Team Fortress 2 unlocks: Demoman

1- Main Weapon: Hand Mortar – Similar to the Grenade Launcher, but the grenades explode in contact.
• Pros: used to “bombard” the enemy lines. Helps the Demoman to manage short range combat better.
• Cons: lost of the bounce feature.  

2- Secondary Weapon: Bouncing Bombs Launcher - uses the same Sticky Bomb Launcher, but now the bombs don’t stick but bounce (farther than the original Grenade Launcher). The bombs can be detonated the same way as before. 
• Pros: can be thrown at far distance (when holding the fire mouse bottom). Can reach very unusual places.
• Cons: lost of the ambush feature of the Sticky Bombs. Harder to use the bombs to jump. 

3- Melee Weapon: TNT - like in the earlier TF2 movies
• Pros: great for room cleaning.
• Cons: lost of the melee ability which makes Demoman even more vulnerable at hand-to-hand distance. Limited ammo (other drawback comparing with the melee weapon).

5- Hand Grenade: Democharge – I miss the massive explosions and the special destructible objects from the TF1. Maps with alternative routes, only opened by the Democharge, would add more spice to the TF2. The Democharge would take long time to explode and could be “defused” by an enemy Demoman just by standing over it for some seconds.

For general modifications to the Demoman class, I would suggest increasing the clip size of the Grenade Launcher to 5 or 6 grenades (look at the model, it was designed to hold more than 4 shots!) and to extend the ammo capacity from 16 to 20.

Team Fortress 2 unlocks: Sniper

1- Main Weapon: Heavy Sniper Rifle
• Pros: powerful piercing rounds that pass through flesh and thin walls/objects. Optional (but overkill) feature: thermographic sniper scope.
• Cons: slower rate of fire. The weapon is heavy so the movement of the Sniper is decreased (although that could be a problem to implement). Clips with 5 rounds and longer reload. Maximum ammo capacity of 15 rounds.

2- Secondary Weapon: Silenced Submachinegun
• Pros: almost no noise, no flash. Hard to know where the shots are coming from.
• Cons: lower damage. Overheat.

3- Melee Weapon: Serrated Knife
• Pros: cause some seconds of bleeding after a hit.
• Cons: shorter range attack than the kukri (machete).

4- Hand Grenade: Tear Gas grenade – like in the Special Forces expansion of Battlefield 2, it blurs the vision and deals some damage. Good against other Snipers.

Like the Scout, this is a hard class to improve. However, a great addition would be a Grappling Hook in the place of the Secondary or Melee weapons. Valve (when adding the Sandwich) showed that changing things a little bit could make the game even funnier.

I would also like to suggest adding a clip reload animation for the standard sniper rifle (after all, all the 25 rounds are inside the weapon?).

Team Fortress 2 unlocks: Soldier

1- Main Weapon: Wire-Guided Rocket Launcher (works exactly as the Half-Life and BF2 rocket launchers – with the right mouse bottom you can turn on or off the guidance).
• Pros: tactical option for the soldier (to kill that Sniper or Sentry around the corner).
• Cons: slower rate of fire and velocity. Not effective to be used in the “heat” of action.

2- Secondary Weapon: Slug Shotgun.
• Pros: fires a solid, single, large projectile for concentrated damage.
• Cons: still not very accurate at long distances. Harder to hit a moving target.

3- Melee Weapon: Shotgun Bayonet – works for the both Soldier shotguns types.
• Pros: can be used with the right mouse button. Don’t need to de-select the shotgun for using a melee attack.
• Cons: slower “rate of fire” comparing to the shovel.

4- Hand Grenade: Frag grenade – good area damage. Not effective against buildings.

The Soldier was always my preferred class. I fell he could carry more rockets (at least 4 more), because you easily run out of ammo even before breaching the enemy’s defense.

Team Fortress 2 unlocks: Engineer

1- Main Weapon: Double-barreled Shotgun – Texan pride! 
• Pros: great short range damage. 
• Cons: slower rate of fire than the regular shotgun, as it is reloaded after each shot.

2- Secondary Weapon: Girojet Pistol - a gadget born in the Cold War, a minirocket handgun. A more appropriate and less futuristic alternative for the previous Rail Gun.
• Pros: good damage. With a sound that is not associated with shots (can confuse the enemy). 
• Cons: needs to accelerate (no full damage when immediately leaves the barrel). Slower rate of fire than the regular Pistol and not as accurate. 

3- Melee Weapon: Blowtorch – an Engineer’s essential.
• Pros: builds faster. Fast rate damage, can ignite enemies (useful against Spies).
• Cons: consumes fuel over time. Needs to be lighted each time is selected.

4- Hand Grenade: EMP grenade – if Engineer knows how to build it, he knows how to destroy it. The explosion deals powerful damage against buildings (sentry slayer) and detonates Demo’s stick/pipe bombs. No damage against humans. It’s interesting now to see Engineers helping to breach the enemy’s defense.

Team Fortress 2 unlocks: Spy

1- Main Weapon: Dartgun – slows down the enemy movement. An “overdose” will put him to sleep (or kill). Funny effect: the voice of the victim is slowed down as well (though I don’t think this would be easy to implement).
• Pros: tactical weapon. Could be used to avoid chasing enemies.
• Cons: not as powerful as the revolver.

2- Secondary Weapon: Disrupter Sap – instead of destroying a sentry gun, this sap makes it go crazy, shooting members of both teams. The Engineer may still try to repair and fix it, but he can’t detonate it by the Destroy Menu. Until fixed, the sentry is “neutral” and can be destroyed by both teams.
• Pros: mass confusion in the defense line.
• Cons: affect only sentries. The sap could take longer to make effect (still could be taken off by the Engineer). Does not disable the sentry (can target on Spy’s allies or the Spy himself).

3- Melee Weapon: “Tropical Disease” Syringe – inspired by the Medic melee weapon in TF and TFC.
• Pros: slowly kills the victim, unless healed by a Medic. As additional, the victim affected by the disease could spread it to allied players with body contact.
• Cons: no instant kill. The Spy is very vulnerable after attacking.

4- Hand Grenade: Hallucinogenous grenade (the same as previous TF installments but with updated effects. This should be very fun.)

Although I have my own suggestions for the Spy, there is a great fake announcement for this class in the Web. Check it out. If Valve just made it, the Spy would be a much better class to play with.

Team Fortress 2 unlocks

The new Medic, Pyro and Heavy weapons and achievements turned to be a great step to make TF2 more challenging, to bring back players who got bored, to expand customization (and players’ satisfaction) and specially to extend the game’s life.

But how to think on 27 all new weapons keeping the balance, class personality and good game play? In the following posts I will give some suggestions.

As a bonus, I’m also suggesting the return of the hand grenades, so appreciated in TF and TFC. But each class would have only one unique type of grenade, and 2 units of it. This option could be unlocked if the player complete all the old generic achievements, for instance. 

For the classes already "upgraded", I would suggest these hand grenades:

- Medic: Concussion Grenade – small damage, but throws away and stuns the enemy. Can be used by the Medic for "Concussion Jump", allowing him to follow Soldiers or Demomans into the enemy base. Looks like the WW2 German stick grenade. ^^

- Pyro: Napalm Grenade – like in the previous installments, works for area denial. Look: the Pyro already have these grenades in his player model.

- Heavy: Nail Grenade – the hand grenade of the Soldier in TF1 and TFC. Although I feel a Smoke Grenade would be more useful, the problem with these is the lag caused by the smoke particles. 

Best and worst game expansion packs

BEST GAME EXPANSIONS

• All Blizzard expansion packs. They not only make the best games, but also the best expansions. Notably, the Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne (2003) is that kind of expansion you could pay the same price of the game. Gladly.

• Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour (2003) – simply makes the C&C Generals the best RTS of its time. It’s so charming (specially the Challenge mode) that I’m still playing it.

• Warhammer 40k: Dark Crusade (2006) – this is what the poor Winter Assault should have been in the first place. A great expansion, awesome content, lots of fun. Pity the metamap game mode does not support multiplayer.

• The Battle for Middle-Earth 2: Rise of the Witch King (2006) – even if the Campaign could be made with more attention, the metamap game mode WITH multiplayer support from TBfME2 now enhanced and perfected is the best multiplayer experience in RTS I know.

• Medieval 2 Total War Kingdoms (2007) – this is one of the most valuable expansions I ever saw. It not only adds one new campaign, but four! Each one with countless of hours to play. It’s really impressive. By the way, I’m playing it now.

• Command & Conquer 3 Kane’s Wrath (2007) – Tiberium Wars is not one of my preferred games in the C&C saga, but this expansion kind of save it. Although the story line is the weak point, the Global Conquest game mode is very good. There are just two things that avoid this expansion to be perfect: the lack of multiplayer support in the Global Conquest mode and the Kane’s Challenge (from Xbox) missing in Windows version.

WORST GAME EXPANSIONS

• All “The Sims” and “The Sims 2” expansions – not only the expansions don’t worth the money you pay, but they degrade the game, making it very slow. These expansions are a factory of making money, but they compromise the quality of those great games.