It's an average night at home. Feeling bored, you decide to hop onto some Team Fortress 2 servers with Spy. However, there's only one server up, and when joining, things don't look as wacky or hat-filled as a regular match... But then the server locks you in. And the only way to escape is ending the round.
Just know one thing: the player list might be empty, but you're sure as hell not alone here.
Capture The Intelligence
is a Team Fortress 2 fan game by nixilz documenting an unfortunate BLU Spys experience as he's thrust into a nightmarish Capture the Flag match.
The game also has a Tower Mode consisting of random enemies on each floor, including exclusive enemies, and a custom mode.
Tropes include:
- A Birthday, Not a Break: The ending reveals this entire thing happened on the BLU Spy's birthday. Thankfully, he manages to escape just in time for the RED Team to give him his cake. Too bad Engineer didn't show up.
- Air-Vent Passageway: The Manngle can travel through the vents in the Tower.
- Artifact of Doom: The intelligence itself might have been changed into one, being responsible for the Engineer's corruption and the rest of the plot having happened in the first place.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The Snipers' charge times are heavily nerfed in Tower mode and sprinting in their sightlines is no loner an insta-kill in order to make them reasonable threats when paired with enemies their base versions were never designed to be.
- Came Back Wrong: The Engineer is resurrected by the intelligence after getting shot by Heavy in the Tower Ending, but it's clear-cut that he is not the same anymore.
- Can't Move While Being Watched: Inverted. The Snipers will not shoot you if you stand still even in their sights, but move in their line of sight and they'll ready a shot.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: Tower Mode's titular tower, or towers, as the loading screen graphic implies, which mysteriously appeared after GMod Tower fell.
- Harmless Enemy: The Demoman is stationary and doesn't attack you at all, only make noises when you approach him, though the sounds will attract the likes of the Medic. The Tower exclusive enemy ARGMan serves a similar purpose, where approaching him will trigger a jumpscare that won't kill you but alert any sound-sensitive enemies on the level.
- Horror Comedy: While wearing horror on it's right sleeve, the game also carries TF2s sense of humor on it's left, naturally taking facial animations from GMOD machinimas.
- Implacable Man: The Pyro, who may be slow, but always knows where you are and will never stop chasing you.
- Invisible Monsters: The Ratman only becomes visible in brief intervals while wandering (and becomes completely invisible when standing still). He drops this when he starts chasing you.
- I Shall Taunt You: Out of all the enemies, the Heavy is the most talkative, taunting the Spy whenever he loses track that he will find him.
- Irony: The Scout, who is the fastest class in the game, happens to be the second easiest chasing enemy to outrun, only faster than the deliberately slow Pyro. The Heavy, who is the slowest class in the original game, on the other hand, has the fastest default chasing speed among the mercenaries.
- Knight of Cerebus: The Engineer is the only enemy devoid of active comedy(until the ending). He menacingly floats towards you, and is entirely determined to blow that dumb look off your stupid face. Fitting, considering Spies and Engineers are natural enemies.
- Laughing Mad: Both the Scout and the Manngle laugh dearangedly when they find you.
- Madness Mantra: the Engineer tends to repeat "Well don't that beat all" in scattered pieces throughout the server room. Beating Tower Mode would reveal this was one of the last things he said before Heavy killed him.
- Marathon Level: Tower Mode, in which you have to overcome 50 levels consecutively with randomised threats, including four new ones. Oh, and if you get caught once, it's right back to the bottom.
- The Misophonic: The Soldier, who is otherwise able to eventually outpace you and catch you otherwise, freezes up if you call for Medic near him, which will enable you to escape him.
- Mythology Gag: Each enemy's behavior actively recalls a certain tactic unique to that classes playstyle:
- The Spy himself has to sneak around and get to the objectives without getting caught, much like in a normal Capture the Flag match.
- The Heavy taunts the Spy when he gets away, showing that he's still the Boisterous Bruiser in canon.
- The Soldier attempts to pounce you when he sees you, bringing a Market Garden rocket jump to mind.
- The Snipers all wait for you to make the first move before firing, which also explains why sprinting in their line of sight is a One-Hit Kill.
- The Pyro is an Advancing Boss of Doom, which brings to mind standard W+M1 tactics. Pyro is also paired up with the Sniper, and both are effective Spy counters, the Pyro in particular never stopping their pursuit of the Spy like an overeager spy-checker.
- The Medic only comes when alerted by either the Demoman, who's notorious for having the most loud screams, and the Scout, who's low health in game makes them more reliant on Medics.
- Whenever you shutdown a server, the Engineer teleports and rushes to the server to check up on it, like how a regular Engineer would react to a Spy sapping his buildings. The fact that he's the last enemy faced also references how Spies and Engineers are natural enemies and the popular Engineer tactic of intelligence-camping.
- Tower Mode references different parts of GMOD history. The Tower itself is stated to have risen after GMod Tower fell, The Rat Man is named after a similar myth involving a Stalker that roamed gm_construct's tunnels, The M.I.N.G.E is a mechanically-enchanced Mingebag, and the ARGMan is infamous for being a central piece in GMOD analog horror series.
- The Tower Mode ending also throws in more nods to class tactics: Engineer nearly killing the Medic might mirror how Medics are usually seen as the better alternative. Heavy showing up to save the Medic also references the strong bond the two have. And The Engineer is heavily associated with the intelligence, harkening to intel-camping once again.
- Or Was It a Dream?: Or Was It A Game more like. While the Spy does manage to reawaken to reality, and just in time for his birthday too, Heavy points out one of the RED mercs is missing from the table. That merc happens to be the Engineer, still stuck in the server.
- Retraux: The game resembles a classic RPGMaker creation while the cutscenes and jumpscares resemble your average 2010 TF2 machinima.
- Sense-Impaired Monster: The Scout is completely deaf and does not respond to loud noises at all, unlike Medic and Heavy for example. However, his vision is better and can spot you from farther away.
- Single-Use Shield: Every nine levels in Tower Mode, you get a Dead Ringer. Its ability to fake your death functions as a lifeline that lets you avoid dying if you run into an enemy along with granting you invulnerability for a few seconds before making a loud noise that may alert sound-sensitive enemies, just like in the source game.
- Sore Loser: If you manage to shake off the Scout, he doesn't take losing his prey lightly and yells for the Medic to finish the job. Outside of the main story, this can also attract other noise-sensitive enemies to his position.
- Support Party Member: The Demoman. While he won't hunt you, he will alert the Medic to your position.
- Tower Mode has both Demoman and Snipers function as this. They only have a small chance to appear on any given floor as an obstacle, but as a trade-off, you won't be warned about them like the main threats before a floor begins, meaning you won't know if one's there until it's too late. There’s also the Pyro and the ARG Man who act more as walls and will never appear alone on floors.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Tower Mode's ending reveals Heavy is this, as even though he killed Engineer to stop him stealing the intelligence, he accidentally sealed his own fate when Engineer was corrupted by the intelligence, and that of the rest of the RED team as well.
- Villain Teleportation: The Engineer is the final enemy in the main story and teleports to a designated spot indicated by a red mark whenever a server is touched, so the Engineer will always end up in the same room as you when you do. This can be used against the Engineer if he's chasing you and you touch a server, forcing him to teleport away.
- Wham Line: "Where is Engineer?"
- Wham Shot: The Spy managing to escape Hydro...only to end up in gm_construct, indicating that the game isn't quite over yet.
- You Will Not Evade Me: The Soldier can't be shaken off and speeds up exponentially with no cap once he sees you, ensuring he WILL catch you if you don't scare him off.
Well don't that beat all?
