The problem with most steampunk is how it’s laboriously constructed, rather fragile, doesn’t actually do anything and the makers get really annoyed when you blow it up.  But Default Games are far better than other nerds, building an entire Unreal Tournament world with the express intention of blowing boilers to pieces.

Steam Racers is a free mod which teleports the whole world of UT3 to Opposite Land.  Unreal characters are the manliest looking characters in gaming, even the women.  Especially the women, who can most kindly be described as “lumpy men” and least kindly as “mobile shiny beef piles”.

The face of Unreal femininity and/or the horrors of hormone therapy.

They’re ancestors of the Gears of War characters, who look half-gorilla as it is, except UT3 characters think even cover is for pansies.

You mean you hid behind things? So where’s your frilly little dress, fruitcake?

But the world of Steam Racers is simply spiffing.  Well-dressed gents battling it out in a sportsmanlike - if still extremely explosive - manner with the idea that the best man may win.  Where “best” is conveniently defined as “He who beats his rivals to the finish line, or into exploded pieces, taste permitting.”

This may be the best death screen ever

The designers understand the true joy of nerve-wracking racing, where everyone should be able to blow up your vehicle - especially you!  The core mechanic is boiler temperature, with unlimited weaponry and boosters constantly heating your engine towards explosion.  Temperature can be dropped by slacking off or aiming for one a cooling tower, creating exciting all-or-nothing charges at the enemy with accurate steering the difference sweet victory and ignominious, if still pretty sweet, steam explosion.

(Fans of blowing yourself to pieces to go faster should also check out D.I.P.R.I.P., a Mad Max-style HL2 mod with even more weapons but a regrettable absence of heated-water-power.)

I appear to be on fire!  My options are now “Hit that cooling waterfall” or “Explode.”

You have to emerge on foot to pick up mines, take charge of emplaced turrets, repair your vehicle with the Impact Hammer or just find a new (non-detonated) steam engine.

Wood-effect paneling, comfy seat, gramophone music, and twin machine guns.  Comfort!

Four modes emphasize the different styles of play, with the usual “Anything goes”, “Racing” and “Combat”, but the most interesting is “Baron Of The Tank” - a Terminator-style mode where there’s one fully upgraded Scotch Boiler (the Steam Racing equivalent of “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough) and all the other players must take it down with unarmed vehicles, hand weapons, and as stiff upper lip.

The Monowheel - you either want to drive one of these or don’t get it

The mod is free to download and can easily be applied to any UT3 server.  Alas, there are very few public servers, but it’s a perfect alternative for any established Unreal Tournament clan who want to lighten things up for a session.

Pip pip!

Updates to Team Fortress 2 are like visiting the dentist with a toothache - soon things will be so much better, but right this second they suck and hurt. I’m especially affected by the Engineer update, which arms my favorite class with even more awesomeness but making it utterly impossible to play for at least a fortnight. Because it isn’t TF2 anymore, it’s

Every update triggered a tidal wave of the title class - from the Scottish hordes to the Super Scout Squads, but all the others established an ecology. When the Medic Update dropped, Spies had a simply splendid time

The doctor will see you now AND SHOVE A KNIFE IN YOUR BACK!

but by the Heavy update those same Spies were hunted by Pyros

A food chain

Each update established an entire food chain, and while there were still far too many of one class to even say anything rhyming with “balanced play,” it was still fun - it was almost a Mutation (like Left 4 Dead 2), and at least everyone learned about the new weapons at the same time.

But the Engineer update isn’t like that. It’s like a locker room full of straight men all trying to get laid - the more of them there are, the less they can get what they want even if the chance appears. Most of the Engineer’s arsenal is locked behind actual defensive achievements - and you can’t earn those when the opposing team is also doing more engineering than Scotty, LaForge and Torres put together.

Worse, there was about as much chance of establishing an ecology as there is on the surface of the Sun. Engineers stack like LEGO blocks, and against an army of them there’s nothing a Spy or Demo can do - sapping a point with five Engies is like throwing a snowball at a Pyro convention.

The only hope is to assemble an entire team of Medic/Heavy-or-Demo combos and attacking at the same time, and on a public server there’s as much chance of that as of getting the complete works of Shakespeare out of three monkeys with a crayon. It’s just not fun, which is why private servers - or simply stopping playing for a while - are the only options.

Two teams of Engies are about as entertaining as an Eyeball Gouging Competition where you’re the battlefield. Attacking Engies are ordinarily a Highlander factor - there can only be one, and even then only if he’s very good - but now we’re seeing armies of BLU building irrelevant, outdated equipment in the hope of being rewarded. Especially 2Fort - if you’d said it could become even more deadlocked last week you’d have been laughed at, but now it’s a staler mate than a tie on a bread-based chess board.

No, YOU come over HERE!

The words are ashes in our mouths, but this may be the first time in history achievement servers are justified. Sure, they may be antijoy factories turning games into unpaid labor, but at least it’ll transport all these neverwannabe Engies to the hell they deserve.

And I can get back to kicking ass with a Wrench.

The latest advertisement for the hottest game hits gametrailers, you hear about it on one of the dozen identical regurgitation sites on your feed list, load it up, click “Of course in HD you idiot machine” and immediately start drooling over something you can’t quite have instead of the dozen things you do.  I’m guilty a dozen times over, and only recently have I asked “What on Earth am I doing?”  Also: “What the hell is wrong with me?”

Gaming cosplay articles are where substandard gaming bloggers show how much they wish they worked on Maxim (For Men), or Poorly Constructed Sexual Metaphors By People Who’ve Never Been Involved In The Process (For Virgins). For every awesomely engineered Big Daddy there are ten thousand shots of Cammy’s ass described in terms which would make a horny chef blush, and every single one seems to think they’re the first to think of saying how they’d like to “Cannon Drill” it.

That’s why we’re looking at five fan-made efforts with nary a sex organ in sight. Which means we’re not only alone among cosplay collections, but may be unique among websites.

1. Amazing TF2

Ryan Crasmussen and Grep Peltz utterly utterly destroy Hollywood in a single shot, and despite holding a rocket launcher that refers to a camera. Movies can’t make game characters look good despite access to millions of dollars and Milla Jovovich (who can make orange plastic dungarees look amazing). Ryan and Grep managed it in their spare time.

You didn’t/won’t look this good on your wedding day.

The most important is the incredible photography work of Alex Tkatcheva: unlike everyone else on the internet, it’s nice to see some people understand there’s a reason professionals don’t use blurmatic cameraphones to share sights with the world..

This may be the first time in history anyone has happily exclaimed “Look at those grenades!”

2. Really Left 4 Dead

If these guys looked any realer I’d start headshotting hoodies on sight

Seattelite cinephiles, as well as sounding like they watch movies in space, are part of the mix making zombie production Night Zero. It’s as photorealistic as a comic can be because it’s actually real photos, shot on location (and more professionally than you’ve ever done anything) before being touched up for final release. The sign of a real creators, however, is how they don’t hide from other incredible products in the same field - they engage with them.

She’s now the obsessive fantasy of at least one person. Welcome to the internet.

They turned their talents to Left 4 Dead, recreating the ultimate zombie killing game in gritty detail and releasing the shots just to prove how good they are. That’s how you make it online, and now far more people know about Night Zero - and think it’s cooler - than if they’d whined about doing it first or “better”.

I’ve never put this much effort into Left 4 Dead and killing zombies is my job.

3. Counter-Strike

This may be the greatest cosplay of all time.

Sure, anyone can collect the necessary clothes, spend ninety-nine cents on the fakest gun since you drew one on Etch-a-Sketch*, and hunch around a convention like “Keyboard-based Spine Deformation” and “Dodging bullets” were the same thing, but this man has the true spirit. He genuinely looks like he wants to kill you. That’s a simmering cauldron of repression, rage, and hastily assembled equipment intended for just one function. He couldn’t me more of a Counter-Strike terrorist if his elbows were pointed.

You must suppress every junior high urge to not give him back his orange-tagged backpack.

*Escher-style angled clip projecting out to one side extra!

4. The Heavy

At conventions TF2 cosplay isn’t just popular, it’s practically a nationality (just count the number of scouts vs the number of Ghanans at any event). Something about the slick cartoon style just lends itself to awesome group shots, but none have ever beaten this:

And just this once, we’ll admit to staring open mouthed at that beautiful girl: Sascha. If you were looking at anything but the minigun, there’s something wrong with you. Props are where most TF2 attempts fall flat (RED or BLU clothes aren’t that hard to find), but one is so un-flat it’s a fizzy Mt Everest. The reast of the Heavy costume is also excellent, is appallingly good, but if she’d turned up in a business suit and a judge’s wig Natascha alone would still have made it work.

BONUS: From the same photoset by frzdragon, more backstabbing than Judas Iscariot in a Tom Clancy novel.

5. GoldenEye

Transcending mere costumes is College Humor, who truly capture the spirit of GoldenEye - one of the most important games in FPS history. The N64’s incredible Bond game kicked the entire concept of shooting people in the ass (the manliest sentence you’ll read today) and showed that controllers could be tolerated in a good enough game long before Halo. They don’t just dress the part, they don’t just play the characters, they truly capture everything about the game in two minutes.

There are two types of gamers in the world: those who know Valve are the best, and those who haven’t played Portal (also known as “fools”). Obviously we’re enjoying Team Fortress 2, excited about the upgraded Counter-Strike, and looking forward to Episode 3 (and its inevitable inclusion of a Portal gun), but which other games should be given to Valve?

5. Final Fantasy

Square Enix have defined what it means to be a JRPG, selling almost a hundred million units, but that definition is seriously skewed. They’ve perfected the apparently important fields of androgyny, pointless minigames, and playing dress-up with electronic Barbies, but they’re worse writers than Stephanie Meyer after headbutting Dan Brown. Which is odd, because:

- If you want us to Play a Role in a Game, ideally you would make the characters engaging/not retarded

- Every Final Fantasy game contains more text than a special edition of War and Peace with an insurance warranty.

The only place a row of dots have in videogaming is Pac-Man’s maze.

Just imagine: a Final Fantasy game where the text was entertaining and relevant, where the cut-scenes were as good as “Meet The Spy“, and where equipping a hat could actually made your character better at things!

+2 to resist fire, -1 to mmhhmm-hmm

4. Starcraft: Ghost

If you haven’t heard of Ghost, you aren’t Korean or someone who really cares about FPSes.

Claiming to like cool games but not knowing about this armor is a blatant contradiction.

It was to be a third-person shooter set in the StarCraft universe, which has absorbed more man-hours and energy than most of the real actual universe. It’s also more delayed than “Christ 2: The Return.” First announced in 2002, it’s been through around more development companies and release dates than most videogame journalists, and is currently listed as “cancelled” by anyone even pretending to pay attention to reality.

So give it to Valve! They’re rather good at this whole shooter thing, they’re great at giving female characters actual character instead of skintight lycra, and with them the eight-year delay will look normal!

Ghost is currently suffering a fate worse than death: a book-of-the-not-even-game

3. Kid Icarus

We don’t care who makes it now as long as somebody does.  And since Nintendo seem to be really really busy with, er, both of the other massively popular franchises they still actually develop, why not let Valve have a crack?

Give him a double-jump, tell him to kill vegetables and we’re golden.

2. Modern Warfare

Did you know that Valve release multi-million selling award-winning games, and then

- People can actually play those games online, and it works?

- Valve don’t publicly cheat and fire people responsible for making the games?

- The rest of their staff don’t then jump ship like freed slaves?

- Valve’s games only feature the standard number of online cheating scumbags, not a scumbag wrath as unto Moses unleashing an electronic plague of hackers on some kind of online gaming Pharaoh?

- They release new levels for free, instead of charging $15 for levels (including levels you already paid for in previous games)?

Because Activision don’t! And they (used to employ the people who) make amazing games like Modern Warfare!

1. Every EA Sports Game

The X-chromosome seems to screw up computer games by sheer proximity, and we’re not talking about mutant Magnetos electrocuting the hardware. One’s fine, but two together destroy characterization, removes focus on gameplay, and seems to evaporate all clothing beyond the g-string grade. A while back we saw the five worst attempts at forcing girls into games, and it’s evidence enough to convince an alien court to vaporize every testicle on the planet.

This week we’re looking at the opposite: excellent additions which understand that maybe it’s possible for females to wear things which cover their midriffs, or even function like real clothes instead of sparkly wrapping for a T&A buffet!

1. The TF2 Medic

Frau Doctor is fantastic, a model which really recognises the unique style of TF2’s eternally-in-demand übermensch.

The Doctor will see you now. And she doesn’t like it.

The only problem is that since she’s doesn’t seem to be displaying any sex organs in plain sight, many modelers might have difficulty recognising her as a female. “It has a higher-pitched voice but nothing jiggles!” they wail, before going back to drawing nude Cheetarahs. It’s worth noting that such scribbles have a tendency to suck…

“I couldn’t fit the other set of stripper models in the screen shots” - actual description of a custom Specialists skin

…while this fully clothed character was created as part of a Masters thesis. Just in case the inverse intelligence/want-to-shoot-at-exposed-breasts relationship wasn’t clear enough.

2. Unreal Samus Aran

You want a strong female character? How about an armored warrior holding a giant gun WITH ANOTHER GIANT GUN?

Her right hand is holding more weapon than the Hulk scratching himself

A custom skin for Unreal Tournament 3, and possibly the coolest thing in it. As well as standard levels of Retro-Joy, the distinctive color scheme is a seriously welcome relief from the spectrum of “Brown, Grey, Blood Red and Bits of Black” dominating almost every modern shooter. And while she can’t convert into her morph ball here, neither has she been “upgraded” by people who grew up fantasizing over her first games into a skintight lycra showgirl. Unlike actual Nintendo games, unfortunately.

3. CS Female Urban

Another excellent example of clothing restraint is Counter-Strike’s female urban counter-terrorist, thought that could just as easily be technical limitations. Running on the original Half Life engine, any attempt to render breasts would have given her two extra bladed weapons, as well as the ability to cut parallel lines in glass by pressing against it.

We’re one white fill effect and an i away from an Apple advertisement.

4. Joanna Dark

If you’re unclear on why the Carrington Institute would enter their agents in an Unreal Tournament, it was part of a brave attempt to update UT with a Perfect Dark mod. Which would easily have been one of the best things ever. It was abandoned, but the skins were saved and are available for download.

In their defense, none of them look happy about this.

Unfortunately it’s more an anatomy lesson in Epic’s inability to draw character models thinner than an oil barrel. Samus survived above because she wears a full suit of armor, but poor Joanna ends up looking like a human/giraffe hybrid who got stuck on a taffy-puller before battle commenced. But it’s still one of the best mods ever, because honestly, anything involving Joanna Dark that doesn’t end in “zero” is one of the best things ever.

5. Have a little Faith, pal!

Possibly the best cross-dressing crossover in videogaming history, the TF2 scout gets a fashion update from gaming’s greatest freerunner.

Man, if you thought sad people complained about her chest size before (and they did)

We admit it’s a tiny bit horrifying but it’s half-way to something spectacular: someone sorting out a full Faith conversion for the Scout model. Unfortunately we might be waiting a while, as most modelers are still too busy regressing the last ten years of character development by putting the Pyro in a bikini.

Wrongness on more levels than Dante’s Inferno

An even better, if less playable, rendition of the runner is in Half Life - where we finally explain exactly how a headcrab zombie can be so fast. After all, the resonance cascade opened up portals across reality - all we would need is one in New Eden. And for a headcrab to hang around a red drainpipe for a while.

Sniper rifles start a lot of arguments online (the exact opposite of their real world function).  The ultimate expression of what guns are meant to do - kill someone else from so far away that the word “fair” would need a satellite to see it - they’re a worse balance problem than a one-legged camel.  If they’re realistic everyone hides in corners screeching at each other to stop camping, if they’re weak there’s no problem.  Or point.

Ah’ll nevah rule the universe with you, ya overpowahed wankah!

We’re rating five sniper rifles on Effectiveness and Fun, just one more of the millions of things that are okay in videogames but would be terrifying in real life.

5.  Unreal Tournament

Sniper rifles on UT3 servers are fun, but the problem is obvious:

Three engine blocks and a drinking straw.

They fit about as well as a square peg in a duck’s hole.  UT3 player models look like American footballers wrapped in sacks of sausage meat (Epic Games went on to make the beef-tanks of Gears of War) and in the massive meaty paws of these Hulk-a-likes, the sniper rifle looks like the world’s most lethal toothpick.  And if anyone gets close it’s about as effective.  Even when you’re successfully sniping, you feel that the game’s calling you a pussy.

This guy’s using the transmission from a Dodge Viper as a weapon.  He thinks a sniper rifle is a tool for gynaecologists.

Effectiveness: It’s like bringing a javelin to a touch football match - it’ll definitely murder people but it’s not really playing the game properly (and when the others get close they are going to kill you.)

Fun: As much fun as playing Double Dragon in a Harem - great game, but you’re not exactly in the spirit of things.

4.  Left 4 Dead

The closest thing to sports sniping on the list, with hordes of milling undead offering excellent headshotting opportunities at all times.  It’s just a pity that you’ll be simultaneously boom-smoker-hunt-charge-jockeyed if you take more than two, with your so-called “team-mates” half a level away complaining about the idiot actually standing still on a Left 4 Dead server.

Left 4 Dead 2 upped the anti with a rapid firing military model, but it still can’t cut the mustard when the horde descends.

Effectiveness: Is it a shotgun?  Can it beep or set things on fire?  If you answered “no” to both of these, don’t bother picking it up in Left 4 Dead.

Fun: We did just mention the shotgun.  If you find a weapon more fun than the shotgun, well done on using the guitar during the Midnight Riders finale.  If you find a weapon more fun than that, well done on having such an excellent dream.

One of the best multiplayer shooters ever made (including its own terminally hacked sequel), CoD4 servers couldn’t do a better job of sniping without killing JFK.  They’re only one option among many, you can customize perks to enhance your “death from afar” vibe (though this does often mean choosing Claymores, the Dark Side of online explosives), and you’ve even got a shot if they get close.  Up to seven if you’re quick with the pistol. And, the mark of a truly good sniper game, if you forget to check your back you’ll find fourteen knives in it.

It even gives you a Ghillie suit.  PS That mound by the car can kill people.

Effectiveness: Perfect.  The Special Forces call doorways “coffins” and if you can find a safe spot to snipe one you’ll enjoy why.  The natural breathing shake and limited hold-breath window balance the lethality with skill.

Fun: Full “it would really worry anyone who overheard you talking about how much fun it was to drop people with the twitch of a trigger” joy.  You really do have to search for targets in the detailed environments, and you only have a split-second to snipe them, and you will enjoy every single one with psychologist-terrifying intensity.

2.  Team Fortress 2

It’s challenging work.

It’s hard to stress the sniping aspect of your game more than creating a guy called “Sniper,” handing him a sniper rifle, then telling him to snipe things for a snipe snipe.  It helps that TF2 servers are better balanced than twin Zen masters floating over either end of a seesaw - facestab-whiners aside, Valve is a team of amazingly award-winning professionals and they’ve spent the last three years working on Team Fortress.  The result is that it’s better tuned than the London Philharmonic.

Effectiveness: Exponentially decaying.  A single sharp sniper is essential for a team of eight or more, dropping Heavies and forcing Medics to deploy their übercharges early.  Unfortunately you’ll have a minimum of three and at least two will suck harder than a gay black hole.  Your team will have all the offensive weight of a half-full pillow, and enemy Spies will stroll across to enjoy a backstabbing party.

Fun: Maximum.  The Ozzie Assassin is excellently balanced, with cunning coding preventing rapid fire or noscope shots - you need to scope to charge up your hit, so you can kill anything at a distance (just like a sniper should), but  all the while your back is a big “Stabby-knife-goes-HERE” sign.

1.  Counter-Strike

Of course it’s the AWP.  Doctor Doom could fire a scoped superstring projector which detonates eleven Earths in parallel dimensions, and the Arctic Warfare Police rifle will still have killed more people. With less chance of them seeing it coming.  Unfortunately, the best weapon in the world won’t work with an idiot user, leading to a few CS server problems.

Effectiveness: The AWP is more effective than actually shooting people through the head, because you can do it more than once, you can enjoy their reaction, you don’t have to bother with wind, drop, or - for experts - actually bothering to aim through the scope.

Fun: The AWP is an absolutely effective sniper rifle in a multiplayer game, making it about as much fun as doing dental work on an unanaesthetised elephant.  In Counter-Strike an AWP noscoper is able to kill everyone instantly, and the only counter is to be him or better than him.  Which is no fun at all.

Every day there’s another article asking “How can we get more girls into gaming?”, every one of them identifying an author who’s part of the problem.  It turns out that half of humanity isn’t a different species - the clue’s in the start of the sentence - but for an unfortunate few computers project puberty-prevention fields which hold them in a permanent terror of electro-cooties.  Which makes them see gaming girls as the End Boss of Adult Adolescence.

The involuntarily asexual market is a big one, with games like Bayonetta pandering harder than a horny hooker in an Evangelion costume, but by far the worst wish-woman-were-here efforts come from the custom skinning community.  Which is only slightly less psycho than the Hannibal Lecter Appreciation Society that sentence suggests.  We’ve found the five worst fan-made skins, software scribbles by slavering shooter-fans who think “This game about killing people would be better if I was doing it as a half-naked girlie.”  And then wonder whey they’re alone.

1.  Counter-Strike Hostages

In an attempt to create a computerized anti-ovary-antigravity field, “BlueGuile” reskinned Counter-Strike’s hostages as the girls from Dead or Alive and Dragon Ball Z.  And put them in bikinis.  The Dead or Alive series had already raised sexism to a scrotum-driven science - the first game had to invent entirely new attack animations for characters who (by mass) counted as having three torsos.  By “Paradise” they’d removed even the pretense of women having capabilities, removing their fighting moves, and clothes, so it took some serious effort to out-immature that.

“BlueGuile” is up to that challenge.  BlueGuile’s avatar is a repeating loop of an animated woman with gigantic breasts being hit until they break loose of her clothes, and he could probably invent a new forms of sexism which would make a pimp blush.

This is how BlueGuile presents himself to the world.

Hi, welcome to Blueguile’s house!  Let me introduce you - from left to right we have Immaturity Personified, Psychological Problem, Tragic Misuse of Time and Masturbation Fantasy.

The first comment on the mod is “Nekkid plz”.  The second is an essay on user “capitalchopper”’s life story, skills, and aims in life, the entire sum of his existence which leads only to “Nekkid plz.”  Because his explanation that he’s a networking student is essential to understanding his motivations for naked anime characters.  For one thing it might motivate pity, because if he can’t find those online already he must be the worst networking student in the history of the internet.  What is he networking, twigs?

Besides, any real gamer girl wouldn’t have anything to do with hostage mode.  Because a  real gamer playing anything but defuse doesn’t exist.

2.  The Female Scout Panty Fix

This is Santa’s secret midget sex dungeon - so many wonderful things have to exist and then go horrifically wrong before the sentence can exist.  A single fact revealing an entire evil world under the one you thought you knew.  Entire Nightmare on Elm Street movies have been based on less horrifying revelations.  The idea of female TF2 characters is nothing new, but this is a specific patch - a whole extra install - with the sole function of letting you look up the female scout’s skirt.

I never thought a real computer projection of serious psychological problems would have pink stripes.

Understand: singe88 took someone else’s skin and reconstructed what the panties would look by studying the gibbed body parts.  He examined exploded body parts and programmed a pervy reality based on them - untilJason Voorhees becomes a bomb disposal expert in a middle school there’s no possible creepier occupation, and we should thank Valve for not only giving us this great game but for keeping singe off the streets.

Oh god no this is bad. This is bad. This image exists and the man who coded it hasn’t been arrested.  There is no possible universe in which this is not a terrible image.

He worked for at least an evening to alter a simulation of a fan-made modified girl in a cartoon-style video game.  That’s further removed from sex than the average rock.  The Center for Disease Control stores vials of herpes which will get laid faster.

3.  Vending Machine

The most misogynist vending machine since Japan’s soiled panty dispenser, and even worse - at least that requires the user to leave their house and earn money.  We’re just going to show you the image, as any attempt to describe what’s happening would erase our ability to interact with women so hard we’d never have been born.

You will notice those words don’t actually make sense, because you are a thousand times better at higher functions like ‘reading’ than the creator.

On the original site those files not only exist, there are three full pages of multiple-thread discussion based on them.  An entire community thriving only on the intellectual discourse resulting from that image, and the only reason that’s not a convincing argument for re-education camps is that that implies education worked the first time.

An image so psychologically terrifying we’d have to resurrect Dr Freud and train him as a commando.

4.  Day of Defeat’s Future Girl

Apparently midriffs become bulletproof in the future

On the surface this doesn’t seem so bad: World War II really didn’t have any women in most of the units, so the only way to work one into a Day of Defeat server would be a Rosie the Riveter rhythm action game.  And she’s very modestly dressed - by the standards of female game characters that’s practically a ballgown.

The real problem is in the implications.  Someone decided to code a girl into a DOD:S server, and decided the idea was so amazingly unlikely he might as well make her a futuro-medieval scale-armored high-heel hooker.  Because in his mind that fit into gaming just as easily as any other girl.

5.  Porn on a screen in a game on a screen

There’s something about Counter-Strike’s disastrous combination of killing people and being in an office that apparently murders the human soul.  There’s no other way this could have happened.

Just idly playing with a knife alone while looking at porn. No, he doesn’t see anything wrong with that

That’s a patch to add a picture of a girl to fake computers inside a game - the above additions have officially given up on real sex, but this one’s even distancing itself from real porn.  If it was any further removed from the idea of human interaction it’d be HAL9000, and even his red light - murderously glaring at you like a monochromatic hate-powered laser - would still be less disturbing than this mod.  Oh, and that little patch of pink on the upper-right of the image?

He hasn’t moved since the last image was taken. Moving isn’t something he ‘does’

That’s right, it’s a poster of a picture in a fake office in a game.  This guy’s got so many not-women installed on his computer he’d have a panic attack introducing himself to an inflatable sex doll.

The Engineer is next for new toys on TF2 servers, if only because the dedicated defender is the only one left, and since his entire job-description is “Wonderful Toys” this is cause for considerable excitement.  He’s the only man to be given “just make everything three levels BETTER” as a random update - because someone who can build a tripod-mounted heavy caliber machine-gun gets what he wants - so we’re really looking forward to what’s coming up.

The first quite clearly involves a robot arm - seen in the background of Valve’s teaser and wonderfully reconstructed by PCGamer forum-member Ritz here:

Of course a killer robot could be anything - a robot that kills things, for one - but anyone who doesn’t hope that arm’s going to end up holding a spanner and repairing Sentry guns in a cunning mockery of what Engies have been forced to do for the last two years doesn’t do enough defense. (On a personal note, as an Engy I’d love to step more than one meter from my equipment every once in a while.)

From the desk of Saxton Hale:FIGHT LIKE A MAN (WITH BIGGER GUNS!)

Mann Co. must regretfully announce that several well-established products are for wimpy little girls.  Not real Mann Co products obviously - God no, we’ve had to graft extra testicles onto people before they could wield our throbbing equipment - but the shoddy trash we shuffle off on a niche market we like to call “Cowardly backstabbing chickens who’ll take whatever we give them and like it if they know what’s good for them.”

The Electro Sapper especially has been found to react negatively to our beloved Sentry line*.  This is a blatant misuse of hardware, and liable to invalidate the user’s warranty (and spine when I find them.)  The Electro Sapper is only intended to dry and excitingly curl the frilly ringlets of wimpy girls (as well as hurting them because I hate them.)  Likewise, the Cloak range of products are solely intended to shield portly women from view as they eat ice cream, crying into their pinafore dresses about their unsightly flab.

*We only belove things that stand where you can see them and shoot at you, thereby eliminating all legal hassles for our subsequent actions.

But at MANN CO. we only apologize through overwhelming violence, so we apologize by offering you - you, the super-man who not only kills things but builds other things to kill more things - the SAPKNOCKER.  Since the “Dapper Gentlemen” line is built out of cardboard and the spittle of weaklings, intended only to go up against My Little Ponies and take part in tea parties.  Why, it won’t even stand up to a simple super-electrified metal impact shell!

Properties:

- Long reload time (think flare gun), only three shots per refill.

- Replaces Shotgun.

- Does no damage to regular targets.

DESIGNATING DESTRUCTION!

This isn’t called METAL-OWNING WIMP CO., it’s called MANN CO., because that’s ME.  I only bothered founding a company because I couldn’t attend to everyone you need dead personally, and I only allowed machines when my fourth research team proved that the things could sometimes throw bullets through the air faster than me.  Sometimes.  Unlike the previous three teams on whose memorial the test was conducted (The MANN CO Failure Memorial Battleground, “The Only Sports Stadium With Trench Warfare!“)

So your Sentry needs to know what you want!  It already does, of course - “Kill Everyone Who’s Not My Friend” - but the real craftsman sometimes wants to kill a specific person, or just blow the hell out of a piece of ground you feel might one day support someone you decide to dislike.

Properties:

- Replaces pistol

- Sentry immediately fires on designated person/location.

- Sentry automatic targeting requires two seconds to reboot after designation.

THE SELF-DESTRUCT

Shockingly, some equipment explodes when people other than their owner want that to happen!  This will not stand!  Nor will such a wimpy owner when this new equipment arrives!  The mission statement of MANN CO is “He who owns the most MANN CO will determine what explodes”, written by me, because I own all of Mann Co!

We’ve armed our new sentry models with great big sticks of dynamite.  After some unfortunate shipping “delays”, including a lengthy re-hiring process and a new employment contract with more legalese than the Geneva convention (a very specific and relevant example of contrary paperwork), we’ve decided that these can’t be set off by attackers/innocent bystanders destroying the system.

But press that great big Red Button, Oh You Know You Want To (TM), and anything around your ex-equipment will instantly share in its exness!

Achievements are gaming squared: they’ve been mocked as wastes of time (by people who apparently think destroying the Covenant armada was a real matter of national security), but they take you into an incredible fictional world to do even more incredible and funner things.  It’s true that some are stupid, but the challenge involved in the more abstract examples couples to a incredible sense of insane satisfaction you simply don’t get when detonating Evil Overlord Number 3,223 (6,446 if you count ‘twist’ he-wasn’t-quite-dead returns).

The best example is Little Rocket Man from Half-Life 2 Episode Two - you have to carry an ornamental gnome all the way through the game.  A game that’s challenging enough when you’re using your hands for incredible weaponry, never mind when they’re full of porcelain garden figure.

Pictured:  Garden gnome.  Not pictured: Effective weaponry for combating Combine ground and air forces.

It’s one of the most painful experiences outside of stapling your head into a Virtual Boy, but James of PCGamer turned it into incredible fun (and produced the above image).  And one in twenty Episode 2 players have actually done it.

It’s all well and good when it’s your own time you’re double-wasting but L4D2 servers are an entirely different situation.  You’re hooked up with three other players and while a team taking on the challenges is fantastic meta-fun, wasting the time of a trio of strangers is a gaming crime up there with “Stealing healthpacks” and “Choosing Gon in Tekken 3” (the fighting game equivalent of blowing your nose on your opponent’s controller.)  Annoying others instead of playing the game properly is a simultaneous proof of

1. the fact you don’t have any friends to play with
2. the reason for that.

Here are the most awful antichievements to inflict on others:

He’s back and he’s bad!  How bad?

Bashing in undead-skulls bad, which is orders of magnitude more badditude than achieved by any other lawn decoration in all of history.  A terrific adventure for a willing team (and another one tackled by James, from whom the above image originates), but in any other situation you’re telling a desperate team of survivors “Good luck with the undead hordes guys, I’m going to cuddle a triple-fake virtual-statue-mythical figure instead of my gun.”

Melee weapons are for when things get too desperate for firearms, and these melee-only challenges make sure that’s happening all the time.  You might think unknowing strangers are a great way to get this - after all, they’re using their guns to keep most of the enemies away - but there’s a reason over 95% of all Left4Dead games have friendly-fire incidents.  And kick options.  At least the original Left4Dead offers Akimbo Assassin, where the spirit of Chow Yun Fat can help you.

John Woo + Gun + Gun = Invincibility

ANYTHING telling you not to shoot in this situation is not your friend.  It is trying to kill you, and at this moment you have 1000% enough things trying to do that.

Only available at the end of the Passing.  Also available at the end of the Passing: the chance to ask Louis “What the hell do you mean you’re doing okay on your own, Captain crippled-legs, you just lost 37.5% of your team on the same bridge we just cleared!”

Here’s where you earn Stache Whacker:

And here’s your complimentary Stache Whacker checklist:

1. Hold still in a game where holding still means more Special Infected and special Horde deliveries straight from the evil Director.
2. Do so while shooting at carnival game instead of said Special Infected and Hordes.
3. Your reward for doing so is a loud noise which trigger another horde.

You couldn’t hurt your team harder if you hacked the server and set it to ignore their fire buttons.