Team Fortress 2

Multiplayer shooters are getting more and more popular these days and they encourage competition between people living in various countries, fighting on the same battleground, but coming from different backgrounds. The game was originally announced in 1998 as a sequel to the initial Team Fortress Mod for Quake, but it has gone through a lot of changes since then. The evolution over 9 years turned into a militaristic type of game-play and it went even further. The final version of Team Fortress 2 looks very much like the original Team Fortress and Team Fortress Classic versions, and it features a cartoonish-style set of graphics. The official release was on October 10, 2007 and the Steam customers were happy that they could finally play it.

There are already a lot of servers up and running and once you start the game and adjust the settings, you can either make one or select any from the list. The game is bundled in the coupon of the Black Box edition (Steam versions of Team Fortress 2, Portal, Half-Life 2 Episode 2 and Day of Defeat as a Bonus) from Valve that comes with each retail box of Radeon HD 2900XT (requirements of the game - CPU about 3.0GHz, 1GB RAM, DirectX® 9 level Graphics Card, Windows® Vista/XP/2000, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection). The game is also bundled in the new and official Orange Box that also contains Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode 1 and Episode 2 and Portal.

This game has no real story behind it, so I am going to focus on the nine characters you can choose from and play with and on their game style. Just like in the previous versions, players can choose from nine classes of characters and some elements have remained the same: the Heavy class is a bit slow but has a bigger (and an obvious) firepower with 300 health-points and the Scout class is quick but only with 125 health-points.

Team Fortress 2 Teaser

I shall start with Heavy, my favorite player class as it requires more thinking and cunning action – it may not be quick but brings a lot of damage if it catches the enemy in a tight spot and nowhere to run or hide – dodging 10.000 rounds (fired per minute!) is very difficult. However, Heavy’s attacks are effective mostly in medium and short-range combat. He has a strong Russian accent, while he is the strongest physical class and loves to brag about the costs of his weapon. When paired with a medic in a team, he becomes nearly invincible, because of his large body, high health and the big weapon. I always like it when he goes out into the battle and shouts “Run, cowards!”

Meet the Heavy

The Scout has one of the simplest armor and looks like an American teenager, with a baseball cap, thin head-set added, and carries a messenger bag. He is the fastest class and his aim is to capture the objective once the defenses have been disabled. He can double jump and change direction while in mid-air. His weapons are an underlever shotgun, a pistol and an aluminum baseball bat. He can bring much more damage than in the previous games.

Scout Gameplay

Another slow moving class is the soldier, but as compensation there’s the high damage tolerance and the advantage of rocket jumping. His outfit is a typically like the one of World War 2 soldiers and as weapons he carries a rocket launcher, a shotgun and an entrenching tool for close-range attacks.

Meet the Soldier

Burning your enemies is also quite effective and might come as a surprise to the other players, but only if you choose the Pyro class. These masked fire-starters are dressed in a fire-proof suit and are equipped with a short-range but very powerful flame-thrower, a shotgun and a fire axe. The idea behind this class is that they can act only by using surprise attacks and need to be backed up by a Heavy and a Medic to restore the health.

Pyro Gameplay

The Demoman is a “black Scottish Cyclops” (at least it’s how he sees himself) and is apparently jealous of people with two eyes. The class is armed with a time detonation grenade launcher, a remote detonation sticky bomb launcher and makes use of a Scotch bottle for short-range attacks. Obviously, this guy dot not attack on the spot, right in the face or inflict immediate damage – he is cunning and has to attract his opponents in the traps he sets. He can also use these explosions to jump very high over great obstacles but at the cost of a good part of his health-points.

Meet the Demoman

Engineers seem to be very interesting as a class because they will be seen in other games as well performing similar tasks: basically, they can defend bases and passage-ways. The main role is to supply support and transport for the team. Their unique ability is to create sentry-guns that can be a real pain for players from the opposing team. They can also build teleporting devices and ammunition & health dispensers. The Engineer has a typical (American) Texan accent and has a shotgun added to the pistol and the monkey-wrench (melee weapon).

Meet the Engineer

The primary goal of the medic is to team up with the Heavy and the Pyro in order to boost their health so that the team would obtain a fast and guaranteed victory. He has a German accent and doesn’t have serious weapons for himself: only a syringe-gun and a bone-saw for defense as the main gun has only healing purposes for the players in the same team. He can also “űber-charge” the health of the teammates and thus making them invulnerable for 10 seconds (enough time for Heavy to fire his expensive rounds on the enemies).

Medic Class Overview

The (Australian military) Sniper class comes with low tolerance for damage and carries a bolt-action sniper rifle and it is able of 1-hit-kills. The rifle has even a red-laser aiming technique which might come in handy when aiming and can also be dangerous when the enemy sees the red spot on the floor or on the wall. The other weapons are a sub-machine gun and a machete.

Sniper Gameplay

The spy is one of the best classes when it comes to stealth techniques, infiltrating, sabotaging and it is even capable of disguising himself into one of the members of the opposing team and thus thwarting their efforts to win. The spy speaks with a mixed accent of French and Spanish (Latin languages, either way). However the disguise wears off because the team members test themselves by shooting at each other – and only the members of the opposite team take damage – so this means you would have to be very convincing if you wish to infiltrate as a spy otherwise it’s “game over”!

Spy Class Developer Commentary

The game can be played on the six maps that come in the package: 2Fort (capture the flag map), Dustbowl (control point map), Granary (control point map), Gravel Pit (control point map), Hydro (territorial control map), and the Well (control point map). While the set-up interface is rather common to the Half-Life fans, there are also introductory movies for each map, with an old film flavor but the objectives are clearly explained. The “toon” graphics effect is achieved by an intense use of the Phong shading technique.

Character Design Interview

The Sound in the game makes you think that you’re in a real combat situation – rockets and bombs blowing up here and there, not to mention the hilarious voices of the player classes make up for a very interactive atmosphere.

Digitainment mark: 8.0 (because of the reduced number of maps – more will come with the updates hopefully)

Developer/Publisher: Valve Software

Buy: $29.95 from Steam Store

If you liked this post, you might consider subscribing to daily games news and reviews by RSS feed or via email:

Delivered by FeedBurner