By far my favorite of the new offerings is the Ubersaw. Looking more like a gun from Gears of War, the Ubersaw is stained from hilt to curved blade in blood, a twisted piece of bad-ass metal. It adds 25% to your ubercharge after scoring a hit, at the expense of a 20% slower firing speed compared to the standard Bonesaw. Meant for the more offensively minded medics--AlexXdude, maldoror, et al--the potential for ubercharge madness, as well as total embarrassment and disastrous medic time-wasting, is huge.

The Blutsauger--"The Vampire" in German--looks more like a blaster than a needle gun. It will suck away your enemy's health and add it to yours at the rate of three health per hit, a nasty self-healing weapon. But again, while it sounds superior to the Syringe Gun on paper, it lacks the ability to score critical hits, making it more of a defensive tool than anything else.

The Critzcrieg we knew about, but it was no less interesting to play around with. The gun itself emits a passive yellow glow, and upon ubercharge, casts a Palpatine-esque lightning around your teammate's weapon, imbuing him with non-stop critical hits for 10 seconds. Deadly to be sure, but much like a standard ubercharge, it only stays active for so long. The charge must be well-timed, and fully taken advantage of. Unlike the health variant, this crit-uber provides no defense for your attacker, relying totally on the skill of your teammate. If your soldier wastes his few critical rockets on the wall, you'll be forced to beat a hasty retreat, with little gain to show for it.

A loadout menu allows for between-spawn changing of each weapon. From the looks of things, Valve is planning to eventually add even more than the three extra weapons per class, as the loadout lists under each currently-equipped item: "(1 other in inventory)." Changing the primary Syringe Gun, for instance, brings you to an individual Primary Weapon loadout screen, with only one other option--The Blutsauger--currently available.

Like many of you, I was skeptical of the new weapons at first. I asked an imaginary Valve questions like: Why would you take the risk of potentially unbalancing such a balanced game? Why jump on the "unlockable" bandwagon when the game is already so solid? Why would you do this to my beloved pastime, Valve? Why?

The simple answer is, I think, that Valve might just succeed in digging the core of this game even deeper.

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The Ubersaw is my favorite example. In recent weeks, growing a little bored of my typical Heavy setup, I've been playing the medic as an offensive melee class. The game, at present, makes it very difficult to do such a thing, and thus the challenge. However, with the Ubersaw, Valve is rewarding me for the same experimentation that I naturally gravitated toward. It is those kinds of wild gameplay scenarios that, if carefully balanced on a weapon-by-weapon basis, could add a huge amount of replay value to the TF2 experience.

As far as the development process behind these new toys, TF2 team captain Robin Walker told me that the unlockables have been far easier to balance than the actual classes. He seemed less concerned with balancing in general than I expected, though he noted that if any of the changes are unpopular amongst the community, the team will certainly take note.

I know a lot of Team Fortress 2 players--past and present--are worried about the longevity of the game. I didn't play Goldrush for thirty hours, so I can't tell whether it's the second coming of gameplay addiction. I don't know if these unlockable weapons will please everybody, and who knows what it will do to the game in terms of balancing.

All I know is, if you're trying to get ahold of me in a couple of weeks, you might want to look on Steam.

The new TF2 content is scheduled to go live sometime in the next few weeks.