Battlefield 3 Single Player Review

 

So as you probably realised (based off my last post, if you actually read my blog), I’ve recently bailed on the sinking cash cow that is the Call of Duty series, and boarded another boat unfortunately heading for the same boat. My hatred for overwhelming greed in publishers aside (I’m looking at you, EA and Activision), Battlefield 3 is a really great game.

As with many of the games I review, I’m new to the series. The Battlefield series’ claim to fame is offering large infantry and vehicle based gameplay with a slightly more ‘realistic’ viewpoint. But this is a video game, if you want realism go join the army or play ARMA 2. Swapping from Call of Duty, you’ll notice the bullet drop and destructive environments immediately. Compared to the extent of Call of Duty’s amazing glass destruction, battlefield takes it far further. Taking fire from a house? Get a friend to bring a tank and bring the building down, or chip away at it with RPGs. Group of enemies hiding in an alleyway? Bring a building down on their heads. That kind of stuff (I’ll go more into multiplayer later)

Onto the singleplayer, and I’m going to start with this. If you don’t have an internet connection or don’t intend on playing online, don’t buy this game. Having played through the single player through twice, its only use is getting used to the Frostbite 2.0 engine. And what an engine it is. The graphics are amazing, the lighting stunning and the destruction has so much potential. Trust me, the campaign is going to cram those features down your throat. The story’s plot is kickstarted by an earthquake, and the earthquake only really seems to be a way for DICE to show off the capabilities of its baby. Look, a collapsing building! Whoop-dee-fucking-do. Impressive, sure. Necessary, hardly.

The plot is patchy at best, and seems to be riddled with excuses to show off the engine’s capabilities. The several night levels only really serve to show off the blinding lighting the engine is capable of. You play Sgt. Blackburn, a marine in interrogation after shooting your CO. The game starts you within a train, where it becomes apparent that quick time events are going to be commonplace as well. When will developers learn, that gamers hate going through an entire level to fail on a stupid QTE and have to do much of it again? If I wanted to mash buttons I’d play Super Smash Brothers or a Warioware title. Or an overpriced iPod app.

The plot unfortunately bears several similarities to the Call of Duty games. You go between level to level in a series of flashbacks whilst being interrogated. You’re trying to stop a nuke as well. Seem familiar? The antagonist also bears several similarities to Modern Warfare’s Makarov. That, and many of the characters follow their Call of Duty counterparts into ‘shocking’ deaths for cheap emotional scenes, which would work if they were properly characterised. I hardly knew many of their names, or enough about them to feel sad about their demise (I’m sorry, that was a cheap pun).

Some of the levels also link together quite badly. The link to the disappointing on-rails jet level is vague at best. You also play as a Russian, Dima, in two levels. The link between him and Blackburn is the second-last level of the game, and much of the story involving him is unclear during the first playthrough as you have no clue who this guy is. The plot actually has a book about it by a talented author. The book makes much more sense, and it really made me feel emotional about the characters rather than the state of the gaming industry. It’s a pity the game doesn’t follow the book’s plot, otherwise the single player would be worthwhile, instead it just seems to be a highlight wheel for the new engine.

 

Long Time No See- Modern Warfare 3 Multiplayer Opinions

It’s been a while, I know. That multiplayer review for MW3 never came, and for good reason. Here it is in a nutshell, and I know many people have said this, but it feels like Modern Warfare 2.5. The single player and co-op at least have differing levels, but on the plain, claustrophobic and incredibly circular maps MW3 just feels boring and too similar to its predecessor. The only real changes are moving the on-screen text and a slightly different killstreak system. And with death streaks, Infinity Ward’s excellent balancing skills are at it again. Hated Martyrdom and Last Stand in MW2? Well, both are present, but they also combined the two with a resulting death streak that is rage-inducing and leaves you with no possible escape – Dead Man’s hand.

Tragically, the weapon balance is atrocious. The assault rifles are all hopelessly outclassed due to the tiny maps, in which SMGs rule. While shotguns have been beaten senselessly with the nerf stick (now more or less much useless), machine pistols are again hideously overpowered. The FMGs (like G18s in MW2, but worse), despite getting a nerf, are still an “easy mode” of sorts.

Oh, and the spawns. They give me nightmares sometimes. Team Deathmatch isn’t too bad, but Free for All and Domination are atrocious. For a start, several maps are too small for three flags, and then spawning on those results into your immediate demise. Dome is the worst for this.

As I said earlier, the maps are all bland, excessively circular and none of them really stand out as amazing, but more instead stand out as terrible, and the DLC or ELITE don’t really seem to make matters much better. ELITE was delayed severely at launch for PC, and offers monthly content for a set price. Not only does this not encourage well-made maps, as the money hungry Activision already has its dosh, it punishes those without ELITE by making them wait months longer for content. And now, Battlefield has followed suit (but more on that later). I haven’t bought into ELITE or any of MW3’s DLC, and I’m not missing anything.

In the end, my fun in MW3 was really quite limited. It offered very little to the series and the small maps were killing me. Despite my hatred for snipers, I longed for maps such as Wasteland or anything that didn’t involve running around in a circle dropping people with overpowered weapons. In fact, it was the desire for large maps that resulted in myself swapping franchises to Battlefield 3. The DLC seems to bring more boring, small, circular and uninteresting maps and I only really played the game due to the addicting leveling system that has made the Call of Duty games so popular. Personally, I’d rather enjoy my games as well as being hooked by them. No thanks, Black Ops 2. I’ll pass.

Merry Christmas!

Just a shoutout to everyone for everyone to have a Merry Christmas! Should have my Modern Warfare 3 Multiplayer Review up tomorrow.

Modern Warfare 3 Spec Ops Review

I’d love to say that Modern Warfare 3’s Survival Mode is “new”, but it’s a hoard style game type, pitting you against waves of enemies that come in waves. You’ll earn money by killing enemies, and you use that money to by guns and perks (among other things). For anyone that’s ever played Zombies, it sounds insanely similar. The only main difference is they carry weapons, and they will shoot you. While there are other differences, like adding weapon attachments, body armor, sentry guns and various forms of air support, it seems the only way the difficulty is ramped up is the continual addition of more and more Juggernaughts. Survival is extremely fun, i must say. The AI gradually gets smarter and smarter, use different weapons and have more armor. New enemies are also added, with people planting claymores and chemical weapons, to dogs and humans strapped with C4.

Unfortunately, all survival maps are exactly the same as multiplayer maps. I would have rathered specific maps, like Zombies has. You can check your best against the rest of the world, with solo and co-op leaderboards for each maps, however, it only shows the last 3 numbers of your place, leading me to believe my wave 30 score made me about 150th in the world, when it actually was about 150 thousandth. Buzzkill.

Another major addition to Spec Ops is a leveling system and (gasp) hitmarkers. You gain experiences through kills and assists to go towards your rank, and to unlock items to use in survival.

Onto the specific Spec Ops missions. While many of Modern Warfare 2’s 23 missions were set in parts of campaign levels, all of Modern Warfare 3’s 16 missions are more or less working backwards through these levels, doing various different missions. In a Spec Ops mission, you want it to start immediately, so you don’t have to run through a starting event a million and three times trying to get three stars. One mission has you flying into the level, and circling around for a good few minutes before getting really into the level.

Juggernaughts are thrown in early into Spec Ops. In 2, they didn’t come in until the later missions, and were a lot more serious. It seems in three they’re thrown around so much you don’t really become scared when one pops up when you’re about to die. The music changed and they were generally badass. Now, they’re just like another enemy (they don’t look as scary any more).

Despite this, you will have some really awesome levels. There’s on flying in on a chopper offering support to your partner. You then pick them up, and you are dropped off while your partner then offers support. Another, defusing IEDs in a Juggernaught suit, and a great AC-130 level (I liked 2’s more, however). oh, and controlling sentry guns and generally owning people.

Nitpicking aside, there’s only really one main thing that could have been changed in Spec Ops (mainly survival), and that is in-game chat. When put alongside a complete stranger, it’s nice to have some form of communication with them. There’s not even a text chat!

And I just wanted to blow up some cars.

Modern Warfare 3 Campaign Review

I’d easily have to say Modern Warfare 3 would have to have been the most hyped-up game of 2011. Not the most anticipated, but the most hyped. In fact, since the Call of Duty series rose to worldwide fame between the first two Modern Warfares (mainly the second I’d say), each new game is insanely hyped up.

Now, unlike the several thousand people who got the game within the first few days, I left the series’ addicting multiplayer for later, and jumped into the campaign, which starts immediately after the events of Modern Warfare 2. Soap is gravely injured, Russia is attacking the USA, and Makarov is… Well, he’s not massacring people every time he goes to the airport. You don’t play as Soap this time, and Foley has been given the sack by infinity ward. Instead, you play as Yuri, alongside Price and Soap, and as Frost, part of an elite USA team.

There’s no doubting the games contain some pretty awesome moments in some pretty awesome locations, and Yuri, Frost and team rock up some serious frequent flyer points, travelling to New York, Russia, Africa, Germany, England and France. And while that’s pretty cool, I find it ruins the overall feeling of the game. What I liked so much about 1 and 2 was the American missions. While the stealth of playing as Soap/Yuri annoyed me, I would much rather the urban warfare seen in the American missions. In 3, the Americans you play as are also jet setting across the globe. After the first two missions, you’re never really in the same location again.

But it is a call of duty game after all. You’ll be driving through occupied Paris in a… Postal van, have the helicopter flying next to you shot down (shock horror), drive a tank into a parking lot and still not find a park, and of course, have several characters killed off, like a bad drama show. You’ll get halfway through the campaign with most main characters still kicking, but, true to tradition, they’ll drop like flies.

The game looks the same as Modern Warfare 2. It plays the same as Modern Warfare 3. lt’s like the world’s most expensive DLC. The new Modern Warfare offers many thrills, but it’s really quite typical of a Call of Duty game. There was a particular part of a level in London they could have left out, as it tugs at the heart-strings quite a bit. While it’s no airport massacre, the impending sense of knowing something’s going to happen makes it far worse in many ways.

Story wise, it hasn’t really brought anything new to the game. Sure, you get to see the sights, mainly in a particularly awesome French level with an AC-130, and fighting towards the Eiffel Tower. The AI is just as stupid as ever, getting in your way and missing the one enemy that always kills you on your Veteran run-through, however all completionists have in ways of getting 100% completion in the game are the intel items scattered across the game, giving little replay value to the campaign.

The big question is, will Battlefield 3 trump Modern Warfare 3? We’ll have to find out when I get it.

My Rating

Music: 9

Gameplay: 8.5

Creativity: 6

Graphics: 8

Other: 8

Total: 39/50

Thinking with Portals: Portal 2 Review

There’s no denying it. Portal 2 has big shoes to fill. The original game was about as witty and puzzling as it was indie. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, portal has you firing two portals to solve a series of puzzles, usually getting a cube onto buttons, paving your way to the exit. The first game had a pretty slow pace, waiting for those balls of energy (I’m sure they have a proper name) to fly and around and platforms to get to you.

I’ll assure you, Portal 2 lives up to expectations and more. Valve has obviously put a lot of time and thought into this game. Set after the events of the first game, you wake up with Aperture Science having seen better days. But, sure enough, pretty quickly you’re throwing portals everywhere (just not the black walls). To differ from the usual portal here, portal there, cube in here type of gameplay (which never gets old for me, by the way), there’s a few new puzzling additions to mix it up. Faith plates throw you into the air, and you have bouncy/low friction gel. The gels are great, you have to spread them all over the map, there’s even one gel that gives you more portal spaces. Finally, you have excursion funnels, which suspend you in mid-air, making gravity rage and Newton turning in his grave.

All these new additions really add to the puzzling element of that game. You think you’ve mastered one thing, nd then they combine two or more together. The game feels fresh throughout. The story, while not in-depth in the slightest, is so simple not to hinder your gameplay. Wheatley is just comedy gold, with great added humor to Glados’ antics throughout. And, typical for Valve, the music is awesome.

The major addition in Portal 2 is the addition of Co=operative mode. You and a friend (or a random) have to work together to solve puzzles through a umber of levels. It’s great fun with a friend. I’ve “accidentally” either thrown the level-ending cube into a pit or crushed my partner with a “mashy spike plate” (as Wheatley puts it) several times. You can’t help nearly pissing yourself with laughter while playing it.

Probably the only problem I have with Portal 2 is some stages, especially while underground, going on crazy hunts for a small patch of white wall to place your portal on. It’s not puzzling in the slightest, and just gets annoying. Besides that, I can’t fault the game for anything else past its shallow storyline.

My Rating

Music: 10

Gameplay: 10

Creativity: 10

Graphics: 8.5

Other: 8.5

Total: 47/50

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

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If you follow this blog, you’ve probably seen my massive bitch about Steam in one of my previous posts. Steam’s grown on me now, and if it weren’t for Steam, I never would have discovered this brilliant game.

Valve’s marketing strategy is pretty clear. If you preorder THIS game, we’ll give you THESE items for Team Fortress 2! Deus Ex:Human Revolution (from now on called DEHR because it’s so much easier to type) was one of these games. A handful of Deus Ex items made their way into game, and led me to discovering the game. Now, I feel guilty for not actually buying the game (I’m not going into that any further), but there’s no doubting it’s a good one.

I’m new to the Deus Ex series with this game, so keep that in mind.

The game is based in the not too distant future, where humanity has begun stealing fire from the gods with human augmentation, making themselves better (and some believe losing their humanity). Set before Invisible War and the original Deus Ex, augmentations are only really available to the rich. You play as Adam Jensen, head of security for Sarif Industries. He’s ex-SWAT and wear sunglasses inside, and at night. In fact, you only see his eyes in two cut scenes in the whole game. Adam starts off the game unaugmented, but due to a story event which I won’t ruin for you ends up partially mechanical. After a group of augmented soldiers break into one of the labs, he is left with more questions than answers, and travels to many different locations throughout the game, including Detroit, Singapore, Montreal and China.

The game is a first-person shooter fused with a role-playing game. It contains sidequests, weapons and ammo carry over between missions, a leveling system (with experience points) and there are two hubs in the game, Hengsha (China) and Detroit. There’s a social side to it as well. In certain situations you have to convince people to do your will, and give you what you want. As you play through the game you unlock Praxis points, which are used to unlock augmentations. Augmentations range from greater accuracy, reduced weapon recoil, stealth, jump higher, resist poisonous gases, EMP grenades and flash grenades to fall from any height upgrades (which is a godsend) and various hacking upgrades. There’s even an option to see through walls. Weapons can be upgraded throughout the game, adding the usual damage and clip size upgrades, laser pointers and silencers, to lock-on systems and explosive rounds.

One of the game’s many trailers shows 3 different ways to play. Stealth, adaptive (hacker) and aggressive. Stealth is pretty much self-explanatory. Don’t be detected. You have to use cover, non-lethal takedowns (or silencers) to get past the guards and security systems. There’s no doubting the game encourages stealth. You get more XP for non-lethal takedowns, and not being detected in the level. Aggressive is my favourite. I try stealth, but ultimately end up failing and come out all guns blazing. Ammo is quite annoying to find in the game, and while aggressive is possible to finish the game it not the best way to play. Adaptive is a nice method as well. Hack into the security hub, turn their toys against them. It’s quite simple really.

The game is fun, that’s for sure. The combination of genres work a charm, but I have two problems with the game. The first, is boss fights. Boss fights in a FPS don’t really work, and require you to pump out most of your hard-won ammunition, regardless of your tactics. The second are the load times, but that’s been fixed in an update.

My Rating

Music: 8 (check out the main theme, Icarus on youtube. It’s brilliant)

Gameplay: 9

Creativity: 7

Graphics: 9

Other: 9

Total: 42/50

Team Fortress 2: A review

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(Now, I have reviewed this game previously, however I spent most of my time explaining the classes than anything, so I split the two posts. The review has new content, too.)

Team fortress 2 has been free on steam for a while now. A few guys I knew through Age of Empires played the game, and I never really had enough motivation (or money) to buy the game, but upon finding out it was free to play I decided to give it a go, after all, I needed a game to take up my time until Age of Empires Online, right? Probably the best decision I’ve ever made.

Team Fortress 2 is a fun and addicting multiplayer game. I don’t know who said it, but it was described as “The most fun you’ll have online.” And they’re damn right. Now, I’m no nooby f2p player, I’ve put in about 150 hours already and have upgraded to premium with a liberty launcher.

Since the game is free to play, you’d expect the premium players to have a massive advantage over free players. You’re wrong. What makes it so good is the weapon balance. Premium players can get weapons easier, through crafting, trading and more frequent weapon drops. Every weapon you find has some advantage or disadvantage, and brings different strategy. As soldier, the direct hit fires faster rockets that do more damage, but have a smaller blast radius, so you have to hit enemies dead on. A scout example is the Force-a-Nature (FaN), which fires faster and knocks back nearby enemies then the default scattergun, but does less damage and has a smaller clip. So while it’s fun knocking people around, you have to pump more lead into people and reload all the time. The balance is pretty decent, and means premium players who have more weapons are still on relatively even ground. Even weapons without a shown disadvantage (the game tells you) still take away from you, by being unable to use a pre-existing weapon in that slot, like removing the shotgun for the Buff Banner (as soldier), and leaving you with only the slow-reloading rocket launcher and your melee weapon.

Which brings me to the health system. Your health doesn’t regenerate, unless you’re a medic. You also have heaps of health, not like other games (ie CoD) where it’s a few shots to kill you. The heavy actually takes ages to bring down as all classes except spy and sniper (a backstab and fully charged headshot is an instant kill for all classes).

There is also a decent amount of strategy in this game. Every class has several different strategies and different weapons also bring different strategies to the game. As an example, the pyro’s main three strategies are holding down w and mouse 1, ambushing people with the flamethrower and running away, and abusing the airblast and knocking people around. With the Backburner, a different flamethrower, a good strategy is to act like a spy, ambushing people from behind because it gives the enemy critical hits from behind. Then there’s the Degreaser (flamethrower) and the Axetinguisher (melee weapon), in which you light people on fire then quickly swap to the axetinguisher to deal out some critical hits. I haven’t even gotten into the flare gun yet. And the you have the different map strategies, team strategies. Man, the possibilities go on and on. You really have to work as a team in all game modes, and the emphasis is more on helping teammates (or assists) rather than getting kills.

The game isn’t entirely serious either. Valve’s quirky sense of humor best explained by the portal games show up throughout, with the characters really showing their… Well, character throughout the game. Some of the sniper’s lines are pretty funny. And then you have taunts, which change depending on your current weapon that show up on your enemy’s killcam (a still of the person who just killed you), or to spam during the setup period. Some taunts also one hit kill people, making for hilarious kills while sitting around the corner waiting for some oblivious player to walk around at just the right time. And when you lose a game, the game goes into humiliation, where the losing team no longer can use weapons and have to avoid the charging winning team. I’ve had a few funny taunt kills as the losing team in humiliation as well.

 

Team Fortress 2 is… Just wow. It’s hard to find the correct words to explain it. And the community support is amazing, with community made maps popping up everywhere. I can hardly fault the game, in fact I can’t at all.

My Rating

Music: 10 (Rocket jump waltz… Says it all)

Gameplay: 10

Creativity: 10

Graphics: 10 (Cartoony but it really works for the game)

Other: 9.5

Total: 49.5/50

Sweet 16

So yeah, I turned 16 yesterday to little fanfare (I didn’t really care, honestly). Besides my teachers slapping on another two assignments to my growing list the day before, I had a good day.

I’ve been really busy with school and other things recently, leaving me with little time to do anything, yet alone blog! I promise I’ll have a few more reviews up and fix the broken tf2 review in which I left out many, many things.

-Shaun

The Classes of Team Fortress 2

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First on the agenda, a little bitch about steam.

I heard that Team Fortress 2 was now free to play about a week or two ago, and decided to give it a go. I know people who play and it looked like a generally fun game, but I’ve never had the money to try. Team Fortress 2 requires you to get steam. No problem there, right? Made a steam account, installed steam, no problem. Then steam started updating. Again, no problem, stuff updates. Then I had to install tf2, all 9 Gigabytes of it.

I’d say it stops responding at least 3-4 times a day. Steam alone updates twice a week, and team fortress 2 has updated 5 times in the last 5 days or so. Now that’s not much of a problem until it tries updating and not responding at the same time. My download limit and patience are getting raped. My computer can certainly handle it too. WHile never getting bugs fixed through no updates can suck, excessively updating really sucks too.

I’d take xfire anyday.

Now, onto team fortress 2. To easily understand the game, it is a first person shooter, consisting of 9 different playable classes, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, and different customisable weapons. Every class has a Valve-made introduction video, except Pyro. Click THIS link to learn more about each class.

The Classes (in order)

Offensive

• Scout. The fastest class, the scout relies on hit and run as it is also one of the weaker (health wise) classes. The scout can pack a punch, captures points 2 times faster than all other classes, but struggles when faced by an engineer’s sentry. The scout’s primary weapon is a scattergun (or other forms of shotguns), which can be swapped out for a scatter-pistol, secondary weapon is a pistol (or various drinks, one of which makes you invincible for a short time but unable to attack, and the melee weapon is a bat (or a bat and ball, the ball makes enemies unable to attack on contact) or fish (I dunno, haven’t unlocked it yet), and even a candy cane. I’m pretty good with the scout. It’s probably one of my better classes. Notable quotes: “Is anyone keeping count of heads I’ve batted in?”
• Soldier. Probably the easiest class to use, but definitely not the weakest. The soldier can be one of the most annoying classes to come up against is played well, however the majority of the soldier’s rocket launchers have a very low projectile speed, so hitting moving targets from a distance can be hard. The soldier is slightly slower than most other classes, but has decent health. Advanced players can rocket jump to great heights, which damages themselves but helps as a shortcut or a distraction (I tried it, but I suicided too much). The soldier’s primary weapon is a rocket launcher, secondary is a shotgun (or a flag that makes everyone around you do mini-crits for a shot time (increases weapon damage), and his melee is a shovel or pickaxe. I’m okay with the soldier. The soldier is best attacking a large group of people and being a pain in the ass to engineers, and I only really use soldier when I’m sucking at scout or pyro. Notable quotes: “I. AM. ON. FIRE!!!!”
• Pyro. The entire idea of the pyro is to flank or surprise people in areas by, well, lighting them on fire with his (her?) flamethrower. When people are on fire they take about 3 damage every second or so (depends on the flamethrower), and can only be put out by jumping in water (water, by the way, pretty much makes a pyro with a flare gun useless), healing or over time (by the time it goes out it’s taken about half your health away). So the pyro can cause fear and confusion amungst the enemy team as they all rush for the closest pool, medic or health kit. The pyro’s flamethrower also has a alternative function, which blasts backs compressed air, but uses up lots more ammo. It’s good for reflecting rockets back a soldiers, clearing out the efforts of demomen, keeping enemies away and throwing them off cliffs and in front of trains (I’ve done that before, hilarious stuff), as well as extinguishing burning teammates. The pyro’s secondary weapon is either a shotgun (which is pretty useless as it is pretty hopeless from long range, and you have the flamethrower for close range) or a flare gun (I really like the flare gun, it ignites players from a range, which partially makes up for the pyro’s complete lack of ranged weapons. The pyro’s melee weapons are a choice of a range of fire axes and sledgehammers. The pyro would have to be my favourite and best class. Besides being able to light people on fire I like to cause confusion with the flamethrower. The pyro’s main two weaknesses are range and, obviously water. The class you’ll want to stay as far away from as possible. Notable quotes: The pyro doesn’t make much sense, due to wearing a gas mask. The most you’ll get out of him/her is “mmmmph”.

Defensive

• Demoman. My least favourite class, the demoman likes explosions. Rocking a grenade launcher and sticky-bomb launcher (which fires sticky bombs that can be remote detonated). The default grenade launcher is pretty hard to use in my opinion, it doesn’t explode on impact and takes too long to reload. I have seen others pull demoman off really well, and with stickybombs can be a real pain in the ass. Due to being able to make explosions, demomen can be a major pain in the ass to engineers, as they can bounce grenades off surfaces to reach sentries. The demoman also carries a bottle or varous swords as a melee weapon (one of which lets you charge at people). The demoman would have to be the class I get the least kills with, but heaps of assists. Notable quotes: “They’re going to have to glue you back together… IN HELL!”
• Heavy. That’s the bug guy with the massive minigun. The heavy has the highest health but slowest movement speed, the heavy has to spin up his minigun before heading into battle. Combined with a medic, the heavy can really be a pain in the ass. Due to his slow movement speed, which slows even more when firing his gun, he is the easiest class to snipe. The heavy is just as good at offense as defense. His secondary is either a shotgun or a health-replenishing sandvich. His melee is his fists, boxing gloves or knuckle dusters. I don’t use the heavy much, I’d rather go medic and help other heavies. Notable quotes: “I am heavy weapons guy, and this is my weapon” and “I hear someone building diaper-dispensing machine” (to engineer).
• Engineer. The ultimate defensive class, the engineer has weak weapons, but can build sentry guns, dispensers (dispenses ammo and health to allies) and teleporters (good for getting allies to the front line). Each item has 3 levels, each costing various amounts of metal, which can be replenished by getting ammo boxes. The sentry would have to be an engineer’s main weapon. With an engineer behind it, repairing it and getting health from a dispenser, most classes have trouble getting through it. An engineer’s worst enemy would be the spy, which can sneak up and disable all his stuff, but an Ubercharged medic or demoman can be just as annoying. In a good position, engineers can often be the most annoying class, especially on maps like dustbowl and 2fort. An engineer carries a shotgun, pistol or wrangler (lets the control a sentry gun), wrench 0r robot arm (adds health but replaces the sentry gun with an unupgradable and unrepairable mini sentry gun). I go engineer mainly on attack/defend maps and occasionally on 2fort if the team has no other engineers. Notable quotes: “If that doesn’t work, build more gun”.

Support

• Medic. The most supporting class, the medic has a gun which heals allies. That’s really all the medic does. Heals. Heals until the medigun is fully charged, which then can release an ubercharge for a short amount of time (makes you and the person you are healing invincible). When the ubercharge is over, the medic heals until it is back again. The medic also gets an assist for every kill the receiver gets. The medic also carries a syringe gun (the projectiles curve in the air) and a saw. I find he medic to be a good class, but it bores me as you really don’t get to do much besides heal. Notable quotes: “Oops! That was not medicine!”
• Sniper. A really annoying class. The sniper, obviously is stronger from a long range, as snipers are. Also very obvious, a headshot with a sniper is also very powerful. The mechanics of sniping in this game are far different from any FPS I’ve ever played. The sniper rifle is 100% accurate with a no-scope, all the time. However, it only does little damage. While you aim down the scope the sniper rifle charges, increasing your weapon damage ovr time. A fully charged headshot will kill all classes, but it really makes sniping more balanced and makes sniper on sniper a really interesting matchup, and makes quickscoping completely useless. Snipers can also swap out their sniper rifle for a bow and arrow, which allows you to get closer to the action. I haven’t really figured out good strategies for the bow and arrow, I’d rather snipe. The sniper’s secondary is a really weak uzi type weapon, a jar of… Well, urine that makes enemies take 32% damage for a short time or a back shield that protects you from spies backstabbing you. The sniper’s melee weapon is a machete. I’d say the sniper is my favourite character, being a stereotypical Aussie. While they do try to lay it on a bit too thickly he can be really funny. Obviously, the sniper’s weakness is close range enemies and spies. I do enjoy using the sniper sometimes, but struggle to get headshots. Notable quotes: “Say goodbye to your head, wanker” and “Your brain isn’t very useful outside your head, is it?”.
• Spy. Quite obviously the sneakiest class, relying on trickery and stealth to get kills. A engineer’s worst enemy and a pyro’s favourite roast dinner, the spy can disguise and pretend to be allied players, before giving you a lethal-to-every-class stab to the back. Attacking removes your disguise, but spies can stealth or fake their own death (depends on the cloak type). Spies can also sap enemy buildings, which destroys them (not immediately). SPies can be seriously annoying, especially when they fake their own death. Spies also carry a magnum pistol. I can use spy, but only in certain situations. I find defending whilst spy can be really good, but attacking I get overwhelmed and end up ultimately failing. Notable quotes: “I never really was on your team.”

According to the game my most used class is Engineer, followed most likely by Scout or Pyro. I’m getting better at Demoman and Soldier with some of their unlockable items.