Team Fortress 2 Gets King of the Hill

Team Fortress 2's Classless Update won't just bring more hats to Valve's beloved team-based shooter - it'll have new maps and modes too, like the freshly revealed King of the Hill.

Team Fortress 2 will add a standard of multiplayer FPS gaming to its offerings when the Classless Update drops in with a new game mode, King of the Hill. You've played in every other shooter out there, but hey, why not play it in TF2 as well.

Here's how KotH, as the TF2 team is calling it, works in Valve's shooter: a KotH map has a single capture point which needs to be held for three minutes. The point is locked for the a short interval at the beginning of a round, and then becomes free for the taking. Once a team captures the point, a timer will start ticking down the three minutes. If the team gets booted off the point, the timer freezes and the other team's starts up. So as you can see, it's a contest to see who can hold a single point for as long as possible. A contest to see who is the...king of the hill.

KotH will debut alongside a new map, Viaduct, which is designed specifically for the mode. The map takes place on a snowy hill, at the peak of which is the capture point. This is about as literal an interpretation of the king of the hill idea gets, folks. In addition to Viaduct, two old maps are being converted for KotH play, Nucleus and Sawmill.

So there: fancy new hats, fancy new modes, fancy new maps. What more could a TF2 fan wish for?