Maybe not the mutliplayer shooter everyone's looking for, but for the most part holds its own.
Team Fortress 2 is a team-based mutliplayer game with various classes and also enforces teamwork to complete objectives. Two teams go at it for the sole reason of... well, just to win.
After you join a team, you'll be faced with the decision of choosing one of nine different classes. NINE. That's plenty. Variety is always good, and TF2's variety for this part isn't bad. You have classes like a flamethrower guy, a grenader, a medic, and some others. Each of them are pretty unique and are balanced well. Though it won't take long to notice that if used correctly, each class can be equally useful and annoying depending on the team you're on. You'll have enemy engineers placing turrets in the most annoying and cheap spots ever and you'll have plenty of other annoyances coming at you from the other team.
Otherwise when you're busy owning everyone on the other team, TF2 plays rather well. The game doesn't necessarily revolve around shooting the crap out of the other team, but around objectives like capturing control points and even a Capture-The-Flag styled mode.
And this is where there's kind of a problem: there's only 6 maps out of the box. You'd think that with various delays and a long development, you'd get more than 6 maps. True, there are always user-created maps you can get, but at least they can give you some more so other people don't have to that much. The variety in terms of maps can get old fast so if anyone's got the time to get extra maps, you can at least keep that aspect of the game fresh.
Even with the lack of maps, the chaos still is alright for the most part, though there are still some oddities and discomforts to be found in the game (for me, anyways).
First off: there are way too many shotguns. This isn't a good thing since the game is actually pretty fast paced and you'd have to be godlike to get up close and control your aim for a good kill. And since shotguns are the secondary weapons for some of the classes, it starts to take away some variety.
Thankfully, each class has some of their own unique weapons as well. The Heavy class has a huge minigun, the Pyro obviously has a nice flamethrower, the Soldier has a bazooka, you know where I'm getting at. Set enemies on fire, launch grenades, heal your teammates, even build some machines to help yourself and your comrades. You may only have a few things in your inventory to utilize, but it definitely makes each class stand out.
But once again, there's a little thing that kind of bugs me and that is the lack of any feel of accuracy in the weapons. Other than the sniper rifle (only available to the Sniper class), pretty much every weapon is either inaccurate or too unuseful in certain situations. Sure, maybe the spread and recoil of this weapon isn't that bad, but when enemies are almost always constantly moving and spazzing about, it'll be too chaotic to use weapons properly unless they're still or if you can lay a lucky shot up close or something. The weapons themselves don't feel too uncomfortable, though I can't say that it'll feel as smooth as you'd want it to be.
And the amount of chaos can actually be so intense, it's bad. There will be times where you'll really have no idea where to shoot and some things will happen so fast and confusing, you'll be kind of disappointed when you lose or your teammates take care of it while leaving you out. Chaos is good, but it can at least let you comprehend a few things as well.
With the small amount of maps available, i can at least say that the map designs were suited enough for this type of game, but even the map design doesn't sit well with me. The maps can feel a bit too straightforward at times making plenty of situations where nearly each and every member of both teams are duking it out within the same 70 meters. And since there's two sides of the map, you'll be respawning and doing pretty much the same thing again.
But it's not all bad. One thing that makes this game stand out from pretty much every other multiplayer game out there is the style and look of the game. As cartoony as it looks, it's pretty neat on its own scale. There's nothing that looks like this at all and it's probably one of my favorite parts of the game, not to mention the hilarity of some of the taunts and voices.
And despite the cartoonish design, it doesn't even look like a cel-shaded game, either. Imagine a game that has the animation quality of a random Pixar movie and add in a lot of blood, gore, and flying bullets. There you go. The graphics are artistically brilliant and while it might not have the absolute best graphics on the technical side, it's still one of the better looking games we'll get this year.
As someone who has a good interest in online multiplayer shooters, I was kind of disappointed in TF2. I can really only ask for less mindlessness, more maps, and maybe some more modes and better map design along with some more satisfying weapons. The community isn't that bad and a game like this has a lot of potential. It's not my favorite game out of The Orange Box, though it's bound to grab some new fans. Just be glad this is part of the package because I truly think that if this was seperate, it'd be a ripoff.