VS Saxton Hale Mode (custom game mode)

“

Me, I'd rather get down there and tell them myself... with my BARE HANDS! — Saxton Hale on communication

”

The VS Saxton Hale Mod is a Juggernaut style mod of Arena that pits the TF2 mercenaries on RED against the Mann Co. CEO, Saxton Hale on BLU. Armed with plenty of health and his bare hands, the Player taking control of Saxton must eliminate all of RED to win whilst RED must team up to take Saxton Hale down.

Status and servers

The mod is still in development, through beta. It is available to play on select servers. Looking in the server browser the gametype would be visible as VS Saxton Hale.

94.23.158.232:27019 , for example, is running Beta 6

Gameplay

The Mod has the same base rules as Arena, RED vs BLU, one life per player. BLU, however, is composed of just a single player as Saxton. His traits include increased health, a few special abilities and can only use melee weapons.

Many actions that would instantly kill a normal player, such as backstabs and taunt kills, will only deal a large amount of damage to Saxton rather than kill him outright.

Saxton Hale's Abilities

• Superjump: The player must crouch on the spot, look up and release crouch. This will send him flying up into the air. This ability has a 5 second cooldown.
• Rage: When Saxton has taken enough damage, about 1,900, his rage meter will read full, by taunting all RED players in close proximity will become stunned similar to how the Ghost in Harvest and the Horseless Headless Horsemann do in their respective Halloween events. Saxton's taunt however also affects Sentry Guns. Older versions of the mod do not use a rage meter for this ability, and can be used infinitely.
• Weighdown: Whenever Saxton presses the button bound for the "Medic!" voice command he will drop to the ground, this allows him to escape from being pinned in the air. Older versions of the mod do not include this.

Balance Specifics

Hale's health follows a formula based upon the inital number of players on RED at the start of the round. {([250+1]*1)^1.12} With i being the initial number of RED players.

Some weapons equipped by players on RED will be forced changed into their default counterparts or edited for balance issues:

• Natascha becomes the default Minigun.
• Single clip weapons such as the Flamethrower have half ammo removed.
• All non-backstab melee weapons will always perform Crits to reward the player for taking risks with close range combat.
• Some class limits are enforced.

Video

The below video shows an example of some game play and features of the mod:

Remake

Due to the lack of public release of the Mod, SLAG Gaming has taken up a remake of the mod. There are key differences, most notable in several glitch fixes, lower damage done by players, and a significantly lower health for Saxton. The SLAG remake is named "VS Saxton Hale (SLAG <version>)".

SLAG Gaming: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/slaggaming

Trivia

• The Saxton Hale model is forced over a Soldier player, using the same animations and skeletons. From the first person perspective the BLU player will have a Shovel. Occasionally there are graphical glitches and the RED team will see a Soldier clipped into Saxton Hale.
• In some versions of the mod there is a 1/10 chance a [Vagineer] will appear instead, with faster attacks.

External Links

• Random Fortress Forum
• Relevant SPUF thread
• Mod Credits
• "Update" Page