Valve readies unlockable TF2 weapons

By Robert Purchese Published 24 January, 2008

And an entire new game mode.

Valve has leaked details of its bulging content package for Team Fortress 2, which will be stuffed with unlockable weapons and a fresh game mode.

As reported by PC Gamer, you'll have to earn a certain amount of achievements within a class to get the weapons. You'll then be able to select them from a new Loadout menu.

The only example given so far is the new Overhealer for medics. This contraption permanently boosts your target's health at the expense of being rubbish at building Ubercharge.

And that trade-off is similar across the board; these are far from beefed up versions of the standard arsenal, rather tactical options with unique pros and cons.

Elsewhere the fancy new game mode involves escorting a mine cart through various segments of a map. Simply, the more of your team stand next to it the faster it will go. But when a single opponent stands in your path its progress grinds to a halt, so you will have to murder them to get it going again.

Naturally this brings with it all sorts of tactical considerations as you pass over different terrain. Engineers will have to rethink on the move and others will have to, er, do similar things with a bazooka or cosh or minigun or chloroform napkin or whatever you use.

These new bits and pieces are in the early stages of development and no date has been mentioned, although new Badlands and Goldrush maps are expected in just over a month.

Team Fortress 2 is fantastically fun, though, and you really should know that by now even if you haven't read our review.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (26) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • NickNack #1 4 years ago

    I bought the orange box on 360 about a month ago and haven't even played TF2 yet. I don't know why, I guess the same reason as every other 360 owner who has deserted this game, COD4...

  • drumm23 #2 4 years ago

    I still get really sh1tty lag with this game on Live, dunno if it's just my Irish sloooowband or what.

  • asphaltcowboy #3 4 years ago

    Loving this on PC during my lunchtimes and after work, can't wait for this update!

  • mallocks #4 4 years ago

    I'm slightly concerned that some of these additions might break the (I maintain) excellent balance in the game at the moment, but Valve haven't really stepped wrong with their game designs in the past so I guess I should just trust 'em.

  • DFawkes #5 4 years ago

    My favourite online shooter, with a new weapon for my favourite class. I just hope this gets a 360 release so I can do some Overhealing.

  • effinjamie #6 4 years ago

    still laggy, that and practically no one playing it.
    Took 1/2 an hour of hitting the find a quick match last night to get a game

  • smoison #7 4 years ago

    COD 4 has taken over my PC and won't let me play anything else....

  • JayPee #8 4 years ago

    When comparing the TF2 lobby system to the Halo 3 matchmaking, I can get in a more balanced game more quickly with Halo.

    If Valve had dome something nearly as good as the matchmaking in Halo 3 (or even Halo 2), TF2 might have had a chance. As is stands now, they are very unlikely to get new players into TF2.

    Not to mention the lag is usually awful.

  • skillian #9 4 years ago

    still laggy, that and practically no one playing it.

    The crappy game finder and lag have all but killed this game off on Live. Shame. :(

    Wow, I didn't know it had got that bad.

    It's such a great game - I wonder why the lag is so bad on Live when the netcode is obviously fine on the PC.

    edit: @JayPee: if the lag is "usually awful", surely the matchmaking wouldn't really make much difference.
    Edited by 1 at 24/01/08 @ 17:06

  • Abscido #10 4 years ago

    I find TF2 on Live is just fine, albeit hard to get the match you want sometimes, but otherwise there's generally always a lag-free match available.

  • Feanor #11 4 years ago

    Is the lag on 360 partly because there's no dedicated servers for the game?

  • Guv #12 4 years ago

    haha, goldrush sounds like alot of fun

  • [menace] #13 4 years ago

    I hate achievements and unlockables..

  • DudBug #14 4 years ago

    It can take a few minutes to get into a game on TF2 on Xbox Live (certainly nothing like the quality of Halo 3's service), but I do get usually get into a decent game within that time period - and that's bearing in mind that I always play in matches of between 12-16 people. I have barely played anything on my 360 recently and, given a choice, I play it instead of Super Mario Galaxy, which I also love and haven't yet finished.

  • orakio #15 4 years ago

    only for the 1337 then...
    Would have liked to see the unlockables being available to people with a certain amount of matches or points on their account.
    And only for their favourite class

  • Turambar #16 4 years ago

    "I'm slightly concerned that some of these additions might break the (I maintain) excellent balance in the game at the moment, but Valve haven't really stepped wrong with their game designs in the past so I guess I should just trust 'em."

    I assume you play as soldier then.

  • Tyedyed #17 4 years ago

    I just hope these additions make it to the red headed stepchild PS3 version! Theres still an active community playing it on EAs servers.

  • CARL05 #18 4 years ago

    maybe valve's also fixing the 360 TF2?

    *fingers crossed*

  • Davemanz #19 4 years ago

    @warzin:

    TF2 probably runs fairly well on mid-ranged systems (it's probably Source's best quality) but the requirements are higher than the requirements for HL2. The lowest video card it will run on is an X800 or a 6800 so if you have those or better it'll run. I'd suspect it runs well. And the netcode is flawless. I play the game daily (nightly, rather) and haven't run into servers that lag, neither on my fast connection at home or my slow connection at school. There are well over a thousand active servers so there are bound to be some good pings for you as well.

    I'm hesitant to be excited about the changes to the game but I trust Valve have tested all the ideas a lot and have made them balanced.

  • Raiftel #20 4 years ago

    TF2 is an awesome game, me and my friends play it pretty much every night from 10pm-2pm. I can host 6 vs. 6 matches and we tend to play for fun more than anything else, if anyone wants a few matches just send me a friend request (GT Raiftel) and I'll invite you to as many games as possible (the extra people would be welcome because getting a match can take forever, I usually have to lure people in with 2Fort and then switch to Dustbowl)


    I do hope this new stuff comes to the 360, mainly because it'd do a good job of reviving what is a flagging game. For my money TF2 still offers some of the funnest Multiplayer you'll find and it's a real shame it's being killed by a waining community.

  • Mr_Brown #21 4 years ago

    Lag isn't that bad on Live and I never have any trouble finding games, especially on quick match. Sure its not always easy finding specific levels but theres plenty on games to choose from (especially on 2Fort).

  • Schiraman #22 4 years ago

    TBH I'd be more interested in hearing about some proper balance fixes and more maps for the existing modes. Although TF2 is a lot of fun at its best, it tends to get repetitive fast and certain tactics (turret farming, for instance) just suck all the fun out of the game.
    Edited by 1 at 25/01/08 @ 09:51

  • rudedudejude #23 4 years ago

    ah, it appears another game of which the pc version triumphs over the conkerty consoles.

    But yes, the game is one of the most well-balanced multiplayer games I've played for a while. I'd be worried about how this finely tuned balance maybe affected.

    http://ww w.eurogamer.net/forum_thread_po...

  • Trikk #24 4 years ago

    Unlockables are retarded, why the hell would I want to grind pointless tasks to be able to use all weapons in multiplayer? I guess it's something for the newbies to drool over, but it's really a pointless feature.

    Oh and for the people who bitch about the console versions: you bought an FPS for console. Do you really expect people to play it when there's a PC version out?

  • asphaltcowboy #25 4 years ago

    @Trikk, I highly doubt any of the achievements to gain unlockables are "pointless grind", this isn't WoW for goodness sake! Obviously each achievement will related to each character class (eg. the sniper achievement in-game already relates to headshots, the medic's related to amount of HP healed etc). Silly comment!

    The game is well balanced, I imagine Valve will have done a good job of ensuring these new additions will keep things that way!

  • SomaticSense #26 4 years ago

    These new bits and pieces are in the early stages of development and no date has been mentioned, although new Badlands and Goldrush maps are expected in just over a month.

    Assuming that Valve stick with the 'one game mode per map' thing, then surely this new game mode will be tied into the new maps? If so, then they'll surely be out at the same time.

    I'm not sure about the sound of the new game mode to be honest, but the game deserves some extra content and Valve have already made it by far the most balanced and enjoyable online shooter on Live that I trust that it'll work alright.

    They really need to sort out the lag and host disconnections though. To be fair, there are some days where in a couple of hours I'll only play a couple of games which suffer from proper lag (the unplayable, teleporting, character freezing type) when only enterting lobbies with the highest ping.
    The host disconnections have gotten far worse though that it is an inherent problem that puts me off even bothering putting the disc in the drive at times. Over about 10 games, about 7 or so will end prematurely due to disconnection. It really needs sorting so bad that I have even started to question Valve's apparent 'care for the gaming community' that they always preach about given that they still haven't sorted it.

  • neuroniky #27 4 years ago

    I've got an Athlon 2800+, 1 Gig Ram with a Geforce 6800 and it runs verrrrrrry smoothly, you just don't have to go overboard with some advanced details. It still looks great even when not at the maximum detail level, but I still would prefer using it on a 360 because of the advantage of playing on a big screen.

    Still, the game is much better on the PC. The net code is better, and you have a much greater number of server to choose from. But what really makes the game better is that on the PC the competition is much higher and people playing are definitely better at it, and this actually makes the game a lot better, cause it really makes battles much more intense. It is also a game where you can start as a noob and actually learn the game by sticking near the top players, in example by starting as a medic, or where you can make yourself immediately useful by using your previous experience with other online games, in example by playing the soldier if you loved Quake 3.