Diversity makes Team Fortress 2 one of a kind.
When I try to come up with the whole formula for such success of Team Fortress 2 among online players I end up with many answers, all respond partially. First of all, it's a first person shooter, kids go nuts for this type of game these days, but it's certainly no average shooter. The visuals give a less stiff look to it, and welcomes players of all kinds, This flexibility to please both hardcore and casuals alike is very important in the industry nowadays, evading the constant side-taking.
It's a game in constant change, upgraded as this is written. Team Fortress 2 is one of Valve’s brightest children, with its very active and dedicated community. If someone has heard about Team Fortress nowadays or at least has a slight interest in video-games, this person might have heard about this game’s relationship with ‘hats’. They’re mostly for aesthetic purposes and the player is able to change its characters’ appearance with them. Weapons are also upgradeable, and they’re acquired through achievements or by buying new ones at the games online store.
The online store accepts real money, so if you get stuck on collecting them or just has a thing for character visual upgrades you might end up losing a lot of money, as I find the price a bit overwhelming for a video-game item store. Although the players seem to find it fine, the store has handed Valve quite a profit during its existence, so much that this game is from now on free. Yes, you heard right, one of Valves best selling, and most active game is free to play, no string attached.
When someone asks ‘what’s the catch?’ life has given them enough lessons to know something is not right. Of course there’s a ‘catch’, but it’s actually not that bad. The player has a few limitations, like less space to save items, limited crafting and trading, but the game is fully playable. So this divides the players into free and premium accounts, anyone who purchased the game at any period of time will have a premium account on the go. If someone happened to have started playing it during the free period they’ll be able to upgrade by making any transaction on the online store.
The game itself is a mix of many gameplay styles, it is composed of many classes and each functions in a very distinct manner. Generally first-person shooters have two apparent branded to them, assault and sniper. You’re either a lone, patience-ridden distance shooter or a blood-pumped trigger-happy. This doesn’t happen at all in Team Fortress 2, you can still snipe, you can still assault, though the possibilities don’t end there.
You have bizarre classes like the Pyro who uses his flamethrower to set anything he sees on fire, or the engineers who is able to build sentries, teleporters, and mobile bases around the maps. In total the game has 9 different classes, three considered offensive, three defensive, and three for assistance. Each has its singularities and demands time and many plays to catch the way to properly play them.
Two of the more demanding are the spy and engineer. The spy has the ability to infiltrate the enemy base territory camouflaged, disrupt enemy sentries, become completely invisible and backstab unaware players. If the map is centered around stealing the intel of the opposite team, he’s the man for the job. The engineer helps the team by relocating the base closer to the action, he builds dispenser to supply the team with ammo and health, sentries to shoot anyone who dares to enter the range of the drones and builds teleporters to help the team get back to the battle as fast as possible.
The medic is also an interesting character class, as its focus is all-out defense and support, he basically heals other players and by doing that charging his medigun to, when charged, release an ubercharge for him and the supported player to get a brief period of invincibility. Other classes tend to get more usual, like a soldier with a grenade launcher; the Demoman, focused on explosive weaponry; the Heavy, a big guy with an enormous and deadly rapid fire machine gun; the Scout, who’s the most fragile class yet also the fastest, including the ability to double jump. If you want, the sniper class is also available.
There are many types of game modes, like the already mentioned capture the intel, which each team must try to get the enemies intel and return to their base. Payload maps require one team to defend and the other to try moving a cart holding a bomb along a trail by standing by it, the attacking team must succeed at bombing the site, while the defending must to everything and anything they can to prevent. The well-known capture the flag. There’s Capture Point, where each team must go capturing points in order to succeed, if you lose a points you must take it back, if you capture one the next is available, up until the very last.
It’s good that Valve takes good care of this game, adding constant updates and events for the players to take place. The community is vast and dedicated. The method used to hand out items revolves around time played, so it’s common to see people with immense amount of hours played. The guns and other stuff you get but won’t use can be used to forge new items. Each new item has its blueprint and in order to make them you have to have the ideal ingredients, or guns, or metal.
Team Fortress 2 is much more than an average shooter because it actually adds different classes that will be used, and basically not even one of them will be overlooked. It’s fun to change classes and strategies in-game by realizing your current class won’t do you much good, and then trying some other one. This adds incredible amount of replayability. It’s like several types of games inside only one package. The cartoon-like graphics are pleasing, and the treatment Valve has given to this is certainly top-notch. As the game is free, there’s no real reason as to not at least try it.
