Gentlemen, it’s time to Mann up! Team Fortress 2 has
expanded again with even more free content. With surprisingly little fanfare,
Valve have added a new horde mode; Mann Vs Machine. The gravel pits RED and BLU
have tirelessly battled over and now being invaded by machines. And a new Mann
brother is revealed in the latest of the fantastically silly comics that document the
crazy backstory of TF2.
The new game mode plays as a cross between a standard horde
mode, and a tower defence game. Your robot opponents have a bomb to carry along
set paths to your base. The closer they get, the more powerful they become. But
if you stop the bomb advancing for long enough, it will reset and have to be
carried through your onslaught once again.
It’s easy to jump into a game. Just follow the new menu
options and you’ll join the queue. However it can be confusing the first time
as there are separate set of premium servers. If you’re willing to spend a
little, you get access to the Mann servers where you earn themed aesthetic
rewards to show off your wealth. With the current queues, it’s quicker to find
a server manually.
So what devious creations are you and up to five teammates pitted
against? Robotic versions of yourselves of course! Each of the nine TF2
characters is represented in the enemy hordes with different equipment set-ups.
To mix things up, Tanks and giant robots can be unleashed with devastating
results on an uncoordinated team.
Tanks are exactly what the name suggests. Lumbering vehicles
with an immense health bar. If they reach you base, their armour retracts to
reveal a hidden bomb which is promptly detonated on your front door. Giant
robots are equipped with extra powerful weaponry such as Soldier’s multi-shot
rocket launchers and Demoknight’s swords that have giant cleavage.
And just to keep you on your toes, they have ways of dealing
with your engineer’s turret. If the AI detects a turret doing particularly well,
it deploys a Sentry Buster. A bomb that can run, and run fast! As soon as it
gets in range, it arms itself and detonates in large blast, wiping out
everything in range. If you have a Pyro, you can keep them at bay with
airblasts. Alternatively, a clever Engineer can pick up his prized turret at
the last second and make an escape.
To counter the robotic horde you can upgrade your equipment with
the cash dropped from defeated enemies. The upgrades range from standard damage
increases to providing whole new mechanics. The Engineer can create portals
that teleport in both directions. The Spy can upgrade his sapper to destroy
groups of bots. There’s also a whole set of upgrades just for your character to
improve personal defences. However you’ll need to choose wisely as you only get
enough cash to max out a few bonuses, so it’s important to pick up everything
dropped. This often requires heroic dives into groups of Pyros to rescue the
money from the previous wave. A smart design choice by Valve is that all cash
pick-ups are shared evenly amongst the team.
To help balance the poor Scout who is about as strong as the
milk he drinks. A few extra buffs were added. He’s the only character that
heals when picking up cash and has no respawn time. Everyone else has to wait a
few agonizing second before they can get back into the fight unless they
sacrifice earned cashed.
The quality of the content is excellent as expected. Although
I did have some UI bugs which meant I had no idea what to expect in the next
wave. There’s a whole new range of voice clips for the characters and the
announcer and the robot models are simply fantastic. Sadly I can’t say the same
for the three levels available so far. They are simpler in layout than a
standard map to accommodate the hordes of enemies running on a set path. But the
designs are bland in comparison to the standard multiplayer maps. The biggest
criticism I have is that it’s clearly balanced around six players. Any less
makes the game a lot harder as there appears to be no scaling of the enemies.
All things considered, it is an excellent piece of free
content. It’s good to see a modern classic such as TF2 get another breath of
new life. Maybe Valve might bring new mechanics and games modes in future? Who
knows, this was unexpected delight.
