Pixar meets a rocket launcher to the face.
Team Fortress Classic came out about 10 years ago as a mod for Half-Life. It was announced that there would be a squeal to Team Fortress Classic 9 years ago, and today with the Orange Box we finally have it.
When you pop in Team Fortress from your Xbox 360 or from your PC the first thing you’ll see is the game’s art style. The game looks awesome! While they aren’t as good as Gears of War or Call of Duty 4 they still look cool, and they don’t need to look cool for them to work really well. Think a Pixar movie with a crap load of weapons and explosions, and you’ll pretty much get Team Fortress 2. That’s a metaphor for the entire game actually; this game looks sounds and feels like a cartoon. As I said Team Fortress 2’s sound is also very much like a cartoon. While the original Half-Life sounds are still in the game after 10 years, the explosions, water, and the guns all sound like a CGI movie. This isn’t a bad thing at all, both the sound and visuals are awesome, and they do the job.
Team Fortress is strictly a Multi-player game only. There is no single player component, but that’s a good thing since the characters shouldn’t really be in one. The Multi-player is objective based, so you will be spending time capturing intelligence and control points. Normally one team will defend their capture points while the other team attacks the capture points, with a few exceptions. The map 2fort is a capture the flag map and Hydro has everyone trying to capture points, both teams defend and attack at the same time. The problem with the maps is, there are only 6 out of the box, Valve promises more, but at this time, there just aren’t too many.
The big selling point for Team Fortress 2 are the classes. The game offers 9 classes out of the box, each one being totally different and having a totally different role to play. Classes also work together in order to succeed, for example a Heavy gunner can clear the front line of enemies so a scout can run through and capture the flag. Perhaps the most unique classes are the most helpful, for example the Spy can disguise him self, and look to see what his team is up against, the Medic has a medigun with fires a beam and gives people health, and while a medic is healing you can get more health added to the maximum aloud, then go into uber-charge to make both he and the person he’s healing invincible for a short while. All the classes are fun, and it’s cool to see how they work in different instances.
Team Fortress is a great piece of the Orange Box; it has almost everything a multiplayer component needs, for now. The game is fun, fast, and frantic; you could play this game on the same 6 maps for hours and still have a different experience each time. Whether you buy it stand alone, or on the Orange Box this game belongs in any action fan’s collection.
