lolmagawd, Scout with the sub-machinegun? This is a really old pic XD Developers: Valve Publisher: Valve Genre: Action, Online FPS Online shooters are like no other game – even with a single player shooter, you can choose to play it out slowly and methodically, planning out each shot so as to not die. However, once online, everyone becomes mouth foaming, moronic people who abandon all sense and notions of decency as they spew out bullets with one hand and obscenities with the other, or, in the case of children, obscenities and crying. However, even amongst these, there are a few rare – okay, only really one online shooter whose experience is like no other. This, my friends, is Team Fortress 2. From the moment you pop in the CD and get started, the entire game is a trip. Firstly, you’ll notice the odd graphics – stylized, cel-shady creations firing guns that are as cute as they are deadly. The locations, while mostly all the same in that they are desert/industrial environments, are detailed and lively, as are the characters. All of the art is popping with personality, ranging from the signs to the characters, everything is unique and wonderfully animated. Even on minimal settings, the stylized graphics are a sight to see. A Medic following his precious Heavy Sound is another thing entirely in that they excel all expectations. While soundtracks are limited, they are hilariously catchy tunes that just seem to come out of a bad spy move. Sound effects are wonderful, too, with bullets spraying and flame charring with a cool realism. Beyond all this, however, is some truly excellent voice acting from all of the characters and even the announcer – from the spunky Scout (“I’m gunna headbutt ‘cha!â€ÂÂ) to violent Soldier (“I! AM! ON! FIRE!â€ÂÂ), everyone’s personality is personified in their voice, their voice, personified by their awesome personality. The gameplay is where it is all at, however. TF2 (Team Fortress 2) is unlike almost every other online shooter in its ease for newcomers and its surprising depth for old vets. Objectives are quite simple: kill everything and everything that is not your color. To do so, however, you have one of three overall missions for your party – capture and control various points, retrieve intelligence from the opposite base and carry it to yours (CTF), and the newly added ‘payload’ that has you escorting a bomb through bases to a stockpile of explosives. Each mode is easy to understand and very balanced – control points are slowly captured, but failed attempts will keep the capture bar filled for a short period of time, dropped intelligence can be picked up, and the bomb cart has several checkpoints to keep it going, for the most part, forward. Still, your opposition isn’t going to go out with civility and flowers alone… you’re going to have to give them a face full of lead, fire and explosives. And here, the innovative and most excellent class system is introduced. The class selection screen featuring, who else, the Heavy Rather than picking your gun set like most other shooters, you can choose from one of nine classes; the super quick Scout who is light on defense but captures twice as fast, the offensive Soldier who packs a punch with a slow rocket launcher, the awesome Pyro who lights others on fire and has the best taunts in the game, the Demoman who uses grenades and sticky bombs to keep others at bay, the Heavy who pours out metal death with a chaingun, the crafty Engineer who fashions up turrets and teleporters, the handy Medic who keeps you all alive, the skilled Sniper who is the sole owner of headshots, and unique class of the Spy, who can disguise himself, turn invisible, and OHKO people with a quick stab to the back. It’s easy to say that there is a class for everyone, here, due to the variations in combat or defense styles and the incredible balance between them all. While the Heavy and Soldier may be destructive, they move extremely slow and are larger than other shooters, the Scout can double jump and move very quickly, but very little health, and the Medic has little in the way of offense should his bodyguard be killed. It is very easy to hop into a class, figure out how everything works, and jump into the fray as a good player. Thankfully, there are a number of techniques that fighters can pull off to spice things up. The medic can employ an ‘Ubercharge’ that makes the target momentarily invincible, the Soldier and Demoman can use their explosives to boost their jumps to amazing heights, the Sniper can charge shots to increase damage, and the Engineer can upgrade turrets to include machine guns and rocket launchers. Between these, the frantic combat will always stay fresh as new tactics are found and employed with fatal effects. A Medic deploying an Ubercharge on a Heavy - note how people promptly die All of this amounts to an experience that is just one thing – fun. The classes are fun to mess around with, it’s fun to get better and better at your character, it’s fun to just see all of the hilarious, amazing, and downright stupid things that are done each and every day. Just trying to stay alive, shooting randomly, hoping that Medic gets there soon, only to rush in and capture the final point… it’s such a rush. Finally landing a backstab, using an Ubercharge, taking down the enemy defenses; the game is so balanced and so fun that anyone and everyone, even those whose death count far exceeds their kill count (me) can find themselves coming back for more. It is very hard to find any error in the game, but a few can be found. A good number of the player made maps are honestly horrible, either with idiotic and annoying designs or severe unbalance. With the addition of unlockable weapons, the conditions to unlock them may force some players who simply do not have the means to fulfill achievements, due likely to a lack of friends who own the game or simply the difficulty in coordinating an achievement, such as having someone else get an achievement whilst you heal them. To get this, ya' gotta' save someone who is falling... seriously, how can you do this unless you purposely rig it to do otherwise? Still though, problems are mostly limited to the individual and their skill. If you suck at the game, the game is going to suck, because TF2 is not very fun when you spend more time waiting to respawn than when you are pwning all of teh nubs with ur leet skillz. It also depends on the team you are playing with, as teamwork is the main focus of the game rather than a few players playing “HEADSHOT†every few seconds. The entertainment factors are also derived from how skilled you are not only in simple gameplay mechanics and scenarios, but how well you play your class, and also how many other people play your class, as, if you are not good with the Soldier or seven people are already one, things will not be as fun as they are for others. So, in the end, Team Fortress is a game that you truly have to play for yourself in order to see if you like it or not. Thanks to a nice design, easy and balanced gameplay, and some brilliant personality, you’re sure to at least enjoy the premise of the game. Issues that you may have mostly come down to the individual player, meaning that giving this game a score is extremely difficult and is only done from a, for the most part, objective standpoint based on mechanics and gameplay, rather than personal experiences. By the way, I are being spy right now. Just don’t get your blood on my suit. Stab. Er, *stab* Presentation, 9/10: Clean menus combined with easy to understand objectives make it next to impossible to be confused as to what you are doing and ensure that you are always in the thick of things. Graphics, 9/10: A great design aesthetic combined with a lot of personality make the visuals, while not the realistic quality of some other games, very stylized and enjoyable. Characters are well animated and the special effects are great. Sound, 9/10: A number of catchy tunes combined with a barrel full of amazingly awesome voice acted goodness make this a pleasure to the ears. Also, the lack of little children crying, swearing, and eating the mike bumped this up from eight to nine XD Gameplay, 9/10: Fast paced combat that follows the "easy to learn, hard to master" mantra makes this an addictive experience, ensuring that all players will have an enjoyable time. However, the unlockable weapons may unbalance things and the actions necessary to unlock the weapons are annoyingly difficult and require things that may be beyond some players, such as friends (in all seriousness) with TF2 or team coordination. Lasting Appeal, 10/10: The only perfect score in that every time you hop onto the battlefield, something new is bound to happen. You're sure to form grudges, friendships and standings within servers, and all of the addictive elements come together perfectly so as to make you want more and more. Total Score, 46/50: Great design coupled with addictive gameplay make for a great game that is sure to find you playing well into the night. While actual issues are far and between, little problems may be big annoyances for others, so make sure that you try this game out somewhere before committing yourself to buying it, investing time in it, and getting good at it. He bonesaws bears for a living "[insert any Scout line here]."
If God wanted you all to be alive, he wouldn't have sent me! - Solus/Soldier ... I think that about sums it up XD
When I saw the Steven Colbert picture, I couldn't help but throw it in XD The only thing I don't like about the game is that I suck at it and it is really fricken' hard to get better at it. I typically play as a Pyro or Medic, and the most points I've ever scored in a life is a dismal 13... I think I've only once been on the MPV list as someone other than a Medic, and that was because I blitzed a team of four and captured their base on Well. I haven't been writing very much due to a lack of material to write about, as well as a focus towards school finals at the given moment. This is also the first review I've done up solely for this site... mostly because reviews on a game that has been out for a year are generally ignored at other places. I've got one of Mass Effect in the works - I would have gotten to it sooner, but it took forever for me to finally get the class and skill setup that I wanted and didn't die with. Infiltrators get Sniper Rifles, and Sniper Rifles can one-shot, with the right upgrades, a Krogan Battlemaster, who, amongst a shield, has obscene amounts of health. And mines are fun. But; yup, this game is fun. And, I've gotta say, backstabbing people is just awesome =]) And make sure to post up your Steam names, Solus and Winterreise. Mine is Neku_Sakuraba at the moment, if you ever care to play with teh suxzor Pyro.
Pyro is perhaps one of the easiest to use, well in close quarters. Just spam your fire and strafe like hell. But unfortunately, Im currently in Australia and the Steam account is for Asia region. So I can play it right now. SSorry. But my steamId...I think it's SolusGan or Solus...not sure which.
Aww, that's too bad. I always keep it in mind and have been able to get some good kills in, but I always end up getting blown to bits by a Soldier or a Demoman before I can back away. That, and it's oftentimes hard to get into the small spaces that the Pyro needs to excel, as those spaces are usually by the control point or some other location that is surely defended or chock full of dood ready to blow your head off. And searching 'Solus' pulls up so many people that I'm not even going to try, while 'SolusGan' pulls up no one. Back to TF2... must... keep... trying...
The way that I learned the basics of the game was by being a heavy and running around punching people on 2Fort, when I got decent at that I found I was actually pretty good with pretty much all of the classes in most scenarios. It's sort of an excuse to have a low score and looks really impressive when you get lucky (punching a sentry to death, etc.). Also, I always find it hilarious whenever there's a string of melee kills up in the corner.
Yeah, it's fun to just run around with a melee weapon or your fists, doing the things that you aren't really supposed to do. I saw someone play as an Engineer and build no buildings, just hop into the fray with his shotty. He had the second highest score T_T Mhaa, I can't stand 2Fort- it seems that the only classes that get any points there are the Soldier or the Demoman due to the explosives that, you know, have splash or bounce off of walls... or Snipers, but they're oftentimes too engaged in sniping other Snipers to notice. And everyone but me, for that matter. I just hate Soldiers and Demomen in particular XD I don't think it helps that I have a pretty bad computer that, despite having 4 gigs of RAM, has an ATI Radeon X1200, which is outclassed by the graphics cards in our English room laptops (granted, it's a tech school, so the computers are all pretty good, but my point still stands). Our internet connection is also pretty mediocre, causing me to lag a fair bit and miss a good number of backstabs... I also have absolutely horrid luck. Okay, that's not really a complaint, but it always seems that, when I go into battle, I always run into a sticky-happy Demoman or a Soldier's critical rocket. Bad timing, bad skills - I dunno, but I don't really care. I just stop playing when my score stays still for a round to prevent me from breaking my computer even further. Wow, is it just me, or are all of my posts extremely long? And they all end with something about me in real life or commenting on something unrelated to my post or the topic in general... wait... HOE SNAP!
Nine breaker i may add you when I go home this holiday. Unfortunately it's only for 2 weeks but...And 2fort is kind of my favourite map. I suck at defending. And you left out one more class that's played here: engineers
Oh, yes, the Engies, how could I forget them? Based on the quality, quantity and intelligence of your Engineers, 2Fort can either be a very easy map or a become the source for the next angry German kid who wrecks his keyboard over, what was it, Unreal Tournament? And 2Fort isn't all that bad, I just really detest its two extremes; full server or a few doods. When its balanced and has some of your friends in it, it's a lot of fun, but it's otherwise, for me at least, very annoying. With 24 out of 24 people, it usually just because a stalemate on the bridge with no teams really getting no where, and everyone just blowing each other up. With a few people, even eight, it isn't very fun, leaving one side to effectively perform lewd acts with the mothers of the opposing team, smoking cigars and dicing the opposition to ribbons every now and again. But isn't that every map...? >,>
Nah man, the map where you have to capture checkpoints are the most annoying when you have too few people. 2fort is still playable where there is a little people.
I think it's safe to say that all modes of play are very annoying and extremely boring when a few people play, Control Points especially. And, when I stop to think about it, 2Fort has provided me with a number of fun games - it's just that the bad experiences tend to be more frequent and prominent for me. And, is it just me or, is this entire review now dedicated to me and Solus talking about 2Fort?
