Team Fortress 2: too late to jump in?

Team Fortress 2, a game that retails for 19.99 and one that I have finally purchased after a year of not having a pc to play it on. Of course, I was a bit nervous entering an online fps this late in the game. Yet I found TF2 and its community to be decidedly welcoming and easy to assimilate into. I had high hopes for TF2 as a game, and it has done nothing but exceed everything I had previously conceived about it. If you were hoping I was going to have plenty of negative things to say, stop reading. If you are late to this party just as I was, come on in, theres still room in the server.

Team Fortress 2 is a class-based online multiplayer first person shooter, with an emphasis on team play. Most shooters will brandish the “team” aspects of their games and fall short of their promised glory. In other words, TF2 actually requires you to work in conjunction with your fellow members. An example, in most shooters everyone just goes ahead and picks whatever class they want to have fun with, makes sense right? That will get you killed in TF2, the satisfaction comes from being an integral part of the team, whether that be being a good medic, a hardworking engineer, or a sneaky spy. If you do your part well, your team members will certainly reward you with their gratitude, and that just feels good.

There are nine classes to choose from in Team Fortress 2, each class plays a different role, and these roles can change depending on what mode one is playing. I have played three modes in TF2, deathmatch, capture the “intelligence” and gold rush. Payload is my favorite mode of the bunch, perhaps because it is the most original. The objective in this mode is for one team to escort a bomb cart along a railway track all the way to the end of the line. Trouble is, the cart only moves when a teammate is standing near it, there is a time limit that only gets extended when the cart passes checkpoints, and there is the entire enemy team out to kill you. This is where the team work kicks in. Traditionally two or three heavies surround the cart, their health being constantly replenished by medics that follow in their wake. Eventually the medics will “uber” charge the heavies causing the duo to be momentarily invulnerable. This usually gets the cart going pretty quickly and allows the team to slice through any and all opposition. Unfortunately the enemy team’s engineers have probably set up two to three sentry guns in a choke point that rip the un ubered heavies to shreds, and then their medics. Now the opposing team has their chance to push the cart backward a little bit until the cavalry arrives. A lone pyro may leap into the fray causing many to burst into flames (thank goodness friendly fire is always off in this game), and a scout may double jump over everyone and start shotgunning others to the back. The snipers (all adorned in cowboy hats) look funny in this game, in fact I was inclined to laugh at them until one put a bullet through my lower cranial region mid-jump, ripping my head from my torso. I forgot to mention, this game is gory.

The gore is not the only visual highlight of the game, the entire thing looks like a living cartoon. You have probably heard that before, let me tell you, this is the only game that actually fits the bill. I am running it on a fairly outdated 8800gt superclocked and it runs just fine with everything turned up, those of you with newer cards, or even all the way back to 7-series Nvidia’s should be A-ok to run TF2. The visual fidelity compliments the game’s zany sense of style. While the style of TF2 effectively comes off as a bunch of international soldiers fighting in a western motif environment, it pulls off this culteral hodge-podge perfectly. The litany of Russian jokes streaming from the Heavy never fails to bring a smile to my face, and even the game’s creative achievements reflect the thought that must have been put into this game stylistically. Playing on the PC adds even more opportunity for style, as many servers will be blasting their favorite music and slapping stickers of their choosing on every wall. This makes for a more entertaining and engaging experience.

I could go on about this game forever, and I will be adding more to these thoughts in the coming days, but for now I must say BUY THIS GAME if you have yet to do so. It is  Uber in every sense of the word.