The Game I've Been Playing Lately

This post, however unlikely it seems, is for you. I feel like videogames are sort of my arena and are my little world when I don't get to talk to you at night, so I thought I might share my little world with you.

You probably didn't know but there is a social network for games where you can play with friends. It's called Steam and it's very popular. Many of the computer game publishers publish their games on the network and you can buy and download them, instead of the traditional format of buying the games in-stores and on CD/DVDs. I haven't bought many games but one of the games that I've been playing lately is called Team Fortress 2, it focuses a lot on team work. There are two teams and usually the objective is to steal the enemy team's intelligence. The basic rules are that there are two bases, yours and the enemy's. The two team colors are red and blue so the bases are also colored accordingly, as are the characters. There are points where you can pick up packages to replace lost health and lost ammunition. After you consume these they are regenerated after a fixed period of time. The main goal is to collect the intelligence from the basement of the enemy base and return it to the basement of your base 3 times. Whichever team does this first wins. You get points for killing enemies, healing people, capturing the enemy intelligence and defending your intelligence from being captured. At the beginning of each game you are spawned in a 'safe area' where the enemy cannot enter and you can replenish your health and ammunition indefinitely. You can return to the safe area at any point. When you are 'killed' you are 'respawned' after a set period of time depending on the specific rules where you play (the details of the rules can be changed). Killing the enemy only has the advantage in that you slow them down slightly from capturing your intelligence and your team mates.

You can play as many characters:

a heavy weapons guy: he has a strong machine gun but he walks very slow. He also has a lot of health to compensate for his slowness. Russian nationality.

engineer: he builds stuff to help the team, these include automatic sentry guns, teleporters and resupply for ammunition and health. American nationality (midwest accent).

medic: he heals people. After healing people for a long time he can charge up an invulnerability ability, which he can employ to make the person he is healing invulnerable to enemy fire for a short period of time. This can be a great advantage when you need to storm the enemy base and get rid of many enemies or the engineer's sentry gun. German nationality.

spy: he can cloak to become invisible and he can destroy the engineers buildings, disguise as the enemy and backstab people (which instantly kills them, but only works when you sneak up from behind). Seems like the coolest character but people quickly start becoming paranoid and start shooting their own people because they think you're the spy. Once you get shot by the enemy your disguise is revealed. It's not easy being a spy. French nationality.

Scout: he runs really fast, he usually steals the intel but his firepower is weak. His main strategy is to hit and run to slowly wear down the enemy. American nationality (with a Boston accent)

pyro: shoots fire, is resistant to enemy flames. He's pretty fast on his feet and is good for close range attacks. You can check for spies using your flames, when an invisible spy gets lit on fire he become visible. Your flames will continue to damage the enemy until they are put out by themselves, until your enemy is submersed in water or when you are healed either my the medic, items or by an engineer's building. This guy wears a full flame retardant suit, no one has any idea what his nationality is because his voice is muffled.

soldier: shoots rockets. He can either be a close range or far range fighter. His rockets are great for dealing with sentry guns or heavys since they deal a lot of damage. American nationality.

demolitions: shoots mines that explode on his command and shoots grenades. Arguably the most overpowered class. Since it is hard to aim grenade they do a lot of damage, but a lot of good players have already mastered the art of shooting grenades so they can be deadly. Using mines he can also be a very tactical player. He is a black Scottish man.

sniper: he can shoot people from afar. If you hit people in the head, the payoff for the difficulty of the shot is, of course, that you incapacitate the player. Australian nationality.

You can also talk and communicate, I usually just type shortcuts that allow me to communicate quickly, I find it weird to speak on my mic with strangers. The game tries to foster team work and usually the team that works well together and communicates best will win. The game regularly updates every few months with new 'maps' (locations to fight) and weapons for each of the classes. Each update is free and you can play the game indefinitely. The game also has an 'achievement' system where you can earn achievements based on your performance. This makes the game more social since you can share the list of your achievements with friends.

You can find my website with my achievements here -->Clickity click

You can also see how many hours I've been playing, about 2 hours on average for a weekday. Although this is much less than what many players play on other games, say World of Warcraft, I'd probably want to spend a little less time in the game. Also, unlike World of Warcraft there is no monthly fee, so I won't spend a fortune playing this game.

Just wanted to share my little world with you. I hope you gained some insight to my gaming habits. If you clicked on the website you'll see that currently my favorite character is the heavy weapons guy (aka the heavy). Each class has a different nationality and everyone, except the pyro, has a little video exposing their charcter. My character is dumb witted but powerful guy who loves nothing but firing his gun, he even named his gun Sasha. He has a strong Russian accent. The game makers have an interesting sense of humor. You can find the character expose videos --> here.

Even though you might not relate to the game the videos are quite funny.