Recently the Gold Rush update was rolled out for Team Fortress 2. I spent most of my free time today playing it, so here is my quick review on it. But before that, if you don’t have Team Fortress 2, you can play the full game for free this weekend.

Gold Rush is a new map and gameplay type in which you have to stand around a cart and move it along the tracks. The more teammates standing near the cart, the faster it moves to each checkpoint on the tracks. The other team is defending. Players on the attacking team need to be constantly pushing the cart forward to keep it from automatically moving backwards - after 30 seconds it starts moving backwards.

Since the object of Gold Rush is to stand around the cart while the defending team is attacking you, it sure sounds like the attacking team would always be made up almost entirely of heavys. I thought this too at first, but actually it’s not like that at all. I played as a sniper most of the time, and I had a score of 183, being the highest on my team and the second highest of both teams. Even if your team is attacking, you can stand a good ways behind the cart and snipe the defenders.

A heavy teamed up with a medic is how the cart is moved forward most of the time. The thing about Gold Rush is that the whole opposing team is attacking a single area. If you camp, you won’t move the cart forward. And if you’re defending, you know where the attackers are going to come from by looking at the tracks. This is about the only thing wrong with Gold Rush though - everything else is gold (no pun intended).

I played a couple of rounds as each class, and I can say that each class can be useful in Gold Rush. A couple of good spies can be extremely useful. You can go invisible and sneak through the line of fire and go behind the other team. The other team is facing one way the whole time, so if you get behind them you can get a few stabs before being shot.

The engineer becomes very useful to set up turrets along the track, if you’re defending. Once again, since there is only one track, you know where the main group of attackers are going to come from. Placing a turret after a turn can get you a nice number of kills.

Medics are absolutely necessary when moving the cart in TF2 Gold Rush. The cart gets attacked very heavily when moved, and without a few medics the whole team can be destroyed with a couple of stickies from an opposing demoman along the tracks. This is good though, as now maybe someone will have a chance of actually unlocking the almost impossible medic achievements that just came out.

The one class that I would say is almost completely useless in Gold Rush though is the scout. When attacking, scouts get destroyed by explosions. When defending, well.. you can’t really defend with a scout. Gold Rush is for the heavy classes such as demoman, heavy, soldier, etc. Scouts are for close up combat, but they just can’t survive the bombardment of rockets, stickies, and heavy fire flying at them.

In conclusion Team Fortress 2 Gold Rush is an extremely fun new map and gametype. Although I have only played it for one day, I think I can say it is the best map and gameplay in Team Fortress 2. The fun level is just off the charts. So go play it now if you have Team Fortress 2, and if you don’t, either buy it or play this weekend for free.

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