It can be that they just wanted to activate the audience of Team Fortress 2 a bit with the war thing going on, and in the end they give the speculated items to both.
My download speed is an average of about 100kb/s... So you aren't in a bad situation at all. Generally I like Steam as it makes playing and over all the installing of games easier.
Well I've always thought that the Demoman is an easy class to play. It only needs a little prediction to be played well. As for what comes to the new weapons, I really can't say anything about them for sure until I get a little test in real gameplay. The new weapons introduce a cool idea...
What I meant earlier was that you'll have to be carelful while wandering around in the game. It would be nice if you'd have to be in constant alert mode while playing, even though the overall rhythm of the moment would be slow. Well rockslides are a pretty good example of my ideas.
I think they should make the environment an enemy. What I basically mean is that I would like to have more interaction between Gordon & friends and the hostile environment. I don't want the game to just have a sort of a scenery.