Gameplay: 93

Team Fortress 2 is a fun game. With that in mind, Valve tried to make the classes balanced. If you play long enough you will get to know how things work, things like the Medic class works well with the Heavy class or the Soldier and the Demoman, where the Engineer should place the sentry to be more effective, things like that. But in the end, it’s still up to the players and their strategies to choose what class is the best against the opposite side. By killing a player three times you will “Dominate” him and get points over this and if he then kills you one time he will get “Revenge” scoring more points also. Achievements can be unlocked by completing certain tasks like: Nemesis (score 5 revenge kills), Hardcore (accumulate 1000 kills), Lightning Offence (win the Well map in 5 minutes or less) and many more. The game is very rewarding and keeps you coming back for more and more.

Graphics: 92

A cartoonish design has been chosen for TF2 instead of a naturalistic one. Personally I really dig this style. Valve created an inside-house game engine to achieve this effect that uses Phong-shading. Dynamic lightning, special effects and particle textures are beautifully rendered. Also, Team Fortress 2 is the first game to benefit from Source engine's new Facial animation 3 features, for example the Heavy, as he kills more and more he will start smiling to a point when he laughs sadistically.

A minus to the game is the few maps from which to choose and somehow relatively long connecting time to the servers. Valve released for the public only six maps with more to come in the near future. Other unofficial maps have been released by the community or fans. Control points consist into capturing specific points by having players standing near it. It takes certain time to control them; the scout being the most effective, the time to capture it is reduced by half. Also the scout is great for the “capture the flag” maps where you need to steal the enemy intelligence briefcase from their underground base and take it to yours. Some maps are recommended for no more than 24 players but I’ve seen servers with 32 players.

• 2Fort, a capture the flag map.
• Dustbowl, a control point map.
• Granary, a control point map.
• Gravel Pit, a control point map.
• Hydro, a territorial control map.
• Well, a control point map.

Some maps are symmetric, skills and tactics of each team being the key to win.

Sound: 92

Each class has its own sounds and voices. Depending what type of weapon you’re holding, there are three types of emotes you can perform. For example, the Spy says something like “I was never on your side anyway”, the Sniper “ thanks for staying still… wanker”, the soldier starts dancing and hits the protective helmet with his entrenching tool and the heavy who starts yelling “you are all dead”. These are very funny and if you’re playing with the scout and you die you will hear him saying “You suck!”. I wouldn’t know about that, but let me tell you about the music. It’s only available in the menu and it fits perfectly for the cartoonish style of the game. The rest of the sounds and FX are well chosen, like the voice announcing the start of the round, how much minutes are left or when you lost (then you’ll hear a crowd yelling “Booooo&rdquo.

Hardware: 89

Team Fortress 2 has the minimum requirements of a 1.2 GHz processor, 256 RAM and DirectX 7 capable graphics card. If you want to experience higher graphic details than you will need a 2.4 GHz processor, 512/1024 RAM and Radeon X800 or GeForce 6800. The game isn’t that demanding and can run well even if you have an older PC.