Today’s game is Team Fortress 2. For those who weren’t here last year (in which case, welcome), or who just missed it, i play Team Fortress 2 every Christmas Eve. I used to be quite addicted to the game and it overlapped with Christmas Eve, and by year 3 i noticed i had accidentally made it a tradition, so i just keep it up.

Image I… have not played in a while. In fact i think the last time i played was last christmas. It’s not a lack of love for this game, in fact i still do give it a special place in my heart for running on my shitty Dual Core 6GB of DDR3 RAM Laptop. But I just can’t find it in me to play now, i spend a lot of my “Multiplayer” time playing with my friend group, and the bot problem also killed a lot of motivation in me (though i hear it’s been resolved).

To warm up though i did a practice match with bots. To no one’s surprise i’m sure i had gotten really rusty. I usually play Demoknight and could barely keep up like i used too.

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Still, i wasn’t going to let that stop me from having a good time, so i hopped in a public lobby and played around. Almost everyone there was pretty chill.

I say almost everyone because there was a guy there screaming about how “Race mixing is a sin”, but everyone kind of clowned on him and he ended up getting pulled from matchmaking, so hopefully Valve did something.

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I went into another match and this one you had to feed a Nutcracker gifts like a game of Skulltaker in Halo. It was a fun game mode. Though i felt a little lost on the map. I ended up switching to plain Demo and carpet bombing the drop point which was fun.

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The final match was a game of Push the Cart. It was really close but honestly by the end i had started to get into the groove of it again. I had used the Scottish Resistance to set up traps and held the cart for like a solid minute. We ultimately lost, but damn did i feel proud.

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I ultimately might go back into it for another session with my friend (who joined me last year), though i can’t say the same adoration i once had is there. I think it’s kind of been over taken by Halo. It’s weird going back though.

While i was playing i was thinking of a quote from Ben Folds (who i had actually seen live recently). He had described Christmas being like a “Rhyme”, and honestly that’s the same feeling i get from this. It’s like revisiting an old family home that hadn’t changed much. Maybe there’s a few new faces this time, some of the people from last year are gone, and the walls are a different color, but it’s still the same.

Anyways, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy Holiday! It’s an honor to get to celebrate a second one with the community again.