Team Fortress 2 challenges the ideas and concepts of first person shooter games of today. With the various styles of characters, when you play a certain class, it plays and feels entirely differently depending on your choice.  The true core balance of the class system is what makes this game work so well. The fast moving, double jumping Scout can easily dash about the battlefield swinging his baseball bat wildly at those he passes. The demolitions man can place stickybombs at choke points and wait for any unfortunate souls that might wander into that direction. The sniper does what he does best, and sits back long range and waits for the perfect headshot time. And each of the classes feel and play as you would expect them to handle. Now let's get into some of the game play.

As with all first person shooters, you have a gun, and you have to shoot and kill the players of the other team. What makes this game so different you might ask? Again, I would point you to the class system. As each class is a check and balance to another class. For example, the spy can disguise himself as a player on the other team as well as cloak invisible for short bursts to sneak up for the kill stab. This in turn created what players now call the "Spy Check". When a player is acting fishy, or happens to be running the wrong way trying to sneak around, you do a Spy Check. This consists of just shooting people on your own team. If they are on your own team, they will not be hurt. However, if it is a spy in disguise, this will hurt and likely kill them. The best class to do a Spy Check with would be the Pyro, as when you spray a spy that is in disguise, he bursts into flames and stays on fire, thus letting you indeed know, yes this is a spy. And not only that, an invisible flaming spy will be just as easy to see as a non invisible flaming spy.

What other classes come into play here, you might wonder? Well, the Engineer class is quite an interesting character as well. First off, they can make dispensers that distribute health, ammo, and metal. Metal is used to build and repair Engineer gear. After you have one of the babies up, you would then likely want to start on your turret. The turrets can be upgraded to have more guns and even fire rockets. They are also automatic, so if you put on guarding a door, and someone runs around the corner, they might just get an auto-rocket to the face. So, how does one get past one of these things? Again, the Spy class could cloak in behind the Engineer and try to take him down, and then use his Sapper to destrory the turret. Oh yes, Engineers, or at least good ones, will sit and guard their turrets, especially looking for spys. A pyro guarding an engineers turret from spies is a great combo, as the pyro also will get free ammo from the dispenser if one is built. Of course there is also the standard Soldier class, which is basically a rocket launcher class, for those that like to rocket spam. They go well to counter demo's or to push the goldmine carts. What is a goldrush cart? Well, this brings me to map types.

There are various game rulesets for each of the various map types that can be played in TF2. There is of course your most common frag-fest type maps where you are out to just kill the other team. However, more of the fun comes from goal and teamwork, such as maps where you must capture control points hold them and push to the following points to advance and win the map. They have also come up with a goldrush type map. In this type, one team tries to push a cart with bombs in it all the way to the other teams base and blow it up. The cart dispenses ammo and health as well. However, usually there are alot of defensive locations for the defending team to hold up and keep the cart from moving forward. There is a set time limit, and if the bomb isn't pushed to the check points and finally the base before the timer is up, the defending team then wins. Another map type they have is the capture the intelligence style maps, which are just capture the flag if you will. Each team will have a briefcase of their own color in their base. The other team will try to sneak or break into the other base, steal the intel, and return it to their base. If they are shot while carrying the intel, it drops to the ground for some time, and if it isn't picked up before that time runs out, it returns safely to the base. And they are constantly adding new types of maps all the time, including the new king of the hill map, which I at this time don't know much about unfortunately.

New content is the key! Valve is constantly adding new features and dynamics to the game to keep the players interested. Initially it started with dishing out alternate gear for reaching certain goals depending on what class you were playing. If you were the doctor class and finished enough of your achievements, it would allow you to get the new syringe gun that would heal you a little bit when you shot enemies, and so forth. Later, they did away with the achievements end of the requirements for gear, and the items were found randomly at death. And then they changed it again to where you find them in the game randomly now. And the latest addition to the game, is the special hats you can find and wear. Also, besides content, they release official new maps and gameplay styles on a regular basis, so TF2 is definitely a game that has been here for a while, will continue to grow, and be a mainstay for quite some time.

Now lets get a bit into the graphics, shall we? The character styling and lighting in the game are done with precision. They use methods of cell shading that make it feel vintage and retro, yet bright and vibrant at the same time. Each of the classes you can select from really look, feel, and even sound the part. Before they even speak a word, you have an idea of what they might sound like, and sure enough, each of the stereotypes seem fairly close to what the characters represent. The spy is dressed in a ski-mask, and suit, while bearing a cigarette case, sneaking about as he makes snide French accented comments at this fallen foes. The sniper has the Australlian looking hat and attire, just sitting back in the bush, so to speak, waiting for wankers to show their head. The engineer has a hardhat and toolbelt and speaks in a rednecky country boy sort of way. The slim long legged yonkers style Scout has highwater socks, and a large bat he uses for BONKing. The Solider class has a helmet that covers his eyes.. I still think he has no eyes.. but I am still unsure, but his voice reminds you of every cliché war hero type you have seen in movies. "Last one alive, lock the door" he yells as you dart into combat.

And the it is not just the characters that draw you into the game graphics wise, as the enviornments and cell shading that they use really puts a wonderful touch and feel. The theme of theme game is that that the RED and BLU team are psuedo construction companies of sorts, battling it out to maintain control I assume. This being said, the textures, from the signs on the wall give quite a bit of atmosphere, such as the "Zero days since last accident" sign. There are doors that slide, stairs to climb, you never know if there is someone hiding around that next corner waiting for you. You have to really think before you move up, if I was a sniper, where would I be covering, and that sort of logic. Each of the official maps that have been made are just perfect works of art. You can tell they spent much time play testing each of the locations to make sure that there was cover but not too much cover and so forth. Each spot has another spot that could counter it and thus moving up on a map can be challenging if the other team is working well together.

Again, this is where the game shines. It is TEAM fortress 2 after all. There is a built in VOIP system that seems to work fairly well. I have yet to NEED to use an alternate voice server during game. Of course you can just text chat to your team if you like, but usually you don't get time to type "Hey there is a spy!" by the time he has already stabbed half your friends. So I highly recommend that you get a USB headset to play this game. It just makes the game that much more enjoyable, and much less stressful even to the fastest of typers. If your team works together, and cooperates, they might stand a really good chance. But if you get a team of Rambos going in alone, you might want to switch sides. Not that a single lone spy can't cause MUCH chaos, but the rest of the team should be in balance with his services. The spy should tell the team, "Hey I am going to take that turret down" so the team knows and is ready to push up. Communication is the key to teamwork in this game.

So we covered the graphics, lets talk a bit about the sound. The music that is peppered in there is good, but limited. For the most part, you will be hearing much more gunshots and explosions and people dying than listening to the music as much. And in fact, for the most part there isn't that much music. For the most part it is in the intro of the game and such. However, being that you can make your own maps, you can put what ever music in the map you like. As well as, there are streaming modules you can get for your server to allow you to webstream radio into your map to fill that void of no music. But for the most part, the music might get in the way. You want to be able to hear those faint footsteps of that spy sneaking up behind you. So as far as music goes, I give it an average. However, as far as voice acting and sound effects, I give it a well above average rating. Every single person they picked for the voices was perfect, even the lady that counts down the start of the map couldn't have been better. Even if some of the stuff comes off silly and cliche, it still just fits the theme and feel of the game so well, you can't frown at any of it. And all the weapon sounds, explosions and so forth seem to sound just about right.

Before I start to sum the whole game up, I wanted to also mention the open source aspect of this game. Team Fortress 2 comes with Hammer, which is a great tool for you to use to make your own TF2 maps! You can design everything about your map from the layout, game type, spawn locations, to even putting special variables on parameters such as adding flight, or perhaps adding the ability to have unlimited ammo. This being said, this means there are a varied and nearly limitless amount and style of maps to explore. Most of the time you will stick with the main official maps since they are just so good. However, for instance, the MarioKart map is so weird, oddly colored, and disorienting, that it makes the perfect frag map, for when you are in that type of mood. My point is that, if you bore of the normal everyday maps that play so well, why not explore some of the odd creations of others?

Cost wise the game is very reasonable, I believe it is about $20 on Steam most of the time, with sales happening every once in a while that make it cheaper than that. You only have to buy the game, and then you can play on any server that will allow you to join (which should be most of them unless you get banned for being a bastard, lol) Of course, you can rent hosting from any game host company and host your own server, and pick and choose which maps to run and what variables to change. But that is if you want to pay per month to play this game. Otherwise, you just pay for the game once, and you can play forever as long as someone in the world has a TF2 server running. There is no MMO subscription fee as each server is independent. And it becomes up to the user if they choose to pay more and host their own server.

So, in closing I would like to say that TF2 is an incredible game well worth the money, as the replayability factor is very high. The graphics are done very well, and the SFX and voice acting are also done very well, with a slight lack for music. It is the kind of game you can pickup and play and drop as needed, and if you somehow burn out on it for a bit, you can take a break and be ready to come back to it again with ease.

Graphics : 8 (looks great.. interesting style)
Sound : 8 (VERY good voice acting and SFX .. but real lack of music)
Gameplay : 9 (very well balanced game)
Addictiveness 9 (ONE more match..)

I give it an overall score of 9 ... that is a about as perfect as you will see ...
( I don't like to use decimals to rate games)


I will rarely ever give a game a 10, as if it was a 10, I wouldn't be here typing and would be playing it instead. However, I will say that this game likely earns a 9. It is as close to perfect of a formula for a game as I have seen in a while. If you are the kind of gamer that HATE's FPS, you might just love this game. It is NOT your COD4 of ARMA 2 style, it is more of an arcade style of sorts, but I hate to put it that way as it makes it sound like it's a lesser feeling game. If anything, it makes this style more interesting and fast paced, that is easier to pickup and get into, and if you die, you respawn and get over it. So, if TF2 has interested you, or your friends have been trying to get you to play it, why not load it up and see what all the fuss is about. But I warned you the addictive scale on this game is a 9, you have been warned...