Team Fortress 2

"KABOOM!"

Online multiplayer first-person-shooting has degraded from a noble genre involving strategic forethought and planning into constant deathmatches with no goal in sight. There have been some attempts to change this, such as EA's ill-fated Battlefield 2 title that attempted (and failed) to make a combination FPS-RTS game. What ends up happening is that there is not enough difference in the weapons, meaning anyone can do anything and there's no practical advantage to teaming up (it doesn't boost your rank either). Prepare for all that to be changed with Team Fortress 2.

First I want to say that I have never played the original Team Fortress, and I didn't particularly like Team Fortress Classic. Aside from a few rounds of Counterstrike against bots at my friend's house, Team Fortress 2 was my first Valve game. I went into it completely unbiased. The nine is because I don't believe in tens, and while TF2 has near-perfect gameplay, there are technical issues that bring down the score a bit.

Graphics 9/10

Normally graphics and sound are in one category, but I want to break them up here. The graphics in this game are simply AMAZING. They are not realistic at all. No photo-realistic worlds with a brown tint. These graphics are cartoony. When you see something, you know what it does. You know the Heavy is going to take more hits and pack more of a punch than the Scout. Most importantly, they're fun. The graphics take after Pixar's animation, and the character models (especially the RED team) look very similar to the characters in the Incredibles (seriously, who didn't love the Incredibles). Everything is exaggerated. It's not enough for the Heavy to be a large Russian guy. He has to be a mountain of a man carrying a gun normally mounted on a plane. When you shoot and kill someone, they will explode, and their bits will go all over the place, and you can pick them up and use them for ammo. My only complaint graphics-wise is that they're a bit demanding, and my computer can barely handle them. I was forced to turn the resolution down a notch, and they didn't test the graphics as well in the lower resolutions. So some of the interface is broken a bit in low-res (but nothing major).

Sound 10/10

The main theme of this song is reminiscent of spy movies. It's catchy and short, so it doesn't outstay its welcome. Everybody wins. There's no music in game, but it would just distract you anyway. The servers that play music loud get left quickly. The voice acting is simply phenomenal. For a taste, watch some of Valve's "Meet the Class" videos. The characters are hilarious, both in how stereotyped they are and the well-written lines they say. I never get tired of "looks like they'll have to glue you back together...IN HELL!". There's enough variation in the sound that it's almost always something fresh--there are three or four themes (though the jazzy one I mentioned earlier is the best-known) and each character has tons of one-liners.

Gameplay 10/10

The gameplay is, obviously, the most important part of the game. If you were expecting a single-player game, stop right now. There's no single-player support on TF2. If you want to learn how to play, all you can do is dive right into it. Ask people on the server for help. The cartoony graphics seem to act as a barrier to most of the undesirable people, so you usually end up with a team full of decent people who will be glad to help you.

Basically, two organizations, the BLU (Builder's League United) and RED (Reliable Excavation and Demolition) teams, have bases right next to each other. They're fighting with each other, and your team needs to complete certain objectives. On some maps, you have to capture and hold territory, some have you capturing the "intelligence briefcase" (flag), and some have you bombing certain places with a big bomb in a minecart.

The basic idea of Team Fortress 2 is drawbacks. Every gun has a particular case it's good for, and it sucks at everything else. Every class is made for a single task, and if you try to do anything else with it it's not going to work. As such, working as a team is the only way to win and any lone wolves will continue dying and get frustrated after a while. The Pyro, for example, has a powerful flamethrower, but it's very short range, only slightly longer than his melee attack. So the Pyro has to get in close, where he is vulnerable, in order to attack. Alternately, he could use the shotgun, sacrificing power for longer range. All the characters are this carefully balanced, so the only advantage you can possibly have is one of skill, teamwork, and intelligence. If you're buying this game, by the way, make sure you have a microphone. VoIP is used a whole lot in Team Fortress 2 for coordination.

Probably the sole problem with the gameplay is that there are ridiculously long respawn times. These times may have factored in to the balance, but you already have to wait like ten minutes just to join the server. Twenty seconds every time you die seems overkill.

Technical 6/10

Unfortunately, while Team Fortress 2 is a carefully-designed game, with wonderfully balanced levels, classes and weapons, it's a bit buggy. That is, it probably will work on your system, but depending on your computer's graphical power it may not work well. Personally, it takes a while for it to start up on my computer, and a few patches ago I had to fight with it to get it to start up properly. Lower resolutions are supported, but if you switch to 800x600 (which I had to do to keep it running smoothly) some interface elements might cover other ones (specifically in the loading screens.)

As always, we experience Valve's legendary load times. The game takes about two minutes to start up (which even EA games can't match), and connecting to a server can take ages. Some servers also force you to download sounds and pictures so they can play them in-game. Needless to say, this is supremely annoying, and there's no easy way to disable it.

Final Verdict: 9/10 (there are no tens)

Team Fortress 2 will quickly replace all your online first-person shooters. You will become addicted to it and crave more. You will hate Valve for torturing you with long load- and respawn-times when you would rather be playing. Get it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/03/08