Peekaboo!

I know I've been talking a lot about Team Fortress 2 here. I swear I'm not a TF2 blog, it's just... well, I'm heading to grad school soon and I don't know if I'll have the time to play it. So I've been playing it more often than usual pre-emptively in case I don't have the time to be a gamer anymore.

When I saw this video, I was instantly intrigued by a new game mode someone's created called Prop Hunt. Essentially it's hide and seek, done TF2 style. Set in arena maps, the RED team has about 30 or seconds to hide from the BLU team, then the BLU team has the remaining time to go forth and slaughter. Sounds simple, right?

Nope. The BLU team, default pyro (though you can switch to heavy, another good choice), takes damage everytime they fire their weapons. So it pays to conserve instead of W+M1. Yes, you can pull the trigger so much you die. To augment this, periodically the capture point is "refreshed" and you can touch it for full health. The brilliance of this is that it takes you away from the hunt.

Oh, yeah, and it's called prop hunt. The RED team, forcibly scouts, are all turned into random map props as soon as the round begins. We're talking palm trees, buckets, doors, wood piles, hay - whatever is native to the map. Actually, the worst things to be forced to hide as are capture points (BLU always checks the point and you always look out of place anywhere else) and BLU pyros - you hold no gun and don't have the same running animations the other BLU pyros do.

The outcome of all this is interesting. RED's advantage, aside from being a prop, is its speed and mobility. I can't tell you the number of times I've spotted and lit a hider, only to have him run away from me before I could kill him. But what BLU lacks in speed, it makes up for in numbers - once a prop is out and running, you can see everyone scramble to cut off angles and kill it.

It's amazing to see what can be done with a little creativity and the patience to create a new game mode. Wholly recommended.