Wirehead Studios

http://storefront.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=app&AppId=5073

Nom Nom Nom...

I destroyed cowards weapon!!

What I think is funny is how so many people say "Natascha sucks" or "don't use that gun, use the other gun".  It is true that in a stand up fight between two heavies, one with Sasha and the other Natascha, the heavy using Natascha will lose, especially if the Sasha-wielding heavy has a medic attached to him.  Natascha is not an assault weapon, it is a support weapon.  You use it to help your teammates get kills, not get them yourself.  A few things Natascha is good for from personal experience:

1)  Makes mincemeat out of scouts.  After using Natascha for a while, I switched back to Sasha to compare the two.  Scouts were able to duck and dodge behind obstacles when shooting at them with Sasha, but not with Natascha.  Natascha kills their speed advantage and chews them apart.  This is especially good for keeping scouts from making quick in-and-out briefcase grabs on 2-fort.

2)  Slowing down other faster enemies so your teammates can either escape or make an easier kill.  Example:  On one of the Arena maps, I was up high and there was a pyro running down below, a fair distance away.  I used Natascha to slow him down so the friendly spy who was chasing him could pull off a backstab.  I've also slowed down scouts enough for pyros to get in close and cook them on the spot when I was too far away for the gun to kill them from damage.

3)  Stopping charging or fleeing enemies in their tracks.  I've lost count of how many pyros and soldiers I've killed out in the open this way.  Soldiers like to come out, fire rockets, and duck for cover while reloading or if their health drops.  Natascha keeps them from getting back to cover or charging in close for footshots with the rocket launcher.  Pyros that like to charge in close and circle the the Heavy with their flamethrower (especially pyros using the Backburner) find they can't move so well and try to either run into your face with the flamethrower or else retreat away from your fire, neither of which works too well.  Keep Sandvich handy and you can recover if you've been set on fire at all.

If you like to play the heavy in an offensive roll, use Sasha and keep a medic on you, like before.  If you like to stay home and actually use the heavy on defense, Natascha can be a fine tool when used right.  Make sure you can stock up on ammo and keep Sandvich handy, and don't go toe-to-toe with a medic-heavy combo.  Hang back and chain to slow them down from a distance, and let your teammates do the real damage.  Aim for the medic if you can since he's faster and is the bigger problem in the long run.

And now, here's some awesome TF2 footage:  :doom_thumb:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igjPl_SVOe4#

Natascha just doesn't feel worth it in the long run. Heavy is my main class (nearly double the amount of time played over my second most played class [DemoMan]).

Yea, it royally blows against Heavies.. but that's expected. Heavies already move slow, and with the barrels spinning/firing, they're unaffected anyway (guess they figured they already move slow enough). The only real use I've gotten out of it is against pyros and scouts.. pyros are required to get in close to do any real damage, so slowing them down is a huge hurdle for them to jump. And scout rely on their speed, so again.. slowing them is a huge detriment. It's also good for CTF maps when used on intel carrying enemies.

The rest tho.. it just feels.. mediocre. Spies die super quick anyway if you see them, so it doesn't really matter if it's Natascha or Sascha. Snipers are forever the bane of a heavy, so again it doesn't matter. Medics.. feels half and half.. that is, half it wouldn't matter.. the other half Sascha feels like the better choice. Soldiers and Demos also feel that way. Engineers, again.. doesn't really matter since it's the buildings you need to worry about anyway.. so it's a slight lean towards Sascha.

The sandvich tho, is awesome and is a true lifesaver. But the KGB.. again, feels sorta mediocre.. but then again, it's melee.. and Heavies are the slowest class in the game, so it's good for what it is.

But it's all opinion.. and probably also depends on how you play the class. Maybe my views will change the more I use Natascha (which I do use, so don't think I only used it once then tossed it aside).. but for now, Sascha is my minigun of choice.

I think a lot of it does depend on playing style, and part of it is how alert your teammates are.  I've played with some really good teams and some really pathetic ones.  Which means:  RANT FEST TIME!

Example #1:  Stupid medics.  Saturday night (after the Gen game that everyone missed again) I had a medic building up an uber on me during level prep on the new bomb cart level, forget the name.  Ten seconds before the mission begins a sniper pops up aiming right at the gate.  I warn the team "SNIPER:  MOVE OUT OF SIGHT".  I duck behind a wall.  So what does the medic do?  Stands perfectly still... and gets shot in the face.

Other examples of idiots are medics that charge headlong into a firefight with the syringe gun instead of actually healing their teammates, medics that get an ubercharge built up and set it off when nobody is around, medics that don't know how to use an ubercharge, and medics that, when almost charged up, disappear instead of staying with the heavy or whoever is about to charge an enemy stronghold, usually with a sentry gun or two present, and thus what should be a successful attack ends up with a very angry respawning player.

Often times I find I'm on a team with either no medics or no engineers.  That's not a nice situation to be in.  You can do without a sniper, but not without medics and engineers, especially if the other team has them.  That means I have a choice:  Play the support class, or watch my team get run over.  So naturally I end up going the support role.  Which is fine, except when the following happens.

When I play as medic:  I get an ubercharge built up, ready to rock and roll with the heavy and... I get knifed in the back by a spy because the heavy does not periodically turn to make sure we're not being followed, or the heavy decides that an ubercharge means to run away from the enemy, and if not that then they decide, oh, let's machinegun the snipers from across the map and ignore the sentry that's pounding them in the side, or once charging the enemy position, keep charging forward instead of retreating back when the ubercharge wears off so I either have to go in with them and die in a blaze of glory or else retreat and get shot in the back while the heavy goes off on his suicide charge.  Lastly, let's not forget the heavy that's completely ignorant of what snipers are and what they do and why they aim for medics and heavies first, and go charging out in plain sight instead of moving through cover and actually advancing to do something useful instead of respawning 15 seconds later.

When I play as an engineer:  One word:  Spycheck.  Spycheck spycheck spycheck.  As an engineer, I can build your sentry, your dispenser, and your teleports, but I cannot be in three places at once.  That means if I'm going to get your teleport up, I have to leave my sentry gun and dispenser.  During that time, I need either a pyro and preferably another engineer to watch my stuff while I get you a convenient exit portal.  Otherwise all my stuff goes boom and I'm not of any use to you.  So when the engie says "Spycheck for me for a bit", please listen?  Second word:  Pyro.  A team with competent players will often use voicechat and a pyro will pair up with the spy.  Why do they do this?  The pyro will wait around the corner just out of sentry view for the spy to put sappers up on the sentry gun.  It takes some time for the engineer to knock them off, and a good spy can keep putting them up faster than the engineer can knock them off unless the engineer stops to club the spy, which is not always the easiest thing to do, especially with that pyro waiting around the corner.  During that time the pyro is free to run up and roast the engineer, sentry, dispenser, and teleport with impunity.  So when you see a lone pyro anywhere near your engineer, expect a spy to be nearby and if your engineer calls for help please provide it.  Otherwise expect your briefcase to go bye-bye when all the scouts rush past the now exploded sentry position.  Also, if you ever hear the engineer say "Spy is sapping my [objectname here]" DO SOMETHING.  Pyro, soldier, scout with a bat, doesn't matter who, but get that spy so the engy can concentrate on fixing his stuff and saving your butts.

No particular reason for the rant fest, just felt like ranting about a few things that I find annoying when playing a game.  Anyway, if your team is alert and knows what Natascha is good for they'll capitalize on that, and gun down the player that the heavy is chewing up.  Sandvich has saved me from burning to death many many times.  Is delicious!

Bad medics are the worst.. and you forgot one.. the medic that only heals one guy, usually a heavy. No one else on the team.. just that one guy.

Bad heavies are pretty annoying.. bad engies who build in the same spot, every time their gun dies are pretty sad. They exist for all classes tho, just the tolerance of the sucktitude varies from class to class.

I've been on more bad teams than good ones. The servers I play on, the people on them usually stack the teams.. that is, the regulars usually play on the same team.. all the time, instead of fighting each other. Clans do it too when they join. Both cases are quite annyoing, as I prefer a game that's at least somewhat fair.. but.. I guess some people like steamrolling maps.

Nice choice of words, though I can't help thinking I'll log in to Steam one day and get Rick Astley instead.   :P

I've played on a good mix of teams, and yes, parasitic medics are a pain.  If I'm playing as medic, I try to heal teammates while hanging back to build up an uber.  My criteria for healing involves how hurt someone is, what class they are, if they are on fire or not, and how bad I'm going to expose my position to heal someone.  I also look to see if a dispenser is nearby.  If someone goes for the dispenser, unless they're almost dead and on fire, I'll heal someone else first and let the dispenser heal the other guy.

That reminds me of another annoying class of idiot player.  A team should understand the medic's job, the fact that medics do not have 300 health like a heavy, and how important it is to keep the medic alive.  If the medic (that's me) is paired with a heavy and going toward the enemy base, you know what we're planning so please watch the medic's back?  All it takes is one sneaky spy or pyro to ruin a perfectly good medic-heavy rush, usually half a second before the medic gets the ubercharge fully built.  I understand it's hard to help sometimes, but I don't know how many times I've been backstabbed, sniped, or lit on fire when I've had plenty of teammates running around that could have helped out.

Oh how I miss Team Fortress 2.

I enjoyed it, as well as many other Source games, quite a bit until a mod called Pirates Vikings and Knights II came out.  Upon the release (and subsequent installation) of version 2.0 of this mod, all of my source games completely ate themselves.  We're talking Counter Strike Source, Day of Defeat Source, Half Life 2, All of the HL2 Episodes, Portal, and Team Fortress 2!  This is the error I got and I haven't been able to get it to work since:

Internal driver error in IDirect3DDevice9::Present()

I've tried everything from downloading new drivers to reinstalling the original HL2 software, but my computer is just set on not allowing me to play the game.  Apparently this has been an occasional problem with some users since the release of Half Life 2 Episode 1.  Nobody seems to have a solution to it.  I think I either need a new computer or I need to just wipe my hard drive and try again (though I don't want to do that...I have so much crap to back up).

I've almost resorted to saving money for a 360 just so I can play HL2 again in any form, but dammit how I hate those Xbox controllers!

I think I have hit the mother of all non-achievement achievements in TF2.  I crab walked all the way from the Red base to the Blue base on 2Fort, picked up their intel, crab walked back to the Red base and captured.  If you don't know what a crab spy is, here's a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76sQ7IKsZ1U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtFHBpiAWV0

As a crab, you're pretty blind, you're slow, and you're utterly defenseless.  The walk itself is not hard to do, but doing anything besides either dying or getting odd reactions from others on the server is nigh impossible.  Doing something productive like capturing is... well just try it and see for yourself.  This was in a 4 vs 3 server (our team had 3, including Mr. Crab).

Rubil:  I've looked up that problem you're having.  Are you using a program called K-Lite?  If so, it conflicts with Steam and Source.  Remove it and it should fix it.  If not, you've got another problem in there somewhere, maybe Direct-X or video driver.  You're using ATI hardware, correct?  If K-Lite isn't the problem, try starting with -DXlevel 70 in the launch options for your game.  Then go in and reset your settings, and hopefully it fixes it.  Otherwise contact Valve and see if they have some info on how to fix it.

Never did anything that major, and doing so is kind of impossible on 12vs12 servers. The most I've did was keep my minigun barrels spinning as I made the slow trek from my respawn (closest to the courtyard), across the bridge, and into the enemy's courtyard before finally winding down and making a break for the stairway down to the basement.

Granted, I was able to shoot some people since I still had some of my defenses.. but I was still amazed I made it that far without getting sniped, stabbed, or otherwise overwhelmed.

Pho: 

I'm pretty sure I don't have K-Light, but I'm not sure.  What kind of program is it?

I don't use ATI.  I use GeForce.  Its a GeForce Go 6800, an old (apparently no longer supported) video card for laptops (I got a Dell Inspiron).

The Direct-X connection is probably true.  I will try the "-DXlevel 70" command when I get home and see if that does the trick.

I will be overjoyed if I can play Source again after almost a year!