That One Level / Team Fortress 2

As a game that's gone on for about a decade, Team Fortress 2 has a lot of maps, both official and custom. Many are outright loathed in the community.

Standard Play

• Some maps that can lean more towards endless stalemates are despised by many, but many people also love them for their length, allowing them to just drop in, deathmatch for awhile, and drop out.
  • For some, the Nostalgia Level 2Fort, nicknamed "Turtlefort". No flank routes, the constant Sniper wars in the area between bases (which means they're on high alert and ready to shoot anyone on sight), and the ease of setting up sentries to guard the intel leads to the map being played for hours on end. Worse still are the return trips upon stealing the intelligence. Both teams’ escape routes intersect just outside their spawn rooms through narrow chokepoints, effectively encouraging the opposite team to spawn-camp to succeed. And that's if you're lucky enough not to get put in a 2Fort server overrun with friendlies who take the intel and consciously choose not to cap to purposely stall out the match infinitely, calling anyone who tries to cap the intel a fun-hating tryhard.
  • Turbine is often prone to stalemates much like 2Fort, chiefly due to its overall tight space and lackluster flanking routes. The two large air vents exhibit these issues the most; they are both linear and narrow and easily defended by splash damage alone. Each vent also contains a passage to the teams' intelligence rooms... from their ceilings, making them highly impractical to use when Engineers have set up camp down there. And that's just one advantage that Engineers have on Turbine. With little effort, they can lock down any part of the map with a single Sentry; nothing short of a well-coordinated team (which can be a rare sight in pubs) will destroy it. This is especially the case for the middle area, which bottlenecks every single route at once and is very open, severely undermining whatever covering the map provides. Additionally, the spawn doors are incredibly accessible (making spawncamping very easy) and also very close to the intelligence (making capturing even harder); these two factors combined mean that spawncamping is almost required to successfully cap the intelligence. Aside from that, it often receives flak simply for showing its age visually, with a level geometry largely comprised of straight lines and boxy rooms and very limited assets.
  • Hightower. While the emphasis on verticality does make it famous for the many Trolldiers market gardening left right and center, the map itself lasts very, very long. About halfway through the tracks is a hill which the cart must be pushed up. It takes a long while to push up the hill, an Engy probably has a level 3 sentry set up in the building, it's easy to get surrounded, the defending side will usually have the height advantage, and the cart will return to the bottom if it's not pushed the whole way up. If that wasn't bad enough, the map essentially makes teams do that twice; but this time, the cart is going straight up on a platform with very little footing and cover. And it's right outside the defending team's spawn, so be prepared to have to fight off endless hordes of enemies just spamming up onto that platform. Due to the issues with capturing and the infinitely long round timer, Hightower is so infamously stalemate-prone that it's been unofficially adopted as the game's premier deathmatch map, to the point that attempting to cap the objective without both teams' consent is in some cases punishable by votekick.
• While Dustbowl earns its ire for having narrow passageways and easily-defended chokepoints seemingly everywhere, it's stage 3 that's the really tough part. The round timer on stage 3 typically lasts 20 minutes. Trying to fight for that long is exhausting for both teams. Later multi-stage maps cap the time limit at 8 or 9 minutes, alleviating this issue a bit.
• Junction is reviled for its ultra-cramped environment. The map is a maze of almost nothing but chokepoints, the control points are boxed-in rooms that can be easily spammed out, and the almost-omnipresent low ceiling stifles attempts to blast jump. Many of the classes struggle on this map and can't employ their skills due to the suffocatingly tight quarters. Thus, the map greatly favors RED’s effortless defensive play over BLU’s floundering offensive play.
• Hydro, one of the first six maps of the game, was all but abandoned from server rotations within a few months of release, and it remains that way to the present day. Generally, a round on Hydro ends either in a steamroll or a stalemate, with no middle ground whatsoever. This mainly comes about from Hydro's sheer size and multiple segments working against it — the abundance of reused level design means most players get lost, even with guiding signs. The confusion can lead to crucial holes in a team's defense; consequentially, a lucky opposing Scout can end rounds in mere seconds, often less than fifteen seconds. Furthermore, the fact that anyone successfully capping necessities a new round wrecks the pacing of the mode and means engineers will be constantly rebuilding all the time. Considering the lack of map options at launch, the community's near-unanimous lackluster reception of the map was readily apparent, and the introduction of the 5CP mode that worked fundamentally the same way but without all of these problems means this mode is unlikely to never make a proper return. Ironically, the map was designed with the intention of high replayability, according to developer commentary.
• Nucleus has the unfortunate combination of its high potential for spawncamping due to the literal straight path between opposing teams' spawnrooms and wide-open arena layout making it noticeably imbalanced (Snipers are particularly overpowered while Engineers are all but useless). It's also an incredibly popular KOTH map; expect to have a very hard time avoiding it thanks to it consistently winning map switch and map extension votes. The only other map that wins votes nearly as often is...
• Harvest. While not quite as broken as Nucleus, it's still overly Sniper-friendly, and far more prone to spawn camping due to the proximity of the two spawn doors. Once again, Engineers are basically crippled as the layout is unfavorable to dispensers or teleporters, giving advantage instead to the dreaded mini-sentries.
• Halloween maps are a mixture of wackiness... for better or worse. Sometimes the insanity can tip the balance for or against one team too much and can lead to a Curb-Stomp Battle.
  • Ghost Fort draws ire because of its sheer length. Like Eyeaduct before it, Ghost Fort is a King of the Hill Halloween map that is interrupted by the boss showing up. Unlike other KOTH maps, Ghost Fort requires one team to hold the point for seven minutes as opposed to the usual three, so a single round of Ghost Fort lasts longer than 10 minutes. You also get interrupted by Merasmus, who is guaranteed to stall the round for an extra minute each time he spawns, and as he is defeated by the teams, he can show up in increasing frequency, sometimes mere seconds after the point is capped. This also makes Ghost Fort-related Merasmissions that more tedious since you have to play a round to completion before you can collect your rewards.
  • Helltower, being a Halloween reskin of Hightower, faces the same stalemate problems as Hightower does, but with spells added to the mix. There are at least a few solaces; the ramps no longer push the carts back, rare spells (such as Meteors) can quell enemies attempting to defend the final capture, and players on Helltower are more willing to play the objective compared to its base counterpart.
  • Hellstone, from Scream Fortress 2015. Tightly spaced and with so many narrow corners and indoor spaces that become easy chokepoints...while also impossible to cover all at once, so it's easy for attackers to flank. Playing on defense and trying to bodyblock the cart? Too bad, the cart's carrying a ghost, and now you're spooked and ripe for the attackers to shred you to pieces. For both teams, however, there's the threat of the skeletons from Helltower, as well as the Horseless Headless Horsemann, and up to three MONOCULUS!s (MONOCULI!?) at the last point. The map has a reputation as an absolute meat grinder that ensures constant death for everyone, whether it be from the bosses or the chokepoints.
  • Maple Ridge Event, from Scream Fortress 2016. In short, most of the problems with it seem to stem from it being designed as a 4v4 map that doesn't work well in 12 v 12 play. It's not a universal opinion though, as some players appreciate the map itself and the fact that there's no Halloween gimmicks (other than the pumpkins) on it.
  • Precipice is the lesser liked of the two maps we got for Scream Fortress 2019. Unlike the other map, Laughter, there's not a lot of Halloween gimmicks in it which makes it seem boring compared to a lot of other Halloween maps. It's also one of the few Halloween Payload maps, and every point is a massive choke with little or no flank routes. Many a Blu team has been stopped at the first point as the only way through is a single opening easily covered by one or two sentry guns.
  • Bloodwater is an odd case, since it's a reskin of Badwater Basin, which is normally a well-liked map. However, it's made hard to play on by the staggering amount of Halloween gimmicks — there's pumpkins, spellbooks, bottomless pits, the Horseless Headless Horsemann, MONOCULUS, and the Skeletons, with the latter three sometimes appearing at the same time as each other, which can drag out the map significantly. Before an update to the map fixed it, it also suffered from lighting issues, which could make it hard to see enemies or buildings in poorly-lit areas. Fortunately, a later update resolved these issues and removed the Horseless Headless Horsemann.
• Wutville, a Christmas-themed Payload map included in Smissmas 2020, has been widely deemed by some as the worst level in the game. While the idea of a Whoville-inspired map is seen as an appropriately festive idea for a map by a lot of players, Wutville has been near-universally condemned by the playerbase for a whole variety of reasons. The map is big and has wide open stretches with very little defensive cover, putting Pyros and Heavies at a severe disadvantage; conversely, it's a haven for Snipers and Demomen, who can make the most out of the long sightlines and sticky jump to cross incredibly long distances respectively. The spawn rooms are poorly designed, and spawncamping is easy due to the combination of having only a singular exit each and being incredibly small. The eye-searing textures are theme-appropriate but make it hard to navigate. Many props lack collision, making it possible to be shot by someone obscured by them — and with some of the hedges, shot by someone hiding inside them. There are also multiple ways to actually get outside the map, most infamously resulting in Engineers being able to build sentries under the map. And finally, Wutville has an unusually high resource demand as the result of the rendering issues, causing even otherwise-capable computer rigs to have the framerate crawl to its knees when running the map. The map has even started to cultivate an ironic following for its bizarre textures, level design, and glitches.
  • For some background, Wutville's beta was listed on the Steam workshop in 2016 and apparently went basically untouched until the creator was contacted by Valve mere weeks before shipping Smissmas 2020. Thus, they didn't have enough time to polish the map before release, and while they are grateful for having their map added to the game, they understand the criticisms and (as of this writing) are currently working on a series of fixes that may eventually salvage the map. The first of these patches was added a week after release, tweaking the layout and adding proper collision to certain structures.
• While most custom maps are well-balanced (since they fix what are perceived to be flaws in some official ones), Orange is anything but. It's a 5CP map, but the control points have excruciatingly long cap times even with four players on them, and the central control point (usually the focal point of 5CP maps) is holed at the top of a tower which requires classes who can't explosive jump to go inside and climb up, and it's easily camped by Engineers or Demomen. The map itself is bare and ugly, consisting mostly of developer textures and few obstacles blocking Sniper sightlines (the map was abandoned by its creator after releasing it in 2007), and little to no advanced flanking routes. The spawn rooms are atrociously set up: switching classes kills you due to them lacking a proper func_respawn option, you can get into them as the other team ^note In what seems like a duct-taped solution for the creator not knowing how to block off the spawn to the opposing team, the spawn is also really hard to re-enter properly as anyone except a Scout, a Demoman, or a Soldier, as it features a ramp that works as a one-way exit and is insurmountable by a normal jump. The only possible way to go back in for most classes is to strafe jump from a stair railing just outside the base, and even this doesn't help if you're a Heavy due to him being too slow to make the jump, and worst of all, the stairs are slightly farther away from the entrance on one spawn than the other giving one team an unintentional advantage. This problem isn't fixed in the "fix" version mentioned below either, they don't shift as points are captured like other maps, and you can even build in them, leading to perpetual stalemates and frustration that 2fort and Hightower can only dream of ^note There is a fan-made "fix" version of the map that fixes the func_respawn issue and being able to enter the opposing team's spawn room, but all of the other flaws remain. For these reasons, people who play the map don't even go after the supposed objective and just deathmatch; ironically, the map has become popular because of how horrible it is, gaining a Rocky Horror-esque cult following and dozens of remixes, but serious players continue to avoid the map and servers running it.

Mann vs. Machine

Some waves or even missions in Mann vs. Machine tend to give people a hard time, causing some to even Rage Quit. Standout examples include:

• The third wave of Mannslaughter. It has 12 Super Scouts right at the start of the wave, meaning an impregnable defense is absolutely necessary, and two Tanks show up right after you take care of 6 of them, mixed in with Soldiers and Pyros. Even after that, you still have 8 giant Heavies flanked by 3 Uber Medics each and an infinite amount of Scouts to deal with, meaning that one guy almost always has to stay behind to keep the bomb safe. Plus, a good Demoman or Spy is completely required if a team wants to kill the Medics on the Heavies. And to top it all off, money is scarce near the end of the wave, meaning a team that wasted its money on Buybacks or Canteens will be underprepared for the next 2 rounds. Considered the worst part is how time-consuming the whole thing is, meaning that a team that took 10 minutes to get through the wave, only to lose because of an unattended Scout bot, is highly, highly infuriating.
• Caliginous Caper. An incredibly long Coaltown mission, with only one wave, 900+ enemies, and 9 tanks. It has a huge mixture of bots, starting from Giant Demoknights, going up to Giant Crit Soldiers backed by Uber Medics, Giant Heavies backed by Giant Medics, and a parade of Tanks with 96 Spies. These are the common stumbling points: should you persevere, the home stretch sends out plenty of crit-boosted bots with raised base damage, so not even a fully upgraded crit resistance will be enough to save you. And because it's all one long wave (albeit divided into distinct "sub-waves" with noticeable lulls in the action between them, essentially structuring it as a regular mission with shorter between-wave upgrade breaks and no checkpoints), losing at any point boots you all the way back to the beginning of the mission. Cue the mass Rage Quit from impatient players. The "666" is quite justified, because this level is Hell. Even worse, there's no reward for beating it.
  • From an objective standpoint, Caliginous Caper is actually not as difficult as many of the other examples here; it's incredibly generous with cash - you get 5000 right off the bat, which is more cash than is provided over some entire missions and enough to make your character quite overpowered from the get-go - and has a conspicuous lack of Demonic Spiders like Super Scouts and Steel Gauntlet Heavies, in addition to a bomb that periodically resets back to the start. That is, if your team is competent and coordinated. The problem is that it's a Boot Camp-only mission, and your typical Boot Camp team is neither.
• Bigrock is absolutely gigantic, and that means it takes a very long time to get around. If you don't have teleporters, it's hellish when the robots come in, because it takes about 3 minutes to get from the player spawn point to the robot spawn point. By that time, there's already 50 or so robots headed your way. On top of this, all missions include the Engineer robots, which instantly build level 3 sentries and make teleporters that spawn even more robots. And the missions here are among the hardest in the game. Even the "normal" difficulty mission is comparable to an "advanced" difficulty mission on the other maps. The missions hand you more upgrade cash than usual at the start; expect to make full use of it to stand a chance at progressing.
  • Broken Parts is a massive jump in difficulty compared to the other missions introduced in the Mecha Update. There are crit boosted robots on just about every single round, some of which pack massive damage bonuses to negate the crit resistance that players pretty much need to buy already, along with a titanic supply of giant robots and tanks. This wouldn't be so bad if it were among missions with similar difficulty, yet it's considered an advanced mission rather than an expert. Some notable waves include:
    • Wave 2 is the first Difficulty Spike, where players have to contend with a ferocious pincer attack between a Giant Deflector Heavy backed by a Giant Medic, and a Tank with an obscene amount of HP - all at a point when they likely don't have enough money to buy a lot of important upgrades. To further compound things, Super Scouts will be spawning while you're dealing with the chaos, which can cause an instant loss if one grabs the bomb.
    • Wave 4 has an army of 100 Spybots, which can easily surround and backstab players while neutering Engineers, plus 8 Giant Heavies + Übermedics, Mecha Engineers and Crit-boosted Scoutbots. On top of that, the Spybots may cause severe lag due to the high amount of them changing disguises at the same time. And they spawn in different parts of the map.
    • Wave 5 is a Zerg Rush of 75 Steel Gauntlets and 64 Crit Soldiers, the latter of which have titanic bonuses to damage and fire rate. Each Steel Gauntlet can take a colossal amount of punishment by themselves, and the hordes of them found in this wave are ridiculously resilient as a result, taking a massive amount of Splash Damage Abuse to gun down - and that's on top of the legion of steroid Soldiers using them as meat shields, who fire almost constantly and can instantly kill even players with maxed resistances. Further compounding the situation are Uber Medics periodically thrown in just to screw with you by Ubering a bot that you were trying to kill, an endless stream of Sydney Snipers to turn your defenses to butter and kill you from across the map, and the Engineer Robots periodically spawning in to let all of the aforementioned Steel Gauntlets and Soldiers spawn even closer to your base, possibly resulting in an instant loss.
    • All of this pales in comparison to Wave 6, which cranks all the previous aspects to the extreme, and has been compared to the aforementioned Wave 666 in terms of difficulty. The wave is absolutely relentless, pitting you against legions of crit-boosted and damage-boosted fodder that will Zerg Rush you with glee, 24 giants ^note 3 critboosted Giant Deflector Heavies backed by Giant Medics, 8 Super Scouts, and a rush of 10 Giant Rapid Fire Soldiers that push incredibly hard and can easily surround you, and 3 tanks that come shortly after each other while the Giants are attacking, the last of which has the highest health of any tank in the game at a whopping 60,000. You best be hoping you have a well-coordinated team and a boatload of money under your belt.
    • If you survive the 6 hellish waves, the mission then culminates in a Boss-Only Level that pits you against Sergeant Crits alongside an entourage of Snipers and Spies. Even alone, the Sergeant can handily destroy an entire team by himself due to how much raw firepower he has, and also packs the survivability to make it so that even if he doesn't end up killing anyone, you may not end up killing him in time either. The support units constantly moving in to assassinate players trying to fight the boss don't help, either. On the bright side, a team that survived the previous 6 waves will likely be able to take out the boss without too much issue.
• Day of Wreckening is notorious for its second wave. Good news is only one robot needs to destroyed. Bad news is, that robot is a tank with about 20000 HP, along with an infinite supply of Heavyweight Champs. It's extremely difficult to produce enough damage to destroy the tank yet keep the robots under control. Worse yet, this is an intermediate mission, which is basically the easiest difficulty that one can acquire items for.
  • Wave 4 also leads to a ton of hair-pulling, as it consists of an unrelenting parade of Giant Pyros and Super Scouts. Handling both is very difficult, as letting any of the ten Super Scouts past likely results in an instant loss, but focusing too much on the Scouts means the Pyros can muscle past your defenses and let the Scouts through anyway.
• From the Two Cities operation: Bavarian Botbash's final wave brings a whopping sixteen giant robots to the table, plus a tank, including Heavies and Demomen that dish out infinite crits. And the support consists of annoying Uber Medics plus Quick-Fix Medics that can bring an enemy robot through your defenses very easily, plus endless rounds of Spies and Snipers. For an advanced mission, it's tough, but bearable. However, compare this finale to that of Hamlet Hostility, the other Rottenburg advanced mission, which is... three tanks. Yeah, that's it, and while there are quite a few support classes, enough firepower will put that down very easily so you can focus on them.^note To put this in perspective, the final wave of Village Vanguard, the Boot Camp mission for Rottenburg, is essentially the same as Hamlet Hostility's final wave but with slightly less health on the tanks and slightly easier support bots.
• Players on every Mann-euvers missions often reach a brick wall at wave 3. Why? It's when the Steel Gauntlets first appear. Because this is the normal difficulty mission for regular players, many of them are new and just aren't skilled enough to handle them. This is in addition to the many Demomen robots and the Sniper robots as support.
  • And then comes Wave 5. Not only does it open with a parade of Steel Gauntlets followed by Soldiers instead of Demomen, there are also 3 Major League Scouts. If you get too distracted by the Gauntlets, then those guys are gonna slip past your defenses and carry the bomb for an instant fail, and that's assuming the Steel Gauntlets haven't already crushed your defenses through sheer bulk and weight of numbers.
• Mannhattan can become this regardless of difficulty. The way the map is set up is that there are also two gates to defend in addition to the bomb, making it into a pseudo-Control Point map where teamwork is absolutely crucial here. And this map has hoards of Goddamned Bats and Demonic Spiders coming at you full force like the Giant Rapid-Fire Soldiers, Super Scouts, and Bowman Snipers, all rife to blow you to smithereens - on top of having some of the highest concentration of boss enemies in a single map, with Metro Malice having two bosses alone. The warehouse at the beginning has a second spawn point on the balcony above the main open area where teams must be weary of, and unless there's an Engie keeping that area in check, you can easily be overwhelmed by flanking robots coming out at both sides. What's worse is that you must take priority in killing the robots highlighted with yellow lights, as these robots will make straight beelines to the gates. If any of the gates get captured, their spawn point will move closer to your base and they will also gain an additional bomb. Having to fend off robots carrying three bombs from various directions can easily turn the wave into an extended, masochistic experience, even if the bombs can reset if untouched for long enough. The one solace players have is that tanks don't spawn on this map.
  • Empire Escalation. The first few waves are tough enough, being absolutely saturated with Demonic Spiders like crit-boosted Armored Sandman Scouts and Rapid Fire Bowmen, Giant Black Box Soldiers, Force-a-Nature Super Scouts, and Giant Shotgun Heavies. But hope you have some time to spare because you will be stuck in wave 4. First, it's a horde of Grenade Spam Crit Demomen coming from both entrances, and then Major Crits pocketed by Giant Medics soon following. It's over? Nope, there's still some Force-a-Nature Super Scouts that can screw everything up by carrying the bomb to the hatch because you'll be distracted fighting Major Crits or the Giant Demomen. All of this culminates in the final fight with the Chief Heal-on-Kill Deflector Heavy, which has an insane amount of bulk, can heal tons of HP with each kill, and is backed up by more Concheror Soldiers and Force-a-Nature Super Scouts. It's not as bad as Caliginous Caper, but it's close.
• Custom missions, especially those featured in Potato MVM's community campaigns (Titanium Tank, Canteen Crashers, Madness VS Machines, Digital Directive), can really dial the difficulty past what's normally presented, especially when unique robots are factored in.
  • Ultra Uplink has its first wave pit you against a sizeable wave of bots with some Giants peppered in. Not too big of a deal compared to the rest of the Canteen Crasher tour... until you realize you start the mission with no money. Some classes can still manage with their reasonable baseline, but others like the Medic become next to useless without a vital upgrade or two to define their combat role. Unstable Equilibrium has an even greater effect as every credit you get in this opening wave counts.
  • If you enter a custom mission and the wave number reads "Wave 666", you know you're in for a world of pain. Like Caliginous Caper, you start with a fair number of credits, and you're probably going to need all of them to handle a large onslaught of robots. Unlike Caliginous Caper, the custom hell waves will not hold back on siccing Demonic Spiders like Super Scouts or Giant Medics to deliver the bomb when your team is split up, worn out, or when you think you've got a moment's reprieve to upgrade. Oh, and it's very difficult to get contract progress on these missions, since the contract only saves progress on wave completion, meaning it's All or Nothing in that regard. You'll be here for a while.
• Potato.tf’s Operation Digital Directive cranks the difficulty higher and then tips the waiter, with pretty much every mission having mind-boggling numbers of robots. If that wasn’t enough, many robots are equipped with weapons their class usually can’t equip, such as Sudden Equinox giving Spy-bots the Soldier banners, and more. Additionally, Medic-bots with the projectile shield aren’t too uncommon, forcing the team to put themselves in danger by attack the medic from behind. It also doesn’t help that Snipers can now headshot, Pyros airblast all projectiles instead of just rockets, and some Sentry Busters also actively target players instead of sentry guns. Some missions DO have RED robots to help you, however, in many cases, the RED robots, especially Engineer-bots, tend to be prone to Artificial Stupidity and barely help, if at all. It’s rather clear that Digital Directive's high difficulty is unnecessary and excessive and can make even the best teams have a nightmare of a time trying to beat the missions.
  • Mobocracy. Dear lord, Mobocracy. Taking place on the custom map Kelly, this is a mission that many players have struggled to complete. For starters, all of the money in each wave is dropped by the last robot you kill, meaning you can’t collect any during the wave. This effectively renders Scout useless, and prevents players from going back for upgrades mid-wave. In addition, Reanimators, Canteens, and several powerful upgrades are disabled in this mission, leaving you with nothing but your weapons and your wits to fight back the robot horde. Wave 5 is especially difficult, with the main focus being on protecting a “VIP”: A Heavy named Gaben. If Gaben dies, the robots will release a horde of crit-boosted Giant Soldiers, making the wave near-impossible to beat. Even if you’re lucky enough to keep Gaben alive, several other challenges make this wave one of the more difficult ones. First up is the Blimp, which acts as a flying Tank. Since blimps are so high up, many classes that normally excel at tank damage will falter. Pyros will be almost useless unless they can get on top of the blimp, and classes with projectiles are subject to large amounts of damage fall-off. Secondly, rapid-fire Snipers known as Infantry will appear after the Blimp is destroyed. Since they deal lots of damage very quickly and spawn in rapid succession, you’ll likely be overwhelmed if you find yourself fighting a large number of them. Lastly, we have a Tank that is Ubercharged for 90 seconds after it appears. Its invulnerability only wears off right when it’s next to the bomb hatch, meaning that if most of the team doesn’t focus it when this happens, the bomb will be dropped and the wave will be lost. Fortunately, if your team manages to destroy the tank in time, it drops an absurd amount of money, enough to purchase every upgrade with plenty to spare. However, destroying the tank doesn’t end the wave, leaving you to take care of the rest of the Infantry, and even more dangerous robots if you let Gaben die. This can easily lead to a loss if your team is too busy buying upgrades, so it’s best not to get greedy and instead wait until the end of the wave to spend your hard-earned credits.
  • In a similar vein to Mobocracy, Bionic Bits is also notorious for being frustratingly difficult to tackle. Just to give an idea of how ludicrous this mission is, the first wave includes a Giant Charger Demo (a Giant Demoknight with a practically infinite charge duration), 3 giant critboosted Heavies paired with an Uber Medic, a swarm of Direct Hit Soldiers with expert marksmanship, a Giant Black Box Soldier, a Blimp, and a Heavy boss robot. Again, this is the first wave...and your team is expected to beat this with a grand total of...1 credit to start with. Even with all the custom stat changes and buffs provided to you, this is utterly brutal for your average player. The rest of the waves don't ease off the pressure either, bringing all sorts of Demonic Spiders and boss robots on every single wave. Particularly in the penultimate wave, which brings 6 Giant Charger Demos onto the field at once at the start, followed by a 40k HP tank, and 11 giant Heavies...that go invisible when they stop firing, which are also escorted by Steel Gauntlet Pushers and Lithium Gauntlets, the latter of which are completely immune to ranged weapons and backstabs. Oh, and after all that...you still need to go up against a Pyro boss.
  • Dynamic Disaster throws a unique curveball for players expecting a "normal" round of Mann vs. Machine. The mission consists of 2 waves. The first wave is a Caliginous Caper-style "endurance" wave with tons of custom robots and three bosses. Sounds tricky enough? The wave doesn't bring a bomb into play, but instead your team has to kill every single robot within a 28 minute time limit. Running out of time before the last two bosses spawn will result in a loss, and just like Caliginous Caper, there are no checkpoints. You run out of time at any point? You'll have to do it all over again. A coordinated team is practically mandatory, as getting teamwiped or leaving a few stragglers roaming around can really eat into all that precious time. The second wave however is a much needed Breather Level as it only consists of a Tank armed with stickybomb cannons, along with a randomly chosen boss robot, Engineers, and Spies as support.
  • The maps Seabed and Giza, where the missions Ocean Commotion and Tomb Adventure are played on respectively, both have rather confusing layouts. There are plenty of elevation changes or winding paths that are tedious to navigate, especially for the low-mobility classes. Add on to the fact that both are also Mannhattan-style "gate" maps with very few places to mount a decent defense, raising the difficulty of two already tough missions.
  • Special mention must be made to the fifth and sixth wave of Dust and Dirt. The fifth wave throws a sizeable amount of Giants at your team, with the final subwave bringing in a "Tank boss"^note which is actually two tanks stacked on top of each other with 60k HP in total...equipped with a Sentry Gun, cannons that spew volleys of stickybombs, and impenetrable armour plating. Soldiers, Heavies, Pyros, and Giant Rapid Fire Soldiers also spawn in to back it up. All in all, there's plenty of distractions that can hamper your team's ability to lay down enough DPS to take down the Tank^note ...er, Tanks. After that, the sixth and final wave of this mission looks deceptively tame in comparison, featuring 4 pairs of Giant Brass Beast Heavies backed by both normal and giant Medics. It's when the Samurai Demos start spawning in where you're in for a nasty surprise. Enter the Sandstorm Samurai Sergeant, a jacked-up version of the Samurai Demo. Unlike most boss robots, the Sergeant has all the buffs that a boss receives...but can still get the bonuses from carrying the bomb like the normal robots do^note Damage resistance, health regen, and critboost, which can make it even more of a challenge to take him down. He's also hidden from the wavebar, so you'll definitely be caught off-guard on your first playthrough.
• Potato.tf's Halloween-themed campaign, Operation Hexadecimal Horrors, features possibly one of the most brutal and unforgiving missions ever conceived. Welcome to Trespasser. To sum it up, this mission plays out more like a "zombie survival scenario", with your team "holding out" inside an abandoned house^note the custom map, Condemned until "rescue" arrives. To add to the "immersion" (or difficulty) of the mission, most weapons either receive major nerfs or are outright disallowed to be used, leaving all of the typically powerful classes severely gimped in terms of their effectiveness.^note Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, and Heavy are restricted to their secondaries and melee. Medic has no Medi-gun available. Engineer can only build level 1 buildings, and the Sentry has a greatly reduced rate of fire. Among other things... There are no respawns or reanimators. Upgrades are scarce thanks to increased costs and a meagre credits pool (you can even lose credits if a teammate dies). The "horde" you're up against contains plenty of nasty creatures that are either hard to kill, or can rip you to shreds in an instant...or both. Oh, and this mission is one, long Wave 666-style wave. Meaning no checkpoints, and zero room for error. With so many things going against you, it's no wonder why even seasoned veterans struggle to get anywhere close to the end.