By John Walker on August 19th, 2008 at 9:26 pm.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Meet The Sandvich
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Unlimited sandviches! I think I might give up my shotgun. I’m excited to see how it plays.
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This? Fills me with warm joy.
We’d pretty much guessed this was going to be Sandvich, but can you think of another game where a weapon would be replaced with food and have it make sense?
Plus, the video is glorious, and well deserverved after Meet the Scout.
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“Om nom nom nom nom.” But of course.
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“My blood! YOU PUNCHED OUT ALL MY BLOOD!”
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“Oh my god! I think he punched out all my blood!”
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Thank you Valve. You have given another free addon while generating new sales for TF2.
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For Christ’s sake Valve, just give us a TV series already.
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Name: Sandvich
Role: Edible Device
Weapons: Toothpick
He was a good lunch who played by the rules, until the rules robbed him of everything he ever loved. Now he’s lettuce, tomato, cheese, bread, and a mysterious slice of meat, marching down your throat and straight to hell. He’ll satisfy your hunger. FOR REVENGE!
oh lawl
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I want a poster of this to frame and put in my kitchen. Is that so wrong?
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Thank God for Om Nom Nom.
And yet again I consider risking the shittiness that is my PC + Team Fortress 2 for these splendid-lookin’ upgrades.
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Valve, as always, continue to impress.
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Copyright Om-nom-nom.
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I think “Meat the Sandvich” would have been a better title, but now all that’s left is to wait for the update proper, go sniper, and finally earn Grey Matter.
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And TF2 has jumped the shark!
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Epic, no other words, just epic…
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Oh well, I don’t anyone is going to miss the shotgun, are they?
OM NOM NOM
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TF2 has jumped the sandvich, and into the TOASTER!
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That just makes it sound like some sort of sexual innuendo.
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Absolutely superb video…
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@derFeef: No, not Epic. Valve!
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darthpugwash: Actually the Shotgun is quite useful when you are moving to the frontline of a map, as when an enemy jumps out at you the time it takes to ready your minigun is enough to be blown to pieces, whereas the shotgun will let you return fire straight away.
Also, SANDVICH!!!!!!!!
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“AAARRGGH MY SPINE!”
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best “Om nom nom nom” sound ever!
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Jesus, Valve does some things to TF2 I don’t like, but this is just hilariously good.
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That’s got to be the best “Meet The” yet.
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We knew it was coming but, as always, Valve’s execution was spot on. Here’s hoping the rest of the content will be of the same quality when we all get to sample it first-hand tonight!
I’m also after a poster-sized print-out, servitor… Nothing to be ashamed of there :)
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Server uses different class tables?
Are you insane?
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I’d like to get the poster, but I’ll be satisfied with my Portal poster signed by Gabe Newell and various other people at Valve. :D
EyeMessiah: That means the server hasn’t been updated yet.
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Ah well. I
designedguessed one out of three…Welcome to the picnic. OF DEATH.
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Hmm, downloaded the update and something doesn’t seem right already. Perhaps it’s got something to do with being awarded a handful of heavy achievements (including Konspicuous Konsumption) without even firing a shot or getting a stomach ache from overeating.
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“You call that breaking my spine? You red team ladies wouldn’t know how to break a spine!”
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AWESOME IN A BOX.
That final sequence… Words cannot describe.
Oh, and “COPYRIGHT OMNOMNOM”. Valve have once again toppled the pantheon of Olympus and given Chet and Eric control of funny.
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Valve are the new Matt Groening and TF2 is the new Simpsons.
:)
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Oh no, update servers are too busy! Still, I got in a bit of a game earlier this evening, decided to play heavy because nex time I play everyone else will be. One good thing about class rushes on updates is that it often makes another class very useful, such as medics after the pyro rush. I suppose snipers will really get the upper hand this time, which is a shame as I suck at sniper.
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WORLD OF BULLETS
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Would I be shot for stupidity if I tried to marry a game company?
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So what does the sandwich do?
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You call that breaking a spine?!
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“So what does the sandwich do?”
Behold! the top right corner!
or the link to the actual website.
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Sandwich Good!
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have you guys tasted the awesomeness that is Arena Mode? I had some of my best tf 2 moments ever playing ravine tonight.
Not a thing to do with CS, just pure, fast fun.
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You know what I just realized? In the meet the scout trailer, the heavy is actually wielding the shotgun and eating the sandwich at the same time. It makes me think that valve didn’t plan this beforehand. Anyways, how were rumors spread that the sandwich would be an unlockable, even before the achievements were announced?
Meh, TF2 vanilla….
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So I just jumped back into some TF2 today (suprise!) only to find out that the Backburner health up had been removed. That was probably my favorite part of the Pyro pack! Add to the fact that everyone is heavies, and it’s kind of like, all anyone needs to do is LOOK at me and I die. Hilarious!
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As I thought, arena is lame, the tf2 classes don’t fit, the gameplay feels awkward… but thankfully my favorite servers didn’t gave in, so I’m good xD
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Who else besides Valve could make gaming memes out of a cake and sandwich? Brilliant.
Seconded about the Sandvich poster. Spam Valve’s inbox with demands for one.
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Can’t say I’m liking Arena; it’s such a relief changing back to any of the other modes afterwards! Hopefully we’ll see the sawmill set attached to a more TF2-appropriate mode later.
As for the sandwich, well, as I was saying in the last thread, I still don’t see any virtue in an achievement unlocking system — if I don’t have any of the Pyro’s (my most played class) unlocks, I doubt I’ll ever be at the point where I can employ Natasha or the Heavy’s new sanger (or the boxing gloves or the Backburner or the flare gun or the Axtinguisher or the Bludzuiger or the Kritzkreig or…) Bloody pointless, and you wouldn’t think a team directed by Gabe ‘we want the player to experience every bit of our work’ Newell would entertain the idea.
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I really don’t see the problem with the unlock system…I got 2/3 of the Heavy unlocks today playing very casually (1-2 hours). I actually really like the time just after an update when I log onto a server and people are already doing great things with the new weapons. It allows me some “damn I want that!” time which makes the game even more fun for me.
I’m loving arena…not something I would want to play exclusively but it allows some scenarios you just don’t see in the other modes. Just a few minutes ago the sole player remaining on my team, a heavy, was capping the point when he heard footsteps, turned around and saw an ubered sniper rushing at him with the machete. The sniper beat the heavy down to a sliver of health before the uber wore off and the heavy tore him to shreads, only to be cut down by a few well aimed blutsauger needles. It was great.
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I was never very good at CS:S, what with it’s serious! headshot! gameplay, but Arena is a real hoot. In smaller matches, picking your team becomes very important – don’t ALL be heavies on it, or my sniper will rack up teh points.
Haven’t seen the alpine level yet, but cp_steel is awesome. Love the multiple route system.
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I’m not a big fan of unlockables, but I don’t really see many of the unlockables as big improvements. The class that got the best unlockables is probably the medic, where the medigun and the Ubersaw are both straight up upgrades (medigun doesn’t crit, but still). The Kritzkrieg isn’t that good.
For the Pyro, I feel the backburner is the only real upgrade, and that’s only if you haven’t mastered the blowback thingy of the regular gun. The axe might be good too, but not extremely useful. The flare-gun is fun for a while, but I definitely think there’s more to be gained from using the shotgun. For the heavy, the gloves are fun for crazy melee action, but not very useful. Natascha might be good, but from an hour and a half as other classes than heavy I ran into several situations where the guy would have killed me if he hadn’t gotten the damage reduction.
The Sandvich.. well, it’s awesome and fun, but how many times do you choose heavy when you don’t have a medic to heal you?
Still, I love Valve and I love TF2. And as a bit of a sniper-whore, this update is fun! :D
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@James T
Your ‘we want the player to experience every bit of our work’ argument doesn’t really apply how you think it does. In HL2, for example, you don’t get access to every gun and level right from the start you have to play through the game to ‘unlock’ them. This is what I believe is one of the things Valve are trying achieve with these unlockables, give that sense of progression you get from playing a single player game. You would have a point of the achievment bars had be set quite high but the required amount for the unlockable is easy for the player to achieve, all they have to do is play the game.
@Nimic
I don’t think Valve’s intention with the unlockables is to improve the classes drastically. It is simply just to give a few more options. Maybe you don’t like the flare gun, I prefer the shotgun too, but I have seen some people dominate with it so it depends on the player. Personally I use the Klitzkrieg Soldier combo quite often and if you Soldier is a good one the results are devestating.
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I would have preferred a portable ammo refill to a health one for the Heavy. I always have to go back for that first.
Play more! I have them all and my top three classes are Engie, Soldier, Medic.
And I’m not even very good.
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Argh! Steam servers too busy to launch…
Or should I say lunch?
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Not too busy! I’m getting the update through as I type!
Yay!
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Rock, Paper, Sandvich then? .-)
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Alarik wins.
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@ Angel Dust
Yeah, I know, you’re mostly right. I remember that Valve’s reasoning for the unlockables was just to give new ways of playing that, and I actually like that, even though it also in a way goes against Valve’s own policy of trying to make everything be as clear as possible. I don’t like it when there are clearly superior unlockables, like the Ubersaw. I’m fundamentally opposed to go to special grinding servers to get achievements, so if there’s something I’m not likely to get for a while that is clearly better, that irks me somewhat.
Of course, I’m also in a way fundamentally opposed to achievements at all. I definitely feel it makes some people change the goal of their playing from “have fun and win” to “grind and get achievements”.
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It’s a misguided goal; TF2 is not a single-player ‘quest’, with the experience modeled to be appropriate to the gradual acquisition of new weapons (or vice versa), it’s a game in which the ‘drama’ comes from the unfolding of MP battle — it’s far more comparable to, for example, Streetfighter than to HL2. Whether you’ve unlocked the material yourself or not, depriving opponents of alternative strategies because they’re not h4rdc0re enough has no positive effect (wide useage of memory hacks and achievement servers could — or do — counter this problem, but then, why have that artificial problem in the first place?). Never mind that the amount of class-grinding required for a significant number of these achievements (certainly if you want to make 15-plus, and thus have the rarified privilege of using, y’know, the heavily-promoted primary selling-point of these updates (well, I like getting the new maps too, but I digress)) is a strong incentive for people to play the game selfishly, grinding one class and faffing around trying to score kills in unlikely achievement-related ways whatever the actual requirements of the situation are (I can understand Valve wanting to provide an incentive for novel play-styles, but a guy paddling around under 2fort trying to get ‘Krazy Ivan’ isn’t doing anyone any favours). I generally play the class I think the team needs at the time, which spreads my experience across most classes, but dramatically slows achievement-gathering; I should be punished for playing Team Fortress 2 as part of a team?…
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I am entirely sold on Arena mode after playing the Lumberyard map for a while last night. Bloody excellent stuff – far more relaxed than normal TF2, somehow, yet at the same time it’s tense because of the lack of respawns. There’s still plenty opportunity for classic TF2 things like ninja pyro runs, and the heavy-medic team is still very potent, it’s just a one-shot thing now.
Also I really like the team-scrambling, and the spectating is fine because it’s only for about two minutes tops – I spectate more in normal matches from all that respawning.
All good, tbh.
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Right I still dont understand what the hell this does? The link tells you nothing. Is the toothpick the weapon? :|
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Eating the sandvich imobilises the Heavy for four seconds, but restores 120pts of health. The heavy has an unlimited supply of sandviches. The Heavy Update page has the details:
http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/sandvich.htm
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I take it back, the Sandvich is an excellent idea. I had it in my mind that this was a one-shot health top-up or a permanent addition to the Heavy’s total health, but this balance of durability and vunrability is a great idea well executed. I’m also glad to see that Valve have relaxed the design constraint of trying to develop upgrades that only make use of existing animations. Hopefully this will open the doors to other possibilities with future updates.
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Well, the Flare Gun didn’t exactly use shotgun animations, either.
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Um…
Anyone else hear a female voice in that video?
Don’t suppose….
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“you call breaking my spine?!?!”
this video warms my heart, i haven’t laughed so hard since meet the sniper and meet the scout before that.
As I play heavy almost to the point of excess I have asolutly no reservations on saying that valve have outdone themselves in creating new, interesting and BALANCED weapons. Those people must have heads the size of medicine balls.
I take off my freakishly oversized hat off to them.
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Playing on a server half-full of heavies is still fun, unlike the class spam of the previous two updates. Personally I’ve been picking up the last few medic and pyro achievements I need, mostly on badwater (which has no water?). It’s a very well balanced map overall, but it’d be better if there were: a way to drop into the tunnel at the start from above, since once the cart starts moving through there it’s hard to stop; and the final area made a bit easier, currently it’s a slaughterhouse.
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Last night the server I was on decided to go all heavys on the Lumberyard map, and meet at the log with the health kit for some 1 vs. 1 punching games, KGB optional. The server got up to around 10 vs. 10 and for about 30 min everyone followed the rules and waited patiently for their turn to hop on the log and punch it out. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much, it was hilarious. There were a few that even got the taunt kill while on the bridge…. POW!!!
I should have taken some screenshots but was too busy laughing to do so, :(
Also, I love the new Arena maps, and the scrambling of the team after 5 wins… really evens the game up. This is the best update so far.
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@James T
I would not agree that it is a misguided goal as it I have seen it draw people into the game, myself included, who would otherwise not be interested. Personally I don’t get into multiplayer games at all, as they seem rather aimless to me. I’m not saying they actually are, but they don’t satisfying my gaming itch. These unlockables however tap into that gradually progressing feel you get from a single player game, an RPG probably being the best comparison. I got the game with the Orange Box but didn’t really play it until the unlockables turned up and I know 2 people who finally made the purchase because of the unlockables.
Sure you get idiots who will just grind it out selfishly simply because they have to get the achievments right now but you can still easily, I did and I’m not that great a player at all, get what is required for the unlockables for each class with a couple of weeks of solid, smart team play. It kept me coming back to the game after I would have normally stopped playing. I never felt like I was missing out just because someone else had a weapon I hadn’t unlocked it simply motivated me to play more and the feeling of satisfaction after getting an achievement, particularly one that unlocks a weapon, is a great gaming high.
You obviously don’t like them and that’s fine but it’s clear the majority, new players included, do so I would say it is a very successful tactic from Valve. They are obviously still making a ton of sales from this game since they are releasing all this content, which would have been worked on laborously knowing Valve, for free.
I can see the logic in your argument but it simply doesn’t work that way. For most people these unlockables are a case of “dangling the carrot infront of the donkey”.
Who is that in your avatar by the way? They look familiar.
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