Team Fortress 2 adds training mode, Mac support

Valve have released Team Fortress 2 for the Mac. If you don't own a Mac, there are four reasons why you should still care, and one of them rhymes with Spraining Node.

Training mode

They've added a long-overdue training mode that relies on their excellent TF2 bots. It's got a little firing range full of cardboard cutouts that teach you how to be a good soldier - close up cut-outs can only be bust with your shovel, your shotgun harms mid-range foes, and the rocket launcher is reserved for the distant targets. It teaches reloading, aiming, and the switching of weapons. It doesn't actually tell you how to walk around though, but who would need to know that? Oh, right.

Mac users get white earbuds, PC users get target practice

There's only one way to get this unlockable accessory - if you log into the game using a Mac before Monday, you'll receive a shiny pair of white earbuds just like iPods use to make sound happen in your ears. Your only challenge then is to work out how to cloak as a spy with no right mouse button. Try holding cmd+shift+f10. If you don't log in using a Mac before Monday, you'll have to be content with working out your aggression on anyone spotted with white earbuds.

They've done weird things to the UI

It's all big and chunky! The buttons are white! Eww! It also taunts you with classes you suck at. So what if I've got one capture as a Scout? It was probably the last capture. And my team had probably just rage quit.

It's free to play this weekend

There's also a new comic and a trailer up at the Mac Update page. They're obviously trying to leverage the PC/Mac rivalry to repopulate some servers, but I doubt that'll ever happen. Mac gamers are too snooty and elitist to respond to constant taunting from PC gamers.