Welcome to the extraordinary world of Team Fortress 2 leaping. It’s quite a bit like regular TF2, solely somewhat the capturing folks the objective is to propel your self skywards utilizing explosively powered motion strategies on customized maps. Yeah, it’s nothing like regular TF2.
Jumpers have tournaments too although. They’ve spent the previous month hopping by way of three separate occasions within the Beginnings 5 competitors. With the competitors now over, they’ve settled down once more – and left us with some spectacular aerial highlights. I’ve gathered the victors’ movies under, and obtained a few the jumpers to take a seat nonetheless lengthy sufficient to inform me about why they do what they do.
Those three occasions consisted of a head-to-head stay race, a speedrunning competitors break up throughout three levels and completely different characters, and a trickjumping competitors. That final one’s my favorite, because it simply entails doing one thing spectacular on a map of the jumper’s selecting. There’s undoubtedly one thing to be mentioned for the thrill of a stay race although, as proven within the finale between “Boshy” and “Yeye” under.
I like that commentating model, too. It’s a chill counterpoint to the machismo of the current PUBG Global Invitational and Overwatch League, and reflective of what I’ve seen of the leaping scene as a complete. It’s refreshing to see a aggressive atmosphere stay pleasant.
As jumper “Kidder” identified to me, that may have one thing to do with the way in which leaping is “a single player mode at its core”. “You’re not asked to actually perform except for situations like Beginnings and other events”, mentioned Kidder – “jumping is almost 100% practice”.
I requested if that observe ever felt gruelling, and he emphasised the difficulties confronted by learners: “It’s a very very harsh learning curve, I think you need to have a certain mindset to even break into the scene in a serious way because the time investment is extreme for what’s really just a sub category of TF2 … jumping is [at] its most frustrating when you literally do not understand what you are doing wrong, and that happens a lot when you’re just starting out”.
Kidder got here second place within the Soldier class of the speedrunnning competitors, shedding to Boshy by a mere second. Here’s Boshy’s profitable run.
And right here’s “Starkie” together with his profitable Demoman run.
Within moments of chatting to Starkie, it turned clear how he’d reached the highest: “I find training very fun. When I come to a really hard jump and spend hours trying to pass it; I can feel myself getting better. Even if it takes 10 hours over multiple days I don’t get tired of it.” I confess I baulked at that, although then considered how I’ve in all probability spent a comparable period of time banging my head towards Dark Souls bosses.
Given the calls for it locations on folks’s time and endurance, I requested Starkie how he’d promote somebody on TF2 leaping:
“If you’re the kind of one who feels dissatisfied with video games which are a bit too simple; you would possibly need to give leaping a attempt. The group’s had practically 10 years to design a number of fiendishly troublesome ranges that solely a handful of individuals have managed to finest. If you’ve been taken with speedrunning however you’ve by no means actually put the hassle into it, leaping is an effective way to begin. You don’t must arrange a timer, display screen seize or any of that stuff. You simply must obtain TF2 and be a part of one of the Tempus servers. There’s additionally a lot selection. With over 450 maps and a pair of fully completely different courses to play them on, there’s all the time one thing to maintain you . I feel it’s the variability that retains me coming again.”
I reckon merely displaying somebody this spotlight reel of the trickjumping competitors would possibly do the trick. Even if these jumps doesn’t make you go ‘I wanna do that’, it might properly make you say ‘I wanna see more’.
Here’s a playlist that includes the rest of the winners, as hosted on TF2RJ weekly.
