AT A GLANCE: I have a question for you readers out there. Have any of you listened to a Slipknot song and then thought to yourself that it would be a better song if only there was a bit more growling and incoherent screaming? Did you enjoy Waterworld except for the fact that it didn’t quite have enough water in it? Or perhaps you thought Super Mario Sunshine needed just a few more beach-themed levels. If so, you probably have the same rare combination of mental illnesses as the raving lunatic mapper who took a look at 2Fort and said “Needs more snipers.”

For those of you who don’t know, 2Fort is a ‘classic’ TFC map that is enjoyed daily by middle school students all across the world. As the title of the map suggests, it does not have a particularly creative layout. It consists of two bases joined together by a little bridge. The bases themselves have an unusual layout, since getting to the flag requires you to navigate through approximately 16 miles of tiny, cramped hallways, next to enemy hwguys and sentry guns that will be blasting you with machine gun rounds. So, until you figure out the secret code that lets you select the hidden “700 pound cyborg made entirely of kevlar” class, you don’t have much of a chance of even seeing the enemy flag.

Because of this, all games on 2fort consist of running around shooting anything that moves in the center yard until you are killed, then respawning and doing it again. Any time you join a 2Fort game, you will inevitably find at least 6 snipers per team hanging out on the sniper deck and shooting anything that moves. This pointless deathmatching experience is painful enough to drive most intelligent players away, but it wasn’t quite enough for the psycho who took a look at the pointlessness of 2Fort and used some dangerously twisted “more is better” logic to spawn 2FortSniper.

DESCRIPTION: 2Fort Sniper - Sniper War

Who doesn't like playing as sniper in the good old 2Fort...

I guarantee that nobody will toss a grenade in the sniper deck

good game and don't loose the head

by M@ster's

That ‘good game’ line confuses me. At first I thought “Master’s” was trying to tell us “don’t lose your head”, but if that was supposed to be the sentence, how did he manage to get two typos into a four-word phrase? Then I realized he was probably saying “don’t let loose the head”, a reference to a secret room in which you can hit a button to let a giant floating head out of its cage and watch it eat the entire enemy team. That seemed much more reasonable to me, since if that’s what he was trying to say he would have only made one typo instead of two. Then I realized I probably shouldn’t have left an open container of gasoline on the desk right under my face for the last two hours.

THE MAP: I may hate this map, but the author does deserve points for simplicity. The map is made up of two respawn rooms with little hallways, and a big center yard. This layout helps provide the best possible deathmatching experience and ensures that it won’t be spoiled by stupid things like teamwork. And the area between the two sniper decks has been turned into a giant vat of acid, just in case anybody gets any funny ideas and attempts to look for something to do besides shoot an endless stream of enemies. Snipers are the only legal class for both teams, there are no grenades to jump with, and someone stupid enough to voluntarily play this map probably won’t be able to figure out how to launch his teammates with the sniper rifle, so you don’t have a very good chance of ever getting to the other side. But at least you get a completely indecipherable message to read when you fall in!

Should you fall into the green acid, the map gives you the message "this good one the acid bathing". Take this advice to heart.

GAMEPLAY: All you can do on this map is snipe, so I’ll give a quick rundown for those of you who aren’t familiar with sniping in TFC. First you select the ‘Sniper’ class (it’s the only class available on the map, so this should only take you a few tries). Then you need to ‘charge up’ your shot to power up the damage. Apparently Valve thought that one-hit kills would be imbalancing to the game, so they made it so you need to spent a whole five seconds charging up between one-millisecond kills. Then after you draw a bead on an enemy, you need to calculate your shot vector based on distance, wind and the probable trajectory of the bullet. Oh wait, my mistake, you just put the dot on an enemy and let go of the mouse button. After he explodes into a dozen juicy human giblets, begin charging up your next shot to do the exact same thing again. It’s such a fun routine, no wonder “Master’s” decided there should be an entire map based around doing it over and over and over and over!