Cracking art design, glorious humour and the best team-based play online make TF2 all the multiplayer you will ever need
Valve is a special company. We all know that by now, the Half Life games, Counter-Strike and Left4 Dead have all shown us that when it comes to the first-person perspective, Valve has no equal. In 2007 Valve released what is probably the most important nugget of gaming gold ever to grace the current generation of consoles and the evergreen PC. The Orange Box is a collection of 5 games, all three of the stellar Half Life 2 games, the truly staggering conceptual experiment known as Portal and Team Fortress 2.
Team Fortress 2 in particular worthy of note in fact more so than the rest of the package, the first game was a simple remake of the Team Fortress modification for Quake and that was one of the most played online pc games along with the original Counter-Strike. 8 years and a complete thematic and artistic redesign later, Team Fortress 2 become known as one of the most iconic, teamwork-based shooters on the market and has since become one of the most popular online shooters for PC first-person aficionados.
And now, it's free to play for those of you with even a half-decent PC to enjoy
TF2 is a multiplayer only game based around a strict class system and objective based game-types. The premise is simple, you are either Red team or Blu team and you must utilize each and every one of the 9 classes available to you within your team to complete the objective in a set time. There's no story here but the game more than makes up for this with its fantastic cast of characters. Each class is represented by a particular personality and character, most of these being wonderful caricatures of racial stereotypes (in a good humoured way) and satirical jabs at a few movie characters along the way. When you first accidentally press G and watch as the camera zooms out to a third-person perspective to allow a full view of your Heavy cry "YOU DID WELL!!" and snog his minigun, you'll know this isn't your ordinary FPS.
The voice acting of each character is especially enjoyable. It's a laughable mix of stereotypical accents and mannerisms which are coupled with some truly stellar animation on the part of Valve. Each classes facial expressions change according to the prevailing situation and by hitting the aforementioned G or taunt command you'll see each of them do a hilarious victory jig. Even when the matches start the characters will voice their distinctive battle cries and when you kill the other team in a particularly spectacular way your character will respond with the appropriate gloating. TF2 has personality in spades and after so many soulless war shooters you'll be glad to raise a two-fingered salute as the sniper to your fallen enemy even if it does mean another sniper will take you head off in the process. There's also a forbidding female announcer who alerts you of game events in a voice that shifts from haughty to deranged to gloating depending on how your team is doing and if you've grown tired of the frat-boy announcements of Halo or the ridiculously pretentious accents of CoD then this will come as an amusing relief.
Each class is vital to the success of your team regardless of game-type. Scouts move faster than other classes and take control points faster, they're also brilliant for harassing larger and slower enemies. Soldiers (drawn as the stereotypical American military man) provide the bulk of the offense with their rocket launcher. Pyros can seriously mess up the other team if they can get in close enough to use their flamethrower, The Heavy's minigun is a veritable force of nature and will mow down anyone and anything stupid enough to get within range, the Medic buffs his team's health and provides temporary invulnerability once his med-gun is fully charged. Demomen are vital for the extremes of offense and defense with their sticky bomb launchers and grenade launchers, Engineers are the ultimate defensive class and can build sentry guns that when fully upgraded will kill any unprotected adversary within range in a matter of seconds, The Sniper, is well, the sniper but he does a chuckle-worthy Crocodile Dundee impersonation and the Spy… Oh the Spy changes everything. He can cloak himself and disguise himself as the enemy team to run amok behind their offensive lines, sapping sentry guns and backstabbing the enemy, and it works both ways as the enemy will have their own spies out to get you.
The various classes are perfectly balanced, some are more suited to certain maps than others and certainly some are better employed in certain game-types but a good player can exploit each class's abilities to their advantage. And you will need a lot of time to become even marginally proficient with a single class, each controls and plays completely differently from any of the others and you'll soon start to pick favourites. This is natural but my advice is to build up your skills with each and every class and pick them according to the situation. There's no persistent leveling or ranking system to speak of here, you'll be using pretty much the same equipment as TF2 veterans, all that matters is how well you can play your role. The right class in the right place can change the course of a match.
TF2 runs on Valve's Source Engine and it means that those of you with less than powerful PCs should be able to manage its astonishingly low minimum requirements. In fact it's probably the best the Source engine has ever looked, chiefly because of the gorgeous art design. Instead of the drab military themes of the last game, Valve has chosen to create a wonderfully ridiculous almost Wild-West art style populated with vivid orange's, woody browns and the obligatory Red and Blu. The art design for each team also differentiates itself to make navigating the maps easier. The Blu bases are angular, modern concrete affairs while the Red team's bases are more in-keeping with the western themes. Even after 4 years it still looks fresh, probably because many of the colours in both the maps and on the characters are cel-shaded so you won't notice the gritty textures and muddy colours that we've become accustomed to in the Half-Life 2 series. That being said, this is still the Source engine so don't expect any impressive graphical fireworks here, the lighting especially is still not up to par with the physics capabilities and has been left static. The engine manages a reasonably solid framerate despite up to 32 players onscreen at once and that's about it. You'll definitely appreciate the art design more than the technical prowess.
There's also a level of what I'll call "comedy gore" on display, explosive weapons will turn you into bloody fragments and body parts but its light-hearted in a sick and twisted kind of way, if say, your head is in view when the camera shifts to the player that killed you then the game will erect a helpful and colourful speech bubble above your detached cranium noting the fact. In other games I would baulk but it seems strangely right in this crazy Team Fortress universe of perpetual colour-based slaughter.
The soundtrack is definitely worthy of note, normally multiplayer games have a main menu theme and that's the end of it but here we're treated to a fantastic arrangement of brass bands, smooth rhythms and brash scores which perfectly evoke the sense of humour of the game. Sadly there's no music during gameplay apart from some applause and a satisfying horn-blare when you are "DOMINATING" such and such but it's still a nice inclusion. Sound effects themselves are well done if unremarkable, the sound effects of weapons don't really change much when you acquire new versions of them for completing certain objectives but each weapon is loud and distinctive and you'll be able to tell what classes are round the corner by the sound of their weaponry. Sadly many of the effects such as bullet impacts, health and ammo pickups and so on have been lifted straight from Half Life 2 so you get the feeling you're playing an elaborate mod on occasion rather than a full game.
When it comes to gameplay itself it's surprisingly similar to HL2 Team Deathmatch in terms of movement and control. There's no aiming function apart from when you scope as a sniper, you'll fire from the hip and most classes are provided with some sort of shotgun or auxiliary weapon for when their more effective primary weapon ammo runs out. It's actually very difficult to kill an enemy with standard firearms, as each character, even the scout is noticeably more resilient to bullets than other games would allow. When two players are fighting with the secondary weapons which are usually said standard firearms (usually shotguns) it's an awkward war of attrition as both players circle strafe while firing until someone dies or gets killed by a teammate. Explosive weapons are how most opponents get killed although you need to score a direct hit to perpetrate serious damage, there isn't much splash damage which is understandable given the number of people who could potentially all play as Demomen or Soldiers. You'll definitely get more assists than kills playing TF2 and in some ways this is good as certain classes are useless in open combat situations, the reliance on offensive classes like the Heavy, Soldier and Demoman to do the bulk of the killing creates a strong team dynamic and those same classes cannot survive long enough to do their job without help from the non-combat support classes.
Each class has a melee weapon and using it is like using any non-aim assisted melee weapon in an FPS game, cumbersome and ineffective. If you do get into a melee fight you'll hack, slash and bludgeon wildly and pray that the enemy (usually a spy who de-cloaked at the wrong moment) dies first. The melee is a great part of the personality of TF2, who doesn't like killing people with a fish? But it's not elegant by any means.
The game-types themselves are entirely objective based. There aren't a lot of them but there is certainly plenty of maps online especially since Valve released the authoring tools and now support user-created maps. I don't know for sure how many there are but there's definitely more than any FPS on the market at the moment. Some of the maps support only one game-type like 2Fort which is a CTF map but this means that each is bespoke and perfectly tailored to a specific game mode. Payload is my favourite match-type. Blu must ferry a bomb along a train track through a series of checkpoints and into the Red Base for an almighty explosion. There's also the classic two-flag CTF, a control point game similar to Battlefield's Conquest although you must take the points in order in one of the two variants, King of the Hill, attack and defend and so on. They're all immense fun, joyously simple and can last up to half an hour if you have a couple of really good teams. It's the kind of game that creates a little narrative as you hold off Blu from the final checkpoint, fixing your sentries and killing spies attempting to sap them all the while you can hear the maniacal laughter of the enemy Heavies drawing closer. It's fantastic stuff and incredibly addictive, especially for a jaded shooter fan such as myself
There is also a loadout system, you acquire weapons by completing Steam achievements which are linked to class milestones rather than fill an exp bar. The rewards are mostly cosmetic in nature, like hats and so on but there are plenty of weapons to earn. These weapons have an RPG like nature to them in terms of how they differ from the stock weapons. The Frontier Justice shotgun for instance has 50% less ammo but gives you critical hits for every sentry gun that you have built that has then been destroyed, you get the idea. They add a nice variety to how you want to play in terms of what you value about each class and if you're willing to shell out a few dollars then you can buy said weapons without having to play for hours on the Mann Co. Store which is a micro-transaction system that will make up for Valve's loss of income from making the game free-to-play.
Since the game has been made free-to-play I've noticed instances of the hl2.exe which launches the game crashing, increased lagginess even on Valve servers and audio lagging and glitches. These were present in my hard copy of TF2 before it died along with rest of the games on the Orange Box disk but it's definitely more noticeable than before. Evidently the introduction of Free to Play is taking its toll on Valve's ability to maintain server stability coupled with the fact that you have to launch the game via Steam which is having trouble with maintaining cloud info for all the new players so don't be surprised when you lose your huntsmen bow because the excessive influx of players.
Getting the Free-to-play version does mean you won't have access to the very rare items, weapons and cosmetic additions that those who purchased the game can enjoy and you also cannot trade items, only receive them so you'll have to plead with your discerning friends who bought the game if you want that special shotgun. It won't really hinder your play very much at all as the gameplay is the main draw but you may be left wanting after seeing some of the more ridiculous weapons and headgear that TF2 veterans have already acquired.
Team Fortress 2 is a monumentally successful exercise in creating a true team-based gameplay. The inter-dependent relationship with your teammates that is required to be truly successful is something you just can't find in any other shooter. It's not the best looking game to play online but it's incredibly addictive, wonderfully refreshing and could stand alone as a highlight within the already spectacular Orange Box.
The Rundown:
Pros
+ The most fun you can have in a Team-based game
+ Fantastic Art direction and design makes up for the ageing Source engine.
+ Low minimum requirements means those of you with a non-gaming pc should have no trouble running it if you have a modern pc
+ Brilliant inter-dependence on each class to perform their roles well
+ Great voice acting and characterisation of each of the classes
+ Very well balanced, whatever tricks you can employ are also available to the opposition
+ Surprisingly enjoyable musical score
+ Superb Character design and animation
+ A plethora of bespoke maps tailor made for specific game-types, probably the best multiplayer map design out there.
+ Valve again show their talent for humourous writing
+ Each class is fun to play and takes a good amount of time to master and perfect. This is a game of skill and ability even though it may not look it.
+ IT'S FINALLY FREE
Cons
- No conventional upgrade system will put off fans of modern shooters.
- An awful lot of grinding is required to acquire the seemingly random new weapon and item drop which are based on achievements rather than persistent experience point acquisition.
- Sound effects aren't all that impressive and some have been just been transferred from Half Life 2
- Melee combat is awkward and cumbersome
- Still the Source Engine so don't expect to impressed by the technical side of the visuals
- Very steep learning curve for each of the classes
- This is begging for some sort of crazy single-player story.
- If you're a fan of the recent CoD games this may not be for you, requires skill see?
- Quite difficult to kill enemies with ordinary firearms
- Crashes, lag both visually and in the audio and bugs still present after many updates and patches from Valve.
- Steam is having trouble coping with the huge numbers of new players when it comes to cloud saves.
- If you don't have Steam, well there's no helping some people
- You will learn to really, really hate the Spy
Team Fortress 2 is the most fun you can have online coupled with the best class-based multiplayer in existence and it's been worth your money ever since it came out in 2007 with the Orange Box which you have no excuse not to own already.
And now it's free. For everyone. So you're reading this now because…?