Team Fortress 2’s new mode gets a big update from Valve

14.10.2023 - 11:25 / pcgamesn.com / New

Team Fortress 2 is celebrating Halloween season, and the beloved class-based FPS game’s own 16th anniversary, with the launch of a new official mode based on a popular custom game variant and an old Half-Life 2 mod. Just a few days after its introduction, alongside its work on the newly launched Counter-Strike 2, Valve is already busy with balance changes, releasing the first TF2 Zombie Infection patch notes with big buffs to almost every zombie class and nerfs to the human Engineer and Demoman.

The new Team Fortress 2 mode, titled Zombie Infection, was previously available on community servers as a custom game type, but Valve has brought it to the official rotation as part of its ongoing Scream Fortress event for October. Putting an undead twist on one of the best FPS games of all time, Zombie Infection tasks the Red team with setting up defenses to hold out against the Blue team’s ever-growing zombie army, with anyone they kill being converted to the undead side.

In this round of Team Fortress 2 patch notes for Saturday, October 14, Valve includes buffs to almost all the zombie types while reducing the power of the Engineer’s sentry gun and the Demoman’s shields for the Red team. “These changes are aimed at making playing as a zombie more engaging, and to weaken the human meta of bunkering without hurting their ability to roam and fight,” it explains.

To try and force the human team out of full defensive lockdown, the Zombie Heavy is now a lot tankier and immune to critical hits, meaning running away is a far more effective play than staying in one spot against his might. The Zombie Sniper, meanwhile, can now damage the human team’s structures with its spit, while the Zombie Engineer’s EMP now deals enough damage to take out mini sentries in a single hit.

The Zombie Spy now passively cloaks three seconds after attacking or revealing, making it much easier to sneak into human strongholds and dodge sentry guns, and the Zombie Scout gets boosted jump height to get onto rooftops more easily. Speaking of sentries, their damage against zombies has been dramatically reduced to make them “less frustrating to play against.” The full list of changes can be found below.

Here are the Team Fortress 2 patch notes for Zombie Infection, courtesy of Valve:

You can read the full patch notes, including tweaks to other maps and numerous bug fixes, via Steam.

Team Fortress 2 is unquestionably one of the best free Steam games, but we’ve picked out even more of them if you’re looking for something new. We’ve also gathered together the best multiplayer games for those of you in the mood to crush some real-life competition.