Ohhh, for how long I’ve been waiting for a game this great! Making me lose myself in the front of the computer, having hard times in the morning to wake up and go to work... Team Fortress is an online FPS that originally was released as a mod for Quake. Then Team Fortress Classic was developed as a mod for Half-Life and Valve announced the work for TF2. Since ’98 until last year, the game was believed to be on hold, the team had to change about 4 different gaming styles to reach the final version released now. Team Fortress 2 was released along with other four games: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Portal, all five combined into the Orange Box.

I have to admit, Team Fortress 2 is a lot of fun and I think that anyone who played the game would agree with me (anyone = 99.999%). What makes it so fun are the action and the characters in-game and their unique skills. We have 9 classes: Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper and Spy.

Let’s start with the Scout. He’s dressed like a baseball player, thus having a baseball bat as a melee weapon. He’s the fastest class in the game; his fast-running ability is useful at capturing objectives. He can double jump in mid-air, changing direction and making him a difficult target to hit. The scout has a shotgun as main weapon, a pistol and the baseball bat I mentioned earlier.

The Soldier is one mean killing machine. Having a rocket launcher on his shoulder, he is good for both distance and close range combat. Rockets have infinite range and when they hit something, it does area damage. Once in a while you will get super colored rockets; these rockets have higher effect area, more damage infliction and do critical damage. The Soldier can “rocket jump” if he shots on the ground beneath; he takes damage from the rocket however. Besides the rocket launcher, he carries a shotgun and an entrenching tool. You can “Meet the Soldier” here.

Then there’s Pyro man. He likes the fire and wants to share it with everyone. Of course he has a Flame Thrower! What kind of question is that?! Great when a medic, scout, spy or sniper comes nearby. The Pyro is usually hiding after corners, waiting for a victim to pass by. He carries a flame thrower, a shotgun and a fire-axe (just like a firefighter, isn’t that ironic?). The Pyro makes a good team with Demoman.

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Speaking of the Demoman, he plays with grenades and bombs. As a child he wanted to be a pirate, therefore he’s dressed with a skull cap on his head, has a pirate eye patch and as a melee weapon he holds a scotch bottle. He has a Scottish accent and he’s the only black character in the game. Ever saw a black Scottish playing with grenades? Stay away from them. The Demoman can jump higher if he puts a sticky bomb beneath his feet. His weapons are Grenade Launcher, Sticky Bombs and the Scotch battle.

The Heavy is the main tanker of the game. Has the most hit-points, but he moves really slow. This is probably because of the heavy minigun he carries. He talks with a Russian accent and is really in-love with his minigun. Watch him here. He makes a good pair with the medic, which can heal him and still be covered behind the massive body of the “tanker”. The mini-gun is a short range weapon because it lacks the accuracy, it needs loading time to fire but it has massive damage. Besides that, a shotgun and his bare hands are the rest of Heavy’s weapon arsenal.

We have the Engineer that is for support and defense. He can build sentries that can be upgraded with miniguns and rocket launcher, transporters which teleports teammates closer to the enemy base and he can also build a dispenser. The dispenser refills hit-points, ammo and metal (for engineers only). In order to build or repair any structure, the engineer needs metal which can be collected by picking up a fallen player’s weapon, power-ups, metal from destroyed structures or get to a dispenser. If you decide to change class, all your structures are destroyed.
For building/repairing he uses a monkey wrench that serves as a melee weapon also. He has a shotgun and a pistol to take care of “the other matters” in Texan ways.

For healing we have the Medic which is equipped with a healing gun able to boost player’s health up to 150%. Healing players will increase the Ubercharge, which fully charged and activated grants the medic and another player 10 seconds of invulnerability. When healing players he also does a little healing on himself. Having a German accent, “the doctor” also has a flechette that fires syringes and bonesaw as melee weapon. The medic is the second in speed after the scout, and is efficiently when teaming up with a Heavy or Soldier.

For ranged combat, the Sniper is the best class for this. He holds a sniper rifle that can instantly kill any foe with a head shot. There is also a power bar that gets charged when looking thru the scope. The more is charged, more damage you do to the target. The sniper looks like an Australian hunter with Havana clothing and smoked glasses. For close combat he uses a submachine gun and a machete.

Finally there’s the Spy which is probably the most fun class to play with. Dressed in a suit wearing the team colors and always having a cigarette in his mouth, the spy can disguise himself, cloak, scramble devices and backstab opponents. The spy can disguise into any enemy class, randomly getting an opponent’s name. When disguised, the allies see him wearing a paper mask over his face with the specific class, with the cigar piercing thru. You can easily spot a Spy, either if someone comes to you having the same name, or by shooting your own team mates. The friendly fire is disabled so usually everyone shoots everybody to check for spies. Being a spy, you can cloak up to ten seconds, time in which you cannot attack but you can disguise yourself and the other way around. The cloak is interrupted of someone shoots in at you, get on fire thanks to the Pyro or run into an enemy and make direct contact. You can also scramble the Engineer’s structures and in time if not repaired it will blow up. It’s very fun to see the opponents passing near you and then you stab them in the back. Like I said before, this is the funniest class in all the game.

Team Fortress 2 is a very catchy game because of these little things that makes a character unique. You don’t start to yell if you die. You get pick another class wait for the right time to “return the favor”. Another cool aspect of the game is that when you die, a camera is making a close-up snapshot with the guy who killed you. At that point you can take a picture of the offender. As you die, you don’t immediately spawn back, but you have to wait about 10 seconds, sometime less, meanwhile you can watch the other team-mates and choose if you want to change class or not.

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”).

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.