A Sitcom In Game Form

Author's Rating:

Pros: Incredibly funny. Human opponents. Polished to a mirror shine.

Cons: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Lost sleep. Hate-filled rages at opponents.

The Bottom Line: 
Multiplayer FPS has never been so much funny.

Author's Review
This is my first First Person Shooter. Let's start with saying that even if you're BAD at FPSes (I am), you'll be having far too much fun with Team Fortress 2 to CARE.

To put it shortly, Team Fortress 2 is PURE AWESOMENESS. It was awesome when it came out, and it's infinitely more awesome since Valve has supplied the many updates. I bought it outside of the Orange Box but that's just me; coming in the Orange Box changes nothing except the fact that you'll also have to divide your time between two other awesome games (Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and Portal) but that's irrellevant right now.

Team Fortress 2 is a Multiplayer Online Game. You will play with other human beings. The best part (for me) is that once you've paid for the game you don't have to pay those dreadful subscription charges that come with games like City of Heroes and various Warcraft games. So you can boot it up for a quick game, not play it for a few days, and then go back for another game, and not feel like you're getting ripped off. Additionally, all the updates - past and future - are completely free once you've bought the game.

The whole thing gives the vague impression of a 1960s/70s sitcom, and that's roughly when it's set. You are a mercenary working for either Reliable Excavation and Demolition, or Builders League United, two super-global corporations who run the world. Team RED and Team BLU. Har har indeed. The goal is apparently to kick the $h!t out of the other team, although there's various ways to achieve that goal - payload races, arena battles, capture points, or capture flags (which look like briefcases). Otherwise though, it's pretty thin on plot, so I like to pretend it's some sort of evil Truman Show type thing with war and clones, what with the announcer being the same woman for both teams.

So yes, plot's pretty thin, but nobody seems to care because you're spending far too much time having fun blowing $h!t up. Besides, you can chat with the other players, rage at them for killing you AGAIN, discuss strategies, laugh at them for getting set on fire, or just chat about normal things... yeah, you get the idea.

There are nine character classes, all exceptionally well balanced, and so very different in their style of play that you'll feel like you're playing nine different games, all beating the crap out of each other. Oh, and there can be more than one of the same class on each team so don't worry about that. There's the Scout, the fastest character designed to capture points, the Heavy, who totes a minigun and can tear you apart in a matter of seconds, and the Sniper, who has a sniper rifle and causes people frustrating grief from a distance. And the other six classes, all with their own jobs and specialties.

Team Fortress 2 says it's a sequel. But what with minimal plot, and being different to its predecessor in so many ways (so I'm told) there's no need to know ANYTHING WHATSOEVER about Team Fortress Classic. I know I don't, and I still have masses of fun. Apart from the different graphical style, extra comedic value, and altered classes, there's also no grenades.

What really makes Team Fortress 2 stand out, is its already mentioned comedic value. The graphic style has a vague echo of Pixar's exaggeration about it, right up until you explode in a mess of bloody limbs, with various little symbols pointing to your head, arms and kidneys. But forget that. What REALLY matters is the characterisation of the classes. YOU, the individual human being, are playing as them and yet they all have personalities as distinct and official as their sillouettes and those personalities WORK.

The Scout is a hyperactive, egotistical baseball fanatic with seven brothers and a Brooklyn accest, the Soldier a Midwest patriot who has a hillariously poor grasp of military history, the Heavy a Russian Soviet who gives the impression of being a gentle giant right up until he tears you limb from limb with a minigun, the Engineer a Texan Old Boy who philosiphises on life while he designs and builds sentry guns, the Demoman a black, one eyed, alchoholic Scotsman who blew up his natrual parents while trying to blow up the Lock Ness Monster, the Medic a chilly German from Stuttgard with no regard for the Hippocratic Oath and vast regard for ramming needles into people, the Sniper a cheerful, professional Austrailian whose parents do not approve of his profession, and the Spy a mysterious chain-smoking Frenchman who is apparently doing the Scout's mother. Oh, and the Pyro, a completely masked man in a baggy fire-retardant suit and speaking with a voice muffled through a gas mask, who may be a woman.

Valve has brought out various "Meet The Character" videos which expand on the characters personalities, and are available for free on the Team Fortress 2 official site. Very kind of them.

Sound is hilarious too. The accents are spot on, and for that matter, so are the cultural wordings - especially noticable with the Austrailian Sniper.

But the humour doesn't end with the characters. Even their weapons fit into their personalities. Scout totes a baseball bat along with his baseball socks, Heavy can munch on a health regenerating Sandvich, and Sniper can hurl a jar of urine at enemies to make them vulnerable to crits, uncloak spies, and remind them that human dignity is a thing of the past. It's called Jarate.

What about replay value? Well, apart from the human opposition, there are missions for capturing flags, maps for pushing a cart, and maps for capturing points. And not just the official maps either. There are LOADS of custom maps made by people with even more time on their hands than me - some of them so exceptional in quality that they have been accepted by Valve as official maps. There's nine classes to perfect your playing as, or you might just end up favouring one. There are achievements of varying difficulty which unlock weapons and keep you coming back for more even with classes you're not fond of.

In conclusion, I could go on and on. I could go into endless detail about how Spy can disguise himself as a member of your team, and go under your name, and then you bump into him, shout to the team, "The Medic's a Spy!" and promptly everybody empties their miniguns into you, or how the Medic swears in German, or how Snipers get into Sniper Wars and start concentrating purely on plugging a headshot in each other instead of the Heavy currently mowing down a helpless Engineer... I could go on and on about the many, many things that make Team Fortress 2 almost orgasmically fun to play, and frustrating in that way that makes you try again just for vengeance on the guy who just killed you. And you'll have noticed there's something missing from my review - criticism.

And that's because there's nothing actually wrong with Team Fortress 2. There's not a lot of it, but there's a lot TO it, if you get my meaning. You're playing against other human beings, with classes all with their own individual entertaining personalities that sometimes you play as just to hear their taunts. That human interaction, coupled with the humour, and the exceptionally well-balanced classes, takes any small nitpicks about no mini-maps (you have to learn your own way around the bases) or the Medic not getting to kill people during his stage of invunerability, and puts them to one side while you enjoy yourself blowing people up, setting them on fire, and gunning them down. Or watching other people do it. Or shouting your responses at other people until their ears bleed.

It's so much fun. SO MUCH FUN. I can't say that enough. You'll find yourself raging at other people killing you but you're still having SO MUCH FUN.