7 Awesome Team Fortress 2 Mods (that you should play)

With the openness of Team Fortress 2 and the Source engine, there are numerous mods (game modifications) for TF2 that provides new and different experiences. Modding started in the Wolfenstein days where players created their own maps and shared them, and Team Fortress 2 originated as a mod for Quake (another ID software game). Valve has continued the tradition of allowing user modifications to their games, which is a rare sight in today’s DLC map packs and renting-only dedicated servers. If you’ve just played the original game modes and maps, you’re missing out! Here’s 10 great mods, maps or server plugins: (not ranked)

Vs Saxton Hale:

The most popular mod is VSH (derivatives include Freak Fortress and others). In Vs Saxton Hale, one player is chosen to become the CEO of Mann Co and has gigantic amounts of health. Saxton Hale can instantly kill someone with his fists, and it’s up to the TF mercenaries to work together. There are multiple bosses to be randomly spawned as, and VSH or FF is a great mod for when you don’t feel like fighting competitively. And of course, being the boss is fun. To find this mod, look for vsh_ maps, and some servers also run vanilla arena_ maps.

The Great Class Dash:

This is a unique single-player mod where TF2 is transformed into a rapid sidescrolling platformer. Levels are filled with obstacles that require certain classes to bypass, and the mod requires switching between the 9 classes in order to pass. With four beautiful maps designed specially for this mod, the great class dash is something everyone should play at least once. You’ll have to download this mod and start a new local server with the map.

Randomizer:

What if you could be a scout with a minigun and a knife? Or a medic with the flamethrower? Randomizer is a server modification that gives you totally random, out of class weapons and equipment every time you respawn. There’s also a few new unique weapons that you can get. With this mod, the game can get a bit unbalanced and chaotic at times, but it’s definitely a fun experience especially on smaller playercounts. Since randomizer is a SourceMod plugin, it can be run on all maps and modes. Look for server with the word randomizer in their names.

Zombie Fortress

In Zombie Fortress, the BLU team are the zombies and can pick scout, heavy or spy as their class. Zombies can only use melee and edibles, while survivors (the RED team) has to fight an everincreasing horde of player controlled zombies. When you kill a survivor, they turn into a zombie. There are also perks such as Scorching which makes zombies immune to fire damage and they’ll also ignite survivors on touch. Zombie fortress maps start with zf_

Dodgeball

Dodgeball is a mod where everyone has to be a pyro and they airblast numerous homing rockets towards each other. All rockets are crit-boosted, and dogeball is a great place to practice and fine your airblasting skills as you won’t be able to damage the enemy in any other way. Most servers also include the Jetpack plugin to make this more exciting. There are a wide variety of maps for this mod, look for tfdb_

Prophunt

One of the most popular mods, one team will turn into randomly-selected props (think wooden planks, barrels, trees, crates, etc) and they’re charged with blending into the map and avoid suspicion from the other team. Prophunt is essentially hide and seek, with the seekers losing health on each attack to encourage them to not spam. The control point will replenish health to those that walks over it. Prophunt can be played on any map, and there are loads of maps designed specially for prophunt that begins with ph_

Fortwars

Lastly, fortwars is a somewhat obscure mod that’s like a sandbox. Both teams build up a fort from various building blocks, and they are able to spawn things like crates and pipes. Every fortress will be different, and the goal is to capture the flag or the control point. Fortwars servers can be a bit hard to come by, especially if you are not in a well populated country, but this mod combines base building with Team Fortress 2. Fortwars maps are fw_ – this mod also exists in Counter Strike and Garry’s Mod too!