Let’s be honest:  first person shooters live on PC.  They might survive as crippled console versions, thumbsticks turning at the same speed and accuracy as the average wheelchair, hooked up to auto-aiming life support to stave off Terminal Lack Of Mouse, but it’s only on real computers that the ability to aim actually means something.

Second honesty: single player is practice.  That’s all.  It might be the most cinematic practice you’ve ever seen, with incredible set pieces and innovative action scenes allowing to you to indulge in every Hollywood fantasy, but as long as the enemies are AI it’s just a glorified Tutorial.  You played through Modern Warfare for the fun, World at War for access to the Zombie servers, but it’s all sort of pointless unless you’re plugging people so that victory means “You’re better than someone”, not “The computer was programmed to let you have that.”  That’s what game servers are for, and that’s why we’re looking at the most popular multiplayer FPSs:

1.  Counter-Strike

If this is news then please, stop wasting time here and get your ass onto a Counter-Strike server right now.  Right now there are more people playing CS than there are holding hands, which might sound like it says something scary about society until you realise romance never killed any terrorists.  Various versions take up the first, second and seventh positions on the most-played list - and that’s not just shooters, that’s in terms of every game Valve has (to say nothing of the thousands of pirate players out there).  Counter-Strike: Source is now outperforming 1.6 servers (despite the complaints of purists), and even the relatively unpopular Condition Zero servers are stuffed with several thousand players at all times.  Or to put it another way: statistically speaking, Counter Strike is more popular than Shakespeare.

2.  Call of Duty 4

Things can get a little hectic

Modern Warfare servers continue to crush even their own sequel, with World at War servers lagging behind because of “Less impressive weapons”, “Not being made by Infinity Ward” and the all-important “Being yet another World War II game even though the reason we were excited before was because Modern Warfare didn’t do that” factor.  Cod4 is the top FPS on X-fire’s total playtime charts ranking only behind World of Warcraft overall - and ranking below WoW in playtime is like ranking below the universe in size.

3.  Team Fortress 2

It’s all about class balance

Valve’s magnum opus of online play, and proof that a decade of development time pays off.  Team Fortress 2 servers rank second only to Counter-Strike on Valve’s charts, and even outperforms Football Manager 2009, the biggest non-shooting-people-in-the-face title on their service.  For some reason.  The constant addition of new maps, fixes and unlocks keeps the population pumped up, although it’s still a factor of four behind even the closest Counter-Strike game.  But then, many religions have less devout followings than CS.

4.  Left 4 Dead

This game is fun

Multiplying the number of players by the average game bodycount, L4D servers shoot through three million zombie corpses an hour.  It seems those protesting the sequel were an extremely vocal minority, with most players far too busy “actually playing the game” and “enjoying themselves” to waste much time on such silliness.  It also means that at this very second there are at least four kilo-Louii running around with machine guns.

5.  Day of Defeat

There’s a slight learning curve

Ruggedly hanging in at number five are the Day of Defeat servers (both Source and old-school) - guilty of being set in the same time period as 90% of all known games, but at least with the excuse of coming from a time before the problem wasn’t quite so bad.  It also shares the status of being a Half Life modification, meaning that the altered adventures of Gordon Freeman literally have the entire FPS table surrounded.

Gamers dressing up as the gamees is a tradition dating back as far as disposable income, but what about the characters themselves? Can they cackle in costumes for all hallows eve? Since we don’t waste opening paragraphs around here, the answer is “Yes”, and we look at seven skins to spice up your servers:

1. The Creepy Counter-Strike Skull

Counter-Strike servers are already stuffed with Skullz and Killaz [sic], usually embedded in usernames between clan tags and half the number row’s symbols. Modder “Laca” enables the anti-terrorists to become even scarier than “someone with an assault rifle out to kill you” by skulling things up under the creepily human eyes.

2. Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault

Those playing on Medal of Honor servers shouldn’t suffer because of the age or authenticity of their game - so “Vdog777” has built an in-character costume, and is far better at 3D modeling than coming up with a name. The French resistance fighter adds another option when you’re dressing to impress (and shoot several times in the head) those fashionable Nazi chappies.

3. Team Fortress Halloween

Halloween costumes are something fun and awesome, so of course Valve are involved. We’re only talking about this because we enjoy it, anyway, as anyone on any TF2 server has already enjoyed the new koth_harvest_event map, exploding pumpkins, brand-new hats (to pile on top of all the other awesome headgear), and the incomparable ghost costume of Zepheniah Mann.

PS We love our Gibuses, though proper grammer sometimes makes for odd pronunciation.

4. The Classic Spy

Just because you’re ten years behind the times doesn’t mean you can’t dress up - though it can mean you wish you were more advanced. That’s the lesson behind the awkwardly-named |WS|*Nikon’s smooth spy skin, disguising a Team Fortress Classic server’s Spy as: a TF2 spy!

5. The Red vs Blue Crysis

In the most insanely complicated meta disguise outside of Major Smith in Where Eagles Dare, “not so l337” lets Crysis commandos disguise themselves as the staff from Red vs Blue, who in turn are played by Spartans, from Halo. It would be impossible to add more layers to a costume without forming a human pyramid or dressing up as a double-decker bus.

6. Day of Metal Gear Defeat

Dr. Cloud understands exactly how to guarantee an Allied success on Day of Defeat servers: staff the side of the angels with an endless army of Solid Snake clones. With the Axis forces represented by far inferior GRU cannon fodder it’s quite likely the sheer psychological pressure will force them to fold (despite their advantage in heavy machine guns).

7. Left 4 Dead

The most popular costumes over the last week come from the Left 4 Dead pre-order exclusive demo, with our four favorite survivors sporting spanking new skins.

Bill: Everyone’s favorite armed uncle-figure swaps Vietnam flashbacks for a love of candy, and an incredibly convincing Coach fatsuit.
Zoey: The apocalypse’s only female pulls an incredible double reverse-Michael-Jackson, both turning from white to black AND staying alive to play Rochelle.
Louis: The hard-working everyman goes even further than Zoey to become Elllis’s engineering Suthan bo-ay.
Francis: Why hate everything at random, when Nick can hate and distrust everything as a scumbag conman?

The best bit? Game servers can be dressed up every day of the year!

Counter-Strike co-creator Minh Le is gearing up to release his sequel, Tactical Intervention, and while that might sound like a thesaurus-based restatement of the original concept it looks like being a very different game.  For one, it doesn’t involve original co-creator Jess Cliffe.  For another, it seems entirely engineered to enrage CS Server players.

Image Credit: IGN.  Graphics Engine Credit: Ten years ago.

Why Minh made a whole new game instead of adopting the insanely attention-grabbing title of “Counter-Strike 2″ is simple: the insane expectations associated with that attention.  Minh used to work with Valve on exactly that project, but hardcore gamers respond to change like vampires react to garlic-flavored sunlight, and CS server experts are to hardcore what the BFG is to a pistol.  It’s hard to express just how obsessive some players are, but when we tell you he’s still getting shit over some of the gun models having cartridge ejection ports in the wrong place a full decade later you might have some idea.

That’s why Minh broke loose and decided to make his own game (while Cliff started seeing Seattle and living with some extremely cute cats), and Tactical Intervention is the result.  A result where every change, good or bad, will inevitably enrage the CS veteran.

The Good Changes

Faster Rounds

The first and most important matter Minh made an issue of was the length of CS server rounds.  He’s concerned with the enjoyment of every player, and waiting in spectator for five minutes while the top-ranked players stalk each other isn’t much fun.  The problem is that kind of mastery is exactly what the expert loves, viewing other players as expendable target practice, so expect world-class-whining about any changes enforcing this.

Weakened Sniping

Minh’s main complaint about his creation, just like most people who’ve played it, is how incredibly overpowered the AWP sniper rifle is.  This single-shotter singlehandedly stalls the whole game as people are either too scared to move or sniped from approximately half a light year away.  This results in an eternity of waiting as dead players spectate, hovering over the ghosts of teammates too terrified to step out into the open.  The thing is, CS masters have spent years perfecting the ability to noscope you AWP-style with the merest mouse-twitch - any change with eliminates that advantage will be opposed.

The Bad Changes

Hostages

Go to any Counter-Strike server and see how often they play cs_office (and how instantly it empties when that cursed place appears).  CS servers make middle-management at Cannibals Incorporated just before lunchtime look like Sesame Street - “ultra-competitive” doesn’t cover it simply because the phrase doesn’t involve enough swearing.  Now remember any game where you lost through no fault of your own, but because some idiot AI escort mission moron didn’t know which end of a gun the bullets came out of.  Now try to combine the two in your head (Warning: may cause rage-splosion).

Attack Dogs

Another addition taking any risk of your results being related to ability is the attack dog.  Because we all know how popular homing missiles are in online games (here’s a fun party game: say “Blue shells are great” to a Mario Karter, just be sure to duck).  Imagine in an online game, and while you’re at it, just thump yourself in the stomach a few times.

The thing is, the complaints of the obsessive aren’t exactly anything someone who plays for fun should worry about.  Minh made one of the most popular games of all time, and when he releases another you can be sure we’ll be on hand to see how those servers stack up.

“Exploiters” is linguistically impossible: despite having three syllables it sounds exactly like “scum.”  A plague on every game server, exploiters exist only to apply every unfair advantage they can - like playtesters hired by the Grinch to ruin Christmas every day.  Assuming every game is Christmas.  The metaphor doesn’t bear close examination.

But what drives these despicable denizens of dustbowl and No Mercy?  What brings someone to de_dust only to snipe from the skybox?  Here we look at three types of exploiter (in order increasing abomination against everything online games are about.)

1.  The Desperate

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but that’s because they existed in the boring time before games.  They had to read ancient latin texts to get undead characters which went around forgiving people instead of feasting on them.  Nowadays we know the road to hell is actually paved with a trip to Mars colony and/or out of control genetic weapons experiments, but the good intentions problem remains.  Especially in Killing Floor servers where your teammates respawn if you survive the round, the Flesh Pound is bearing down on you like a  - well the fact we’re alive proves there is no real-world analog for a Flesh Pound - and you know that hiding inside that map glitch will get everybody to the next stage.

In fairness, if anything would make you hide inside a wall this is it

It’s a dirty dishonorable trick and the way those words shouldn’t apply to the undead doesn’t matter.  Small studio creations are especially open to exploits as ambitious maps outstrip their testing resources.  Don’t punish them by breaking their game!  Do you really want world where the only levels are perfectly tested, empty, and two feet across?  Get out there and take your death like a man!  Knowing you can hide inside a protective rock whenever you want is fine for Alicia Masters, but in turns a desperate death-struggle into a boring hobby.

2.  Peer Pressure

A unique pressure brought about when you have to work with other players to survive the onslaught.  It’s not the worst form of exploit as you aren’t screwing over other players - you’re just destroying everything the genius game designers worked to create for your enjoyment. Which isn’t that much better.  The problem is when your teammates all jump into the map glitch safe spot, and suddenly you’re the asshole for wanting to “play” the “game.”

As well as hordes of the undead, the virus created horrific trimutated glitchers

Or rather, not play the game because you’re being slaughtered by every single enemy on the map and your anti-fun teammates won’t leave their glitch-haven to come save you.  It affects Killing Floor, but is a particular problem on Left4Dead servers.  At least on Campaign mode it only ruins a set-piece or two, but you’ll always end up with an idiot on Survival (check!) shouting at everyone to glitch themselves onto a ledge where nothing can touch them “because we’ll totally get GOLD you guys!”)

3.  Pure Unadulterated Scum

In the above you’re ruining the game for yourself, but once you’re killing people with glitches instead of guts you’re officially ruining it for everyone.  Counter-Strike servers suffered from serious game-breaking glitches over their history, massively amplified by the incredibly competitive nature of the players, but years of patches have boiled most of them out.  Now the worthless simply install their own hacks, another subject we’ll deal with in due time.  Once the IP-tracking missiles are ready.

Laughing at people trying to play the game, before building a sentry on an unreachable ledge and screeching “If they didn’t want us to it wouldn’t be possible!”

The modern exploiter adventurelands are TF2 servers, where every update and added map (fun free gifts for gaming enjoyment) is immediately broken into and abused (by people who don’t understand a single word in the previous brackets).  The barrage of brilliant new levels and extras has the exact opposite of the intended effect on exploiter scum:  Hiding outside the level, firing new taunts through the gates before the game begins, sentries installed in utterly unreachable locations by jumping on dispensers - truly these masters of modern gaming show their expertise in online entertainment.  At the small cost of turning themselves into mockeries of even the concept of fun.

The best thing about having your own server is that you can take some of the greatest games ever made, and play them exactly how you want. Some scum won’t stop using rifle grenades on CoD4? Kick him! Want to play Well despite nobody in the world liking that map? Go ahead! And thanks to the hard work of modding community FPSBanana, you can redecorate in ways you never thought possible:

1. The Glorious Francis Heavy Skin

In the best cross-over ever (until the Portal gun turns up in Half Life Episode 3), Left4Dead’s Francis can escape the infected - to a TF2 server. This skin retextures everyone’s favorite weapon-wielding Russian into Mr “I Hate Everything” himself. Install it client-side and only you’ll be able to see it, but if you host a TF2 server you can upload the upgrade for everyone to enjoy!

I hate RED!

Just imagine if Francis could take Natascha to fight the Horde - why, he’d be invincible! For about ten seconds. Then he’d run out of ammo and die, but man, it would be so sweet up till then!

2. That’s Not A Knife, THIS Is A Knife!

It’s a fact that Counter-Strike servers are still the most popular around. It’s also a fact that the most popular skins are all insanely detailed knives and weapons, which would be more worrying except the whole point of the game is “Use knives and weapons.” If you’re the kind of CS server master who can run around eliminating enemies with nothing but a knife, you should definitely make it a nice one. The terrifyingly specific “M9 Probis III” knife is the most popular.

I’m the one holding it and this thing terrifies ME.

3. Tuxedo Sleeves

Slick stunt-style shooter The Specialists may not have a Source upgrade, running off the original Half-Life engine, but it still has class. Modder “Jeffysan” certainly thinks so, tweaking the code for nothing more than giving you trendy tuxedo sleeves as you obliterate the opposition.

On one hand this is wasted effort - it doesn’t affect the game, and you barely see it. On the other hand, it makes you feel that tiny bit more like Bond and is therefore absolutely essential.

4. Band of Brothers on the Day of Defeat

Day of Defeat servers get some pop culture love with a TV-upgrade, swapping out one of the skins for Ronald Speirs. If you just asked “Ronald Who?”, you don’t watch Band of Brothers and can move on to the next item. Fans may wish to have a look at this fun skin:

5. Dead4Left

Technically the easiest mod on the list as it only copies the survivor skins over the infected, but come on, that’s pretty fun looking. It’s also a bit of a cheat on our part - the mod is single-player only, so you can’t run it on your L4D server, but we figured it was more than cool enough to let people know. And you just know that the community are working on a full multiplayer infected/survivor switch.

6. The Most Terrifying Mod Ever

Say goodbye to Silent Hill, because this is the most mentally scarring videogame you’ll ever see. That chick from the Ring could get on BitTorrent and come out of every computer in the country, and it’d only be a welcome break from the screaming. Of course it’s for L4D servers, and we warn you: don’t scroll down if you’re eating:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

How can the Boomer be made so much more terrifying by putting more clothes ON? What horrible inversion of fashion, flesh and mortal sanity makes a spraypainted thong worse than infected nakedness? We don’t know, but we salute Darksider1972 for advancing the frontiers of Lovecraftian insanity to find out.

Game servers sometimes shove you into impossible situations and rate you on your reaction.  Unlike Star Trek, cheating isn’t an admirable response - you’ll either be banned or, worse, NOT be banned and become one of those people who enjoys running around while their computer plays the game for them.  Making this one of the few situations were being caught and punished, or even being killed by a freak lightning strike, is preferable to getting away with it.

But how do you know when you’re in an impossible situation?  What signs warn you that it’s time to switch servers?

Team Fortress 2:  Doctor Doctor

This team could be made invulnerable to damage and still lose.

The worst waste of time in the world is waiting while you’re “Sending Client Info”, only to find a four-sniper team when you connect.  You’d be better off trying to teach a gorilla the trombone, which at least that has potential for the funniest YouTube and the funeral stories ever, depending on the patience of your gorilla.

Logging on to a TF2 server and becoming whatever your team needs is a great way to play, but Medicking a Scout-Sniper-Spy side is just getting in Darwin’s way.  Anyone who prefers a second spy to a medic are better off dead, and when your defenders have more snipers than engies?  They wouldn’t recognise co-operation if Sesame Street hired the A-Team to beat them up.

Correct response: Hit that “Disconnect” option like you found it stealing your wallet and go find an un-idiotic server.

Call of Duty 4:  Crates of Death

Call of Duty server doom-identification is extremely easy: do you see a collection of crates?

Shipment is the antithesis of everything Modern Warfare servers are about, as well as being an excellent commentary on the horrors of war (because even when you win, you lose).  Those who score on Shipment have a tendency to make with the Martyr and fling Frag x 3 as soon as they spawn - in other words, they’re the scum of the server.  You could do the same thing, just like you could win a street fight against a drug addict by losing your job and getting tough by living under bridges and picking fights with hobos for a while.  It’s not worth it!

Correct response: Bring out whatever weapon you haven’t achievement-ed yet and just let rip.  There are no tactics, teamwork or anything resembling justice on this map - you’ll die utterly and only because someone else knows how to work the grenade key - but it’s an excellent reaction test and pretty much free target practice.

Counter-Strike:  Clan-tastic

There are few things more fatal than arriving on a clan-stacked Counter-Strike server, and none the average person can get at.  You’d have to juggle sharks inside an active volcano to die even nearly as fast.  Some clans have been playing since 1.0, and if they decide to be unsporting about it there’s literally nothing you can do - you can’t even take yourself out, because even when you’re actually holding a machine gun and grenades they can still come and kill you quicker and more efficiently than you could do it yourself.

Correct response: While “one brave soul taking on impossible odds” is usually the entire point of a shooter, this is the time to disconnect and find another CS server.  If they’ve decided to open their clan server to the public just to shred all who come in, that’s their problem - real pros engage in clan matches against other pros, or randomly assign themselves mixed teams to practice against each other.  Those who stack a full clan against random pubbies are like pro wrestlers proving they can beat up everyone at a playground - they’re right but they’re tragic.

Games are awesome.  You’re either agreeing or extremely lost because, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re on a site that rents online game servers (aka “Palaces of Pyro-explosive Joy!”).  But some go above and beyond the simple call of fragging, helping their FPS fantasies escape into the real world WITHOUT - and this is important - going insane and killing us.  Here we salute these brave server-servers and their incredible efforts.

1.  The Sentry Gun PC

The single coolest thing to happen to Team Fortress 2 servers since the game itself, “TiTON“’s Sentry Gun PC is the most beautiful sight outside of a burning Spy.  As well as being an excellent reproduction of the ultimate in BLU team point defense, the tripod-mounted heavy-calibre (fake) machine gun is a decent desktop as well, featuring a GeForce 9600 and a Core 2 Duo processor.

This means you can set up sentries on Team Fortress 2 while playing on a sentry from TF2; so you’re so many levels into an imagination, you have to start setting yourself on fire to make sure you’re not a spy.

2.  Real Life Warthog

Halo servers don’t actually need any promotion, what with the game being connected to approximately every college student dorm in any country, so this real-life Warthog is nothing but luxury.  Awesome, awesome luxury.

It’s even the original Bungie team who get to ride in the recreation of their creation, creating a “Cycle of Awesome” which could be used to drive all coolness on Earth -  except they’re a little too aware of how this is a one-of-a-kind result of weeks of work.  So they drive carefully, apparently unaware that driving carefully in a Warthog is like fasting on the set of Iron Chef.  Luckily there are real Halo servers where you can skid that thing’s beautiful inverse kineamatics right through an opposing soldier’s face.

3.  Real Life Crates!

You’ll see crates on almost every FPS server, with “Time Until You See A Crate” acting as respected review system, but you pay far more attention to the crates on Counter-Strike servers.  Because you normally pay more attention to things that can hide terrorists with machine guns, or if you don’t you need to radically re-evaluate your priorities.  All of which make these real life crates a thousand times more awesome than wooden boxes have any right to be.

Part of the best-named art exhibit ever made, the “de_dust installation,” pixelated packing was placed all over the city, popping up in streets and stations and generally making people try to reload while walking down the street.

4.  CERN Crowbar

The above escaped server-stuff is slick, but none of it ever protected Earth from interdimensional invasion (though we can see that Warthog being significantly awesome in an urban combat environment).  Luckily some cyber-citizens saw that CERN’s screwing around with the stuff of spacetime could lead to a resonance cascade (and a little alliteration) and organized probably the best nerdy thing ever to happen.

They sent CERN a crowbar, a headcrab for practise, and a strategy guide detailing what to do in the event of alien invasion (specifically, a Half-Life strategy guide).  And because some scientists are awesome, the actual factual Gordon Freeman (codename: Sandro Bonacini) came out to demonstrate his readiness.  Even cooler, as if that was even possible, Sandro’s work is in radiation-resistant logic components - so he really couldn’t sound more like a videogame scientist if he was wearing body armor and could run top speed while carrying ten thousand rounds of ammunition.

Video games have come a long way in forty years - the average controller has more buttons than the first computers, and the internet connects you to so many people Nintendo are terrified to let you do anything but press “A”.  But what does the future hold for those of us who live in online game servers?  What do we want from future technology?

1.  A wargame where jumping like a tazed rabbit doesn’t confer a tactical advantage

The Call of Duty series creates an incredibly realistic environment, equips you with authentic weapons, has graphics so advanced that ghillie suits work, and then prances all over that with players leaping like turbo-boosted kangaroos.  The only way a marine could jump that high in full kit is by standing on a claymore, and in real life, a terrorist whose panic reaction to an MP5 is jumping?  He’ll be that soldier’s “funniest confirmed kill I ever had”.

On CoD4 servers you can be killed by expert players who bounce and crouch like fast-forwarded gymnasts.  An amphetamined-Mario couldn’t keep up with them.  You’re pouring machine gun fire right into them, and when they land behind your corpse after a triple inversion somersault you expect them to score 6.0 for Grace, 5.9 Agility, and 0.0 in Realities of War.  Halo servers technically suffer this problem even worse, with ten-tonne armored space marines leaping like they have trampoline-simulators in their futuristic space boots, but the great thing about cyborg soldiers fighting a race of space-mushrooms is that it never claimed to be realistic.

2.  Mice which administer electrical shocks to people who miss five times in a row but still play Sniper

Counter-Strike servers are the most popular places for online action, hosting more players per day than Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty put together.  Now players have created incredible new classes for this classic!

Truly, it is a wonderful time for gamers to be alive! You can get the very latest in digital destruction delivered direct to your desktop without even going outside, and YouTube lets you share your stories - with people who actually care!  No more failed forum posts claiming “And then I shot him in the head - you know, just like every single player in every single game ever, but this time it was really cool.” It’s not convincing, it’s not great writing, and typing things like that translates as “Hello, FBI Search Program, please monitor me forever as a dangerously unstable psycho!”

Besides, people are busy watching those far better than you’ll ever be:

1.  The Impossible Bunny Hop

CounterStrike server bunny-hopping is like spam - fantastically annoying, but people keep doing because it keeps working.  And every once in a while you get something awesome out of it, though the spammers would have to send you C1@L1S which gave you superpowers to match this incredible bunny-hop:

Even in image form it’s impossible.  The video looks super-impossible.

Yes, he jumps clear across the de_dust lower passage from the hole in the wall, which you might recognise as fifteen million times further than the tiny CS jump can actually go (Warning: Scale distorted by awesomeness of jump). After that the video degenerates into the usual “Watch me kill loadz of d00dz” stuff, which you don’t need to watch: if you play on a CS server, then you’ve seen that movie already.  As the hero or an extra, that’s up to how good a player you are.

2.  Death From Above!

If you really want to Jump Around, you can get into House Of Pain or a Left 4 Dead server.  Since grunge stopped being cool approximately sixteen years ago, one second after it was created, we recommend the latter.  L4D leapage is delivered by the Hunter, who we like to think of as TF2’s Scout after falling on hard times, pawning his bat, and maybe getting infected by a mutagenic virus a little bit.  The playstyle is the same: use cool double-jumps, get in fast and do as much damage as you can before being annihilated.  It helps if you can jump better than a Kangaroo with rocket-pogosticks for feet:

Hello Hunter, this is NASA Mission Control, you are GO to land on Zoey.

Most Hunter-hopefuls make the mistake of relying on speed to strike, thereby winning the “charge directly at four people with automatic weapons” General Custer Award for strategic thinking.  Instead, use the double-jump to gain incredible altitude then fall like the wrath of a taloned god on the weakest of the group.  From the video you’ll see that by “incredible altitude” we mean “You’ll have to avoid satellites on the way down.”

The survivors are never looking straight up (and even if they are, it’s still impossible to aim well), though it takes Terminator-grade targeting and reflexes to aim as you fall.

3.  How To Spy

EvilDaedalus is a minor celebrity on the TF2 Server circuit, and instead of the usual show-off videos (do something cool, set it to music, profit in comments) he’s crafted excellent tutorials to help his enemies.  His spy tutorial remains the best espionage education since James Bond started giving night classes in cunning linguistics.  Even better, as Team Fortress 2 servers are updated, he annotates the video with the latest and greatest changes and tweaks.

4.  Pubmasters Pwnage

“Pwnage” is not a word we use without quotation marks to contain the massive levels of sarcasm, but there’s truly no other way to describe the Pubmasters‘ antics.  Because the designers of the English language just didn’t equip us for “four counter-terrorists stacked in a human column running in sync and shooting people, in an awesome manner.”  It’s not they foresaw.  It’s not something the Counter-Strike designers foresaw, in fact, as this expert clan abuse and seduce every glitch in the game into utterly unstoppable tactics.

Yes, they’re running around in a stack. Yes, that can be done.  No, probably not by you.

If you round a de_dust corner and see five men in a vertical stack, you’re dead.  Even if you kill one the others will demolish you, and even then your last thought will be “That rocks!”