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.