Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is one of those games that has been in development hell for a very long time; in fact, it been in development for nearly a whole year. I never really have the chance to play the first game at all so I had no real anticipation for this game whatsoever and all I knew was that it has some team based gameplay in it. Boy was I in for a real treat, this is one of the best team-based shooters ever made, if not, one of the best multiplayer games I have played in a very long time. Allow me to elaborate on what I mean.

There really is no cohesive story at all to this and mainly a Multiplayer-only game. The way that they name their factions is quite funny and is pretty much the standard colors of Red and Blu (the letter “e” is left out on purpose). However the real standout of the game is actually the characters themselves. There has been much effort into giving them character and personality that makes this game all the more entertaining.

Characters consist of their function in the game and the classes have various accents in the game and the design of each

Game play is another aspect that makes this game even sweeter and definitely keeps me coming back to play it some more. Classes have different weapons and abilities that give each class a distinct edge to them. For Example, the Pyro has a flamethrower that can ignite multiple enemies or the Engineer that builds various mechanical doodads that help support in terms of defense. Medics can heal other characters and when charged enough he can shoot out a beam that gives them invulnerability for a limited time. Even though each character has their own distinct weapons and abilities, each class had a balance to them. One class never felt overpowered than one another and it really makes the game much more fun. The fact that they took time to tweak each class to make sure they weren’t broken in anyway makes it feel much more approachable and really allows you to be able to experiment with whichever class you feel is appropriate for the situation at hand.

As for the types of different modes in the game, it is pretty much the standard modes that you would see in a multiplayer game plus one different mode. You get your standard Capture the Flag, Control Point, and Arena mode (a la Counterstrike). The only real standout is Payload/Payload Race, this type of game mode makes the Blu team transport a

bomb to different points of the map and the Red must stop them from reaching the end. The map is split into three different sections and the Blu team must reach the very end in order to win. Payload Race is like Payload but this time two teams have bombs to transport. Honestly this is the game mode that really kept me playing. As for the rest of the modes they feel boring to me. While the maps are well made and balanced to where no team has one advantage over the other. They still don’t have that originality that the characters in the game have.

To wrap up this review I just want to say that I have had a blast playing this game. With such expressive characters, nice amount of variety, Steam Achievements, and the updates with the various classes, it feels like a nicely wrapped package that I still enjoy playing to this day. The number one thing that really makes this game fun is the true sense of balance to this game, not one class feels overpowered or underpowered. You can buy this game along with the Orange Box or separately.