. But since Halloween is approaching and Valve released yet another seasonal event, I figured I'd check it out.

I never bothered with any of the previous Halloween events so I don't know how this one compares to events in the past, but this one just seems like a clusterfuck, full of rage and confusion. Speaking as someone who doesn't enjoy Steam Fortress 2 that much in the first place, the stuff in this event makes me like it even less. More of my pseudo-review of the Scream Fortress 2 Halloween 2012 event after the jump.

Mannaging in Mann vs Machine

I have a bitter relationship with Team Fortress 2. I tried to get into it a few times (once in 2008, then again in 2010) and just didn't see much lasting appeal in it. I'm not a big fan of PVP shooters in the first place, and once TF2 became a hat simulator I almost completely wrote it off. Then more and more of my friends started playing and I got dragged back into it. I still hold very mixed opinions of the PVP modes (sometimes it's real fun, other times it's stale and monotonous, other times it's pure rage-inducing), so my curiosity was piqued when a new co-op mode was released: Mann vs Machine.

The concept sounded vaguely similar to that of Killing Floor, a game in which I've invested hundreds of hours over the past two years; both are co-op shooters with six players per team, both task you with fighting waves of mindless droning enemies, and both have you spending collected money at a trader between waves. Essentially, Mann vs Machine is Killing Floor with TF2 classes and its own unique premise, and I think it has the potential to be a really great game mode. I've had a lot of fun with MVM over the past week, but I do have a few issues with it. Here's my pseudo-review of MVM.