Team Fortress 2 Impressions - More Fun with the Classes

LEIPZIG, GERMANY--Earlier today, during a meeting with Valve at the Leipzig Games Convention, we were treated to an all-new trailer of Team Fortress 2. The trailer not only showed off the game's gorgeous cartoonlike visuals, but it also did a great job of pointing out the rock-paper-scissors-style relationships that many of its playable classes enjoy.

The first class to appear in the trailer was an engineer, who took a few moments to set up an automatic gun turret and then stood back and watched as it mowed down a dozen or so rocket-launcher-carrying soldiers before any of them managed to fire a single shot. The heavy class, armed with a chaingun, was able to cut down even more soldiers in the space of just a few seconds, but met his own demise when he was picked off at range in the portion of the trailer that showed off the sniper class. Moments later, a spy--who had presumably been employing some kind of stealth tactic that made him completely invisible--appeared behind the sniper from out of nowhere, and took him out with a stab to the back.

Next up was the scout, who didn't appear to be carrying much in the way of weaponry, but who was able to move around the level much more quickly than any of the other classes. The footage of the scout showed him using his speed to evade enemy fire and reach what appeared to be some kind of mission objective, just moments before he was blown up by a demo man. After taking out the enemy scout, the demo man proceeded to make his way back to the turret that we'd seen the engineer place at the start of the trailer and then, after playfully swinging a stick of dynamite around in his hand, he used the explosives to take down the turret with a well-placed throw. Our only real question at this point, as the trailer appeared to be coming to an end, was why on earth would anyone choose to play as a soldier? We'd seen them die twice without ever getting their revenge, after all. The answer came moments later, when we were treated to a display of rocket-jumping (the art of firing a rocket at the ground while jumping, so that you're propelled high into the air), which let soldiers effortlessly fly up into high windows much like the one that the sniper had been hiding behind earlier.

The only classes that weren't really highlighted in today's trailer, although both had brief cameo roles, were the medic and the pyro. Regardless, we're now even more excited about Team Fortress 2 than we were when it was unveiled at an Electronic Arts press event last month. We look forward to bringing you more information on the game, which will ship as part of the Half-Life 2: Episode Two package toward the end of this year, as soon as it becomes available.