Venty's Septic Funbox - BUMPER CARS!

Its that time of year again, Valve is hosting their sixth annual Scream Fortress event for Team Fortress 2!

This years event incoperates a few features of the previous Scream Fortress events but at the same time its all in a new map based off the layout of the Doomsday map. The objectives of this event are much like sd_doomsday, the player has to grab a briefcase and bring it to the strong-mann machine in the middle of the map without getting killed by the other team. However, there are couple of problems you might run into:

• The briefcase has a ghost guarding it, you have to get past it without getting scared by it. Otherwise other players will be able to gun you down without any real resistance.
• There are a bunch of spells lying around, the same ones found in the helltower event. Some of these can actually be used to kill you!
• Every few minutes Merasmus casts a random spell among all the players. This is vaguely similar to the 'wheel of fate' found on Ghost Fort but with different effects.

However, I have to praise Valve for the interesting new feature they added to the game. If one of the teams manages to get the briefcase to the top of the strong-mann machine the round doesn't end from there instead Merasmus teleports both teams to an arena with three different minigames in which you are control of a bunch of bumper cars with your big heads sticking out! Fortunately you have the same movement controls to the ones used in normal rounds of TF2, the secondary fire button is used for a short boost attack that can be used to get to one end of the ring to another or to hit members of the other team, and finally you can use spells like in Helltower.

The minigames for this year's event are as follows:

• A bumper car soccer match, where you and your teammates must bump a large ball into the other team's goal. (NO VUVUZELAS!)
• A 'elimination' game where the players are in a ring with a bunch of falling platforms, if they don't make it to the 'safe' platform in time they fall into a giant eldritch mouth that automatically kills them.
• A minigame where you're on a figure eight-shaped track where you have to collect a bunch of golden ducks that can either be claimed by bumping another player or catching the ones that are periodically dropped by Merasmus.

There are also some interesting twists...If you die during one of the minigame rounds you become a ghost (Similar to what happens in Helltower) that can fly about the map but if you touch another living teammate you come back to life.

Also, there are a bunch of new cosmetic items (IE: Hats) that are up for grabs this year! In fact if you manage to get one of the Halloween Gift Cauldrons you have a chance to receive a cosmetic item with a 'haunted' quality and if you somehow manage to get four of the achievements for this years event you can get a new weapon: The Necro Smasher.

All in all, I personally think that Valve did a very good job this year for Halloween, especially with this new Bumper Car feature tossed into the mix. But what do you think, did Valve do a good job this year or could they have tried a little harder? Post a comment below of what you think of this year's Scream Fortress event!