Team Fortress 2 - Review

Team Fortress 2 is a class based first person shooter, released by the Valve Corporation, in its current form on October 10th 2007.

Two teams, Red and Blu face off against each other in a myriad of maps with just as many map styles.

Team Fortress 2 has had many incarnations, ranging from a realistic graphical style and was originally a mod for Quake. The original Team Fortress 2 game was released as Team Fortress Classic and was made using the publicly available Half Life Software Development Kit, fully showing the kit’s potential and flexibility.

The classes in Team Fortress 2 are a wide and varied bunch, each possessing his own skills and abilities.

Classes

Heavy: The heavy (or Heavy weapons guy) is a big beast of a brute. Being the biggest in physical size and having the most health, the heavy is also the slowest of the classes making him “Spy Fodder” (I will cover the spy later.) Not only is the Heavy the biggest physically he also has the biggest weapon, a minigun which he has lovingly named. The Heavy’s best friend is the medic, and more often than not in game you will find these two together, mowing down all the other classes. The heavy’s secondary weapon is a shotgun and melee weapon is his fists

Demoman: The demoman is, as he puts it, a black Scottish Cyclops. This description is quite apt as the demoman is infact black. Scottish and having only one eye, technically a Cyclops. The demoman uses a grenade launcher which has a decent range and failing a direct hit, will cause splash damage to nearby enemies, as well as his grenade launcher the demoman also has a sticky bomb launcher, these bombs are remotely detonated by a simple right click of the mouse. The sticky bombs can be extremely useful in control point matches. The demoman’s melee weapon is a whiskey bottle.

Engineer: The engineer can built sentry turrets to defend key points in the map, dispensers to restock himself and teammates and teleporters to shuttle a teammate from one end of the map to the other. The engineer’s main weapons apart from his creations, which he maintains by hitting them with his wrench, are his shotgun and rapid fire pistol which he can use to spy check around the vicinity of his lovely toys.

Soldier: The soldier uses a rocket launcher, which serves two purposes, one as a weapon and the other purpose it serves is that it gives the soldier the ability to rocket jump to places that other players cannot reach unless they too are playing as a soldier, the ability to get higher than the field of play can prove immensely useful as players don’t often check above eye level. All you have to do then is fire a rocket at them, even if you miss with this rocket, the splash damage will either kill (if it’s a critical) or severely wound the enemy. The soldiers secondary weapon and melee weapon are a shotgun and a spade.

Sniper: The sniper is a master of long range sharp shooting, utilizing his scopes charge ability the sniper can kill most classes in the game with a well timed and well places head shot. The sniper tends to stay back from the conflict, opting to pick his foes off from a distance. If the sniper has to get in close he can switch to his machete or his uzi.

Scout: The scout is the quickest class in the game, generally moving at 150% percent movement speed and having the ability to double jump. The scout also counts as two people when either moving the bomb in a payload map or capturing a control point. The scout’s weapons are a scatter gun which is deadly at close range but the further back from the enemy you go, the less damage that is dealt. A quick fire pistol which is pretty much the same deal, get in close, deal the damage, get the heck outta dodge. The scout’s melee weapon is a baseball bat. Always good for a BONK! Quip from the smartmouthed little punk.

Spy: The spy is probably my favourite class of the game. Having the ability to make himself invisible, sneak behind enemy lines and stick his knife in the backs of enemies for an insta-kill. The spy’s primary weapon is his revolver which is a decent enough weapon at close range but quite weak at a distance. The spy’s butterfly knife comes in very handy when your behind an enemy as you can score in instant kill but used in a fight, will get you killed. The knife is the weakest weapon in the game unless its plunged into someone’s back.

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Game Types:

Capture Points: The aim of this type of match is to capture all the points before your enemy can, whilst staving off their attempts to capture the points at the same time.

King of the Hill: The aim of this type of match is to keep control of a central control point for the allotted time, usually 3 minutes, while the enemies try to take it off you.

Payload: In this match one team has to push a bomb from their spawn to an allotted space near the enemies spawn, once this has been done the game moves on to the second stage, same again then once that has been done it goes on to the third and final stage of the map where the bomb gets dropped and goes boom. Killing any players in the vicinity.

CTF: Or capture the flag, even though it is not a flag, its intelligence. The game mechanics of this match are similar if not the same to the standard CTF matches in other FPS games. Get the intel and get it back to your base without getting a new anus blasted into you by the other team.

Arena: The arena mode is just your standard team deathmatch. Score more points than your enemy to win

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Overall I think Team Fortress is one of the best FPS’s I have played. The unique visual style set it apart from all the other FPS’s out there. The uniqueness of the characters themselves also adds to my love for this game. Not to mention the countless updates Valve do to the game, adding new class weapons and even funky hats. When there is this much blood and guts in a game but you can see it all while sporting a spiffing hat, you know it has to be good.

Team Fortress 2 gets a 10/10 from me for sure.

Valve official site : http://www.valvesoftware.com/