Team Fortress 2

By Rich Stanton Published 14 July, 2011

Oh Mann.

This re-review is of the PC and Mac version of Team Fortress 2, now available for free. The console versions, included in The Orange Box, have had comparatively few updates and remain closer to the version tested in our original Team Fortress 2 review from 2007.

There isn't one game called Team Fortress 2. There are hundreds. Its famously long development time used to see it compared to Duke Nukem Forever, but that doesn't hold water any more: Duke's finished. The development of TF2 goes on and on: new weapons, new levels, new gametypes, new accessories, new achievements, new features, new hats. All updates are free. And now, so is the game.

A Valve employee once wryly remarked that the company could put $20 in a box, sell it for $10, and people would still find something to criticise. The announcement of TF2's change to a free-to-play model bears that out: a vocal minority seem to think this is a great insult to TF2's previous purchasers, while an even smaller minority have set up servers dedicated to kicking out free players. Next to the size and beauty of Team Fortress 2, that is laughable behaviour.

Four years is a long time in videogames, but Team Fortress 2 is as fresh as its day of release. That time has seen other attempts to capture its class-based crown, the most recent example being Brink, but nothing has come close. What was an outstanding game at release has been bulked up and expanded so much that the sheer quantity of content is bewildering - how many other FPS games sell stamps that directly support their community creators?

Since release, there have been over 200 updates for the game, 29 new maps, and numerous new pieces of equipment across the nine classes. And that's just the stuff Valve has made. Covering it all would be a fool's errand, but there are focal points: the new weapons for each character, the accumulation of modes and levels, the trading system, and the 'Mannconomy' of in-game purchases.

1

After each death you can look into the eyes of your killer.

The alternative weapons and kit for each class are the most substantive changes. Demoman, an alcoholic Scotsman, has always seemed the natural class for me - call it empathy. His standard set-up is a versatile mix of explosive grenades, tactical sticky bombs and a bottle of scrumpy in case anyone gets too close. His alternative setup lets you forego all of that cissy ranged nonsense and play as a full-on melee class - the Demo Knight.

Equipped with Ali Baba's Wee Booties, the Chargin' Targe shield and the Eyelander sword, we are doom. This set-up lets you charge into packs of enemies with a blood-curdling scream, dealing a crit to anyone in your path, and start swinging wildly; every time the Eyelander kills, it decapitates, and each head means more health and speed for you.

Hit a pack of enemies and it's mental. Do it with a medic in tow and things can just seem unfair. Lop off the head of your nemesis and an achievement will pop up: There Can Be Only One. Venture into the open, and kiss your wee booties goodbye. Giving with one hand, taking with another.

The Spy's got a new watch, the Dead Ringer - equip it and run at a group of enemies. When they shoot they'll see a fake corpse fall while you turn invisible and run behind their position with the Eternal Reward, a knife that transforms you into whomever you've just backstabbed. What happens next should be obvious, and lovely.

As well as kit that changes how a class is played, there's plenty to tweak the default load-outs: you can give your Engineer a faster-building mini sentry gun if you forgo the ability to upgrade it. As a Medic, you can choose a Medi-Gun that makes you and your target invulnerable during ubercharge, or one that gives your target invulnerability and critical hits.

Such a kaleidoscope of weapons, abilities and buffs is overwhelming, and there will always be the hipsters insisting that vanilla Team Fortress 2 is superior to its current form. If you agree, there are servers for that. But next to this much fun, such po-faced solemnity seems lunatic. Is it balanced? Who can say. Nothing feels unfair - and considering the bullets, baseballs, darts, arrows, rockets, bottles of piss and numerous other tools you'll face, that's saying an awful lot.

But no matter the class or load-out, Team Fortress 2's standout quality is the way it makes you use it. It's the one team-based game that feels team-based in every single match, because everyone has to play to their strengths. Even in the best of TF2's competitors, such as Battlefield, a medic can still have a submachine gun in his back pocket and get a killstreak. TF2's medics are too busy healing.

A lot of stuff we assume is ubiquitous in shooters - grenades, assault rifles, recharging health, straight-up deathmatch - just isn't here. Team Fortress 2 doesn't use the genre's crutches. It absorbs and transforms the best of its inspirations: the original Team Fortress was a Quake mod, and what are the Scout and the Soldier but aspects of Quake turned into entire classes?

Beyond its fundamentals, Team Fortress 2 is an aesthetic achievement that looks more towering with each passing year: it still looks better, and is clearer in-game, than every other shooter. At the time, Tom said: "Other FPS developers: copy this immediately." No-one has.

2

Set-up is all about getting a lovely ubercharge - it's amazing how many teams run straight at the invincible Heavy.

It combines this with irresistible characterisations that are funny in isolation - the 'Meet the Team' videos, the in-game manual belonging to the Engineer - but funnier in the thick of things, when the classes let rip with their brilliant, endless one liners. There are so many details to admire, practical and otherwise. The composition of your team being on-screen while choosing a respawn class. The zoomed-in snap of your killer. Taunts that can kill.

Best of all is the 'ding' sound effect. It can be turned on in the options: every time you hit an enemy, ding! It changes your game utterly. I never used to blanket-bomb chokepoints with the Demoman, but with dings turned on I realised it created symphonies. The Heavy's optimum range is clear as bells. And for the Pyro, it's a manic alarm bell while someone roasts.

The free-to-play model doesn't change much for Team Fortress 2. Being an existing owner, I set up a new Steam account to try out the service from the perspective of a scabby freeloader. It's hard not to do a double-take when everything works - TF2 for free! It's not even fair to call it a bargain. This is an incredible gift.

Playing free has no in-game handicaps: all of the classes and their vanilla load-outs are unlocked, and new items are randomly found at the rate of one every hour or so. But before we get the bunting out, there is one problem: if your account hasn't purchased anything through Steam, you're not allowed to have a friends list. There are items on the store for as little as 49p, but the minimum amount you can deposit to pay for that is £4. A friends list isn't optional if you're going to put any time into Team Fortress 2, and fencing it off for total newbies seems uncharacteristically mean.

One more thing that stands out, mainly because the remainder is so polished, is TF2's recent addition of matchmaking from the title screen. Basically, it very rarely works and more often than not freezes up. The main way of finding a game in TF2 has always been picking servers, and this works flawlessly, so it seems odd to have an ostensibly easier route that often doesn't work.

As for the in-game shop, yes, I have bought some weapons. And accessories. And maybe a fedora. But that's it. There are random item drops that gradually award most of the usable weapons, but in truth the amount of time you'd have to grind to bag a specific item seems excessive - and there are long stretches where you can't score a drop for love nor money. But is that a problem?

You could argue that drops should reflect the class you're playing, occur more frequently, or crafting should require fewer raw materials. To do so misses the point that these items, especially the crates that can't be opened without paying, are teases. You take your chances or you pay up, and if you pay up then the game's that little bit more fun. Since when was paying for fun a bad thing?

3

You could spend the American military budget on the next Call of Duty and it wouldn't ever look this good.

Finally, there couldn't be a re-review without a word for Team Fortress 2's players. Perhaps it's the way the game forces you to play as a team, or the comedy of its violence, but the atmosphere in almost every TF2 game is welcoming. In one match, a random player turned up, opened a bunch of crates for everyone through trading back and forth, and then left with a cheery salutation.

In another, a Medic healing my Heavy asked to reverse the roles, then showed me how to move, where was best to stand on this level, and we switched back. At the end of the game he gifted me a pair of boxing gloves. You can mock hats all you want: from here, TF2's community looks extraordinarily civilized.

Team Fortress 2 is the purest embodiment of Valve's philosophy: listening to their audience, always updating, and forever over-delivering. It's also the best argument for Steam as a platform ever made: with an average of one update a fortnight it has expanded and changed so much, yet like its celebrated silhouettes, still stands out, utterly familiar. It understands that persistence is as much about personality as power, and is one of the most consistently surprising and inventive games you'll ever play. And at the risk of sounding like the press office, you can play it forever for free. Once again, Valve has outdone itself.

10 / 10

Picture of Rich.

About Rich Stanton

Rich Stanton has been writing for Eurogamer since 2011, and also contributes to places like Edge, Nintendo Gamer, and PC Gamer. He lives in Bath, and is Terran for life.

Read more articles from Rich by visiting the Rich Stanton archive page.

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Comments (79) Latest comment 9 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • mcmonkeyplc #1 11 months ago

    Well duh, it's been 10/10 for ages.

    :)

  • StolenGlory #2 11 months ago

    Get this.

    Fuck CoD.

  • mrblonde #3 11 months ago

    Shame the online died on console as it was imo one of the best MP titles on 360 for many years. Pity it wasnt re -released on xbox arcade or PSN(if the ps3 can now handle it) .

  • MrFlump #4 11 months ago

    This is one of the few FPS games that i do find myself coming back to again and again to play having never really got into Counter Strike. The style, the gameplay and the quality of the game are just spot-on and was well worth paying for and now its free, its even better value.

  • superfurry #5 11 months ago

    It's the best Hat-Based MMO on the market today.

  • HSH25 #6 11 months ago

    Granted I haven't played it in ages and I know its had a lot of additions over the years...but I never liked the game and I don't understand what people see in it.

    Call me crazy, but personally I'd rather play Brink.

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #7 11 months ago

    Pity it wasnt re -released on xbox arcade or PSN(if the ps3 can now handle it) .

    Hear ye, hear ye - make enough noise and who knows?

  • mrblonde #8 11 months ago

    ^it was a joke sir

  • estel #9 11 months ago

    What I always find incredible about TF2 is how consistently fun it is to play. It doesn't require me doing extraordinarily well individually, but a quick bout of TF2 will without fail entertain, humour and engage me. No other game has come close to being as persistently incredible as TF2.

  • LockeTribal #10 11 months ago

    Spot on review. Going F2P has really given the player base a shot in the arm too. Great, great game.

  • faux_carnation #11 11 months ago


    Multiplay :: EUROGAMER VANILLA TF2 MADNESS
    85.236.100.22:27715

  • Xardan #12 11 months ago

    Great a re-reveiw of a game that was released 4 or 5 years ago. And apparently the best multiplayer game on PC today. What is the gaming industry doing?

  • rogueJT #13 11 months ago

    only bad thing is when some enemy spy for some reason decides to single you out and just backstabs you every time.

  • butler` #14 11 months ago

    What is the gaming industry doing?

    playing WoW

  • figgis #15 11 months ago

    The Eurogamer server and steam group are worth joining.

  • arcam #16 11 months ago

    Great a re-reveiw of a game that was released 4 or 5 years ago. And apparently the best multiplayer game on PC today. What is the gaming industry doing?

    4-5 years isn't that long a time for a PC multiplayer game. Many great MP experiences were/are dominant for at least that long - Quake, Counter-Strike, Unreal, Starcraft, BF2, Warcraft, DoA etc.

  • dsmx #17 11 months ago

    The gaming industry is utterly fixated on trying to be COD.

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #18 11 months ago

    This is THE BEST multiplayer FPS out at the moment (and has been since launch). The fact that you can play it for free now makes that achievement even more amazing.

    Download it, give it a go, give it a few more goes, and fall in love.

  • VashNL #19 11 months ago

    I agree with Estel. Even the moments where you get dominated by six persons at one time (I was goofing of as both spy and scout :p) and they start to bluff never seem to get to me. When suddenly the roles are reversed, I dominate them, it's still all a jest to most players.

    Sure, there are some who start to troll, or call people names, but on a good server the most mature players call that person out or just kick him off lest he behaves.

    I recently started playing again, after I haven't done so for more than a year, and I really like all the changes. Granted, I have a lot of boxes unopened, but I am thinking about opening maybe one of them. I've even done a bit if crafting, well, tearing items apart, and I am curious as to what I can create in the future.

    And of course, I 'm also curious to what Valve can create in the future of Team Fortress 2.

  • oceanmotion #20 11 months ago

    Great game but really didn't need all the extra crap like Hats and the Mann Co store. Kinda ruined it.

    As long as you can find servers with reasonably vanilla settings then it's ace.
    Edited by oceanmotion at 14/07/11 @ 14:40

  • rowsdower #21 11 months ago

    "Beyond its fundamentals, Team Fortress 2 is an aesthetic achievement that looks more towering with each passing year: it still looks better, and is clearer in-game, than every other shooter. At the time, Tom said: "Other FPS developers: copy this immediately." No-one has."

    Erm... Monday Night Combat? Not an FPS, sure, but it's a team and objective-based online multiplayer shooter too.
    Edited by rowsdower at 14/07/11 @ 14:38

  • bf #22 11 months ago

    It's still reasonably fun but after the random drops and the store the magic from the early days is gone. Even the latest Meet the Medic movie isn't really all that fun either.

  • berelain #23 11 months ago

    I just couldn't get into Team Fortress 2. Sort of wish I could, as I do love class-based multiplayer games, but TF2 just doesn't do it for me and I can't work out why.

  • roz123 #24 11 months ago

    I spent about a year just playing 2Fort when it first came out because I loved that level on TFC. Then the updates really started and I explored it. I have got hundreds of hours on this and often I will find myself stumbling upon new levels, new modes and new ideas that I have never seen before.
    Its perfectly balanced, never have I thought a character was overpowered or weak and this all whilst there has been a constant stream of new weapons that could easily fuck things up.
    Truly a great game

  • menschenfracht #25 11 months ago

    what, a TF2 thread without Heavy?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKTIfXTd32M

  • MikkyX #26 11 months ago

    Shoulda been a 10 to begin with. Good on EG for correcting this horrendous error, albeit nearly four years later!

  • jablonski #27 11 months ago

    Is there a free-to-play mac version?

  • Esnedon #28 11 months ago

    Great game but really didn't need all the extra crap like Hats and the Mann Co store. Kinda ruined it.

    As long as you can find servers with reasonably vanilla settings then it's ace.

    Then just ignore it. Let them run around in their fancy hats. If you're letting it get to you, then you've got a problem, not the game.
    Edited by Esnedon at 15/07/11 @ 04:12

  • bigbadbeasty #29 11 months ago

    @roz123

    Bravo for still wanting to play TF2 after only playing 2Fort! :p

  • mouse Verified Graphic designer, Eurogamer Network #30 11 months ago

    Is there a free-to-play mac version?

    Yes. It's exactly the same as the PC version.

  • roz123 #31 11 months ago

    @jablonski. As far as I am aware the mac version is free. I think you even get a set of ipod headphones for your characters to wear.

  • Oli Verified Reviews Editor, Eurogamer.net #32 11 months ago

    @jablonski - yes, it's for Mac too. I'll tag the review as such.

  • anthonypappa #33 11 months ago

    never played this, but wish counter strike would come to console.

    everytime i play on pc i get smoked instantaneously.

  • jablonski #34 11 months ago

    Thanks to mouse, roz123 and Oli

  • geeza2020 #35 11 months ago

    Its a shame it wasnt this well supported on the consoles. Every time over the last couple of years I've chucked the Orange Box into my 360 theres been absolutely nobody playing and it just cant find any games. I guess MS would've made absolutely everything 560 MS points to download though, just like they did with the terrible L4D 1&2 DLC (well, not terrible in themselves, just terrible value for money).

    And one more thing, what the article says about a medic in battlefield getting killstreaks, there are no killstreak rewards in BF thank fuck. And if you're playing a serious team and your medics arent healing, then you WILL lose.

  • motorwrists #36 11 months ago

    Great to see this re-reviewed. Been playing since the Beta and it's still consistently the most fun online FPS ever created even with the Hats, Demopans, Dead ringer spys and back blasting pyros (even on 2fort). Quick mention for Simian Cage servers and the great community there :D

  • Tyronne #37 11 months ago

    I want my `I`ve seen the re-review on Eurogamer, but all I got was this hat` hat.

  • Lunatic4ever #38 11 months ago

    bought it half a year ago, just couldnt compete with Bad Company 2.
    I don't know what it is but it just doesnt give me the knecessary kick
    when I kill an enemy. Halo and BC2 make it feel much more satisfiying.
    Hard to explain actually.

  • magicpanda #39 11 months ago

    It's simply one of the best games ever made.

    We have a 24/7 Eurogamer server set up as Faux has pointed out.

    Server Name: Multiplay :: EUROGAMER VANILLA TF2 MADNESS
    Server IP: 85.236.100.22:27715

    Usually picks up in the evenings about 7-8pm and is packed till midnight. Come fight us! Men vs you Tiny Baby Men!

  • rogueJT #40 11 months ago

    Hi, nub question.

    How do I get onto the eurogamer server?

    Thanks.

    I entered the IP address and then the "eurogamer" into the tags search box btu nothing came up.

  • Xabarin #41 11 months ago

    I've been playing this game regularly for more hour that I can care to count since the Orange Box was released and, even so, as I was reading more and more of this re-review my inner self was screaming "yes... yesss.... FUCK YEAHHH!!! I NEED TO PLAY TF2 RIGHT NOW!!!!!!"

    I love this game. Truly a 10/10.

  • magicpanda #42 11 months ago

    Go to favourite servers tab, add a server and just stick the IP address in. Job done :)

  • Kano-11 #43 11 months ago

    All i have to say to anybody who doesn't own the Orange Box - is buy it right now! It's honestly the best deal in the history of deals, ever.
    You get TF2, All of the Half life 2 saga and Portal for, how much? Under £10.

    Valve are God's

  • MetalDog #44 11 months ago

    I love TF2 and the TF2 team with the heat of a thousand suns.

  • Razzajazz #45 11 months ago

    Oh mate, I had no idea EG had a server going, I will see you chaps and chapettes later on, look out for my scout!

    And yeah, the drops are a little annoying, in that you are limited to 11 a week I think it is, no matter how many hours you put in. But no doubt, this game is what the 10/10 score was made for.

  • mrblonde #46 11 months ago

    @kano played orange box on release and was amazed at the value , even though GStation were charging £40 for a used copy.
    But if i went back to it now im sure HL2 especially, would look horribly dated for someone to keep pushing through their campaigns.
    They are over 6 years old now i guess but worth a £10 for portal alone, no chance finding a TF2 lobby on 360 though a shame.

  • PopishFrenzy #47 11 months ago

    Excellent re-review but i do think the many changes made to game and class balance are often overlooked and are an important part of why the game is so much better 4 years on. The spy, pyro and engie used to be especially weak and tedious classes and in particular have benefited. Here follows a quick an nerdy list:

    Spy can refill cloak, has a properly working disguise, can switch disguise weapon, can use enemy teles, can see enemy names and hp
    Pyros can airblast, extinguish teammates
    Engies can move their buildings, can upgrade their teles and dispensers
    Stickies can be destroyed with bullet
    Heavies can throw sandvich
    Intel and cart can be seen through walls
    Soldiers take full damage from own rockets (veeery old change)
    Game a great deal less spammy as soldiers and demos can carry less ammo

  • Arcadiian #48 11 months ago

    Game of this gen for me. Even the 360 version. Wish it was possible to update that. D:

  • Buran #49 11 months ago

    Never liked it. I'm unable to play this game even now that is free. A a teamwork game, it paled against BF2 and Quake Wars in the day, and as arcadey shooter, is way behind the UT and Quake league.

  • Bloobat #50 11 months ago

    I downloaded this but i can never find any useful players to show me exactly what to do :( , i do use the matchmaking though so that is probably the problem...

  • Seehuusen #51 11 months ago

    I guess im one of the few that hated the new version then....Played the old versions lots and lots but now that it's free, it is tormented with hackers, unbalanced new items and little kids screeming into their mics....Im so sad...

  • Vortex808 #52 11 months ago

    One of my favourite games of all time.

    Where's this fabled 360 update though, eh Valve?

    /still bitter

  • magicpanda #53 11 months ago

    @Seehuusen

    I'm sorry but the hacker thing is rubbish in my experience. I've seen 1 or 2 hackers since it's release in 2007. Screaming kids are rare and just aren't an issue if you play on a decent server.

  • Ged42 #54 11 months ago

    ka- BOOOOOOMM

    /shows his smile.

  • thomaspower0 #55 10 months ago

    I love Valve anyway. Play a Valve game and you realise you wasted some serious time on CoD and stuff.

  • Varsity #56 10 months ago

    "A friends list isn't optional if you're going to put any time into Team Fortress 2, and fencing it off for total newbies seems uncharacteristically mean."

    Spammers, phishers, etc.

  • peeps #57 10 months ago

    Totally agree. Although I've been playing TF2 since maybe a year after it's launch on PC it's more of a game that I go back to when I'm in the mood, and when I do go back to it there are always new things that I didn't have to pay a single thing for.

    The gameplay is top notch but overall what's really special about this game is it truly feels like a game for gamers

  • ajaxpliskin #58 10 months ago

    I've owned this game for several years, but I just don't enjoy it. I loved Team Fortress for Quake, and Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life. Maybe I played it too much earlier in my life. Meh.

    Don't neg my comment down fanboys, it's just an opinion!

  • rottingyoda #59 10 months ago

    TF2 is great but its not...CLASSIC

    jesus i make a joke about team fortress classic and get negged. Tough crowd
    Edited by rottingyoda at 15/07/11 @ 14:53

  • JamieR #60 10 months ago

    Still overated then.. a game where the developers didn't bother making a single player campain gets 10 / 10 this game offers the same thing another 100 games offer.

  • Bloodloss #61 10 months ago

    It's a good game and I play it regularly currently but in my opinion, it is the most imbalanced FPS in existence. I have absolutely no idea how anyone who's witnessed a heavy using a tomislav and dominating everyone on the server, being the sole reason why that team is winning, can call the game 'perfectly balanced.'

    "Is it balanced? Who can say. Nothing feels unfair"

    You're jesting, surely? Or have you never been instantly killed upon turning a corner by a sniper endlessly spamming with the Huntsman (popularly known as the Lucksman, for good reason), never been crit rocketed and killed instantly (this is the very definition of unfair. Yes you may get crits as well, and when you do, it'll be unfair for your opponent as well. Let's not even get into the fact that crits benefit classes like soldier far more than others - a scout needs two crits to kill a soldier, a soldier needs one HIT to kill a scout with the direct hit), never been one shotted by weapons that just utterly veto your existence if you play a class with low HP despite how you need pinpoint accuracy to do well against others and they just need to spam in your general direction, etc, etc - I could go on all day.

    That said, it's still a very good game, just not a balanced one. I personally believe that Valve intentionally make the game imbalanced in order to make it easier for people who are new to the game to do well, as can be seen with the Heavy class where they had a ludicrously overpowered weapon for him called the Natascha that made it impossible to escape.. it took many months for it to finally be fixed, and then soon after what do they do? Add the aforementioned Tomislav weapon for the heavy, making the problem even worse than it once was. I utterly disagree with this philosophy, but that's just me.
    Edited by Bloodloss at 15/07/11 @ 00:36

  • dsmx #62 10 months ago

    The idea of crits though is that it replaces grenades but crockets need to die, 250 damage for a critical vs 25 for a standard the difference is insane.

  • menschenfracht #63 10 months ago

    @Bloodloss
    there are plenty of servers with nocrits and on many others there is a vote on crits.
    Thing is, TF2 isn't exactly clan shooter. It doesn't work as a 5x5 'pro game', it is what is written on the case - team game.
    It means that you can't play as 12 Heavies with Tomislav and dominate everything - it simply won't work.

    my point is that the core of the game is pretty balanced, and Tomislav issues will be ruled out in a matter of weeks (it has already been nerfed a bit since its release)

  • B1G_D #64 10 months ago

    Oh yes! The best money I have ever spent on a game..... er hang on.
    Thought the cartoony style would work against it (an old TFC clan member here) but it works superbly. See you on 2fort!

  • sickpuppysoftware #65 10 months ago

    I've owned the orange box since launch and I still haven't played this. Spent far too long on HL2 and Portal and then thought everybody else would be far too ahead for me to catch up and then got fed up of PC gaming (apart from indie titles)

    I really should give this a try.

  • FireMonkey #66 10 months ago

    For some reason I didn't enjoy playing TF2 when it first came out. Tried it for a few months, but just got fed up.
    HOWEVER, with all the changes I do wonder if I would enjoy it more now?

    The only problem is that this re-review is written from the viewpoint of someone who already plays TF2 and has seen each update as it happens. What I would like to see is a review from someone who doesn't play it and see what they think as they would not have seen each update but would have a completely new experience (and perhaps someone who didn't like it to see how their opinion has changed) and surely that is who the reviews should be for as people who already play the game don't need to be told how good / bad it is.

    To me the a review of the changes of a game by someone who is already a fan of the game seems a little biased.
    Edited by FireMonkey at 15/07/11 @ 09:32

  • levitate #67 10 months ago

    Whoa, didn't see that one coming tbf. Wow, a full tenner? I'm so getting this tonight!

  • Shagsmith #68 10 months ago

    The one multiplayer game where I can play absolute dogshit, get battered and hardly register a kill, but still be loving every second of it.

  • AVisualEpiphany #69 10 months ago

    Joined the EG server for the first time last night...stuck straight on a team of snipers. 1 Heavy, 1 Eng, myself as Pyro and THE REST of the team were (poor) snipers.
    Was this an unfortunate one-off? (Please say yes)
    Oh, and this was on a payload map...we were escorting/attacking

  • Neut #70 10 months ago

    "Thing is, TF2 isn't exactly clan shooter. It doesn't work as a 5x5 'pro game', it is what is written on the case - team game."

    6v6 TF2 tourneys say hi.

  • Chrasomatic #71 10 months ago

    I bought both the 360 version and the Steam version (once it became apparent that Valve had no intention of updating the 360 version) but I gotta tell you the 360 version still gets players at least here in Australia and Japan (in the same time zone). And I've had no trouble finding games during the day (nighttime in Europe).

    If you can't find any games just keep hitting search - the console server browser only shows games that aren't full.

    Both versions (Steam and console vanilla) are great and now offer very different experiences. Just wish valve would do a map pack with payload for the consoles, that way some of the creative map makers could make some dough (just like the weapon makers) because pretty much everyone who regularly plays TF2 on Xbox would probably fork out for extra maps

  • TheEnforcer000 #72 10 months ago

    Not a fan. Although I liked counter strike.

  • TheEnforcer000 #73 10 months ago

    Not a fan. Although I liked counter strike.

  • gelf #74 10 months ago

    I'm shit at multiplayer FPSs and yes I'm shit at this too, but it stands out like a beacon amongst a sludge of dull grey shooters. I want more games with expressive cartoony characters and bright colours like this.

  • DrStrangelove #75 10 months ago

    I absolutely love the style of this game, and it's brilliantly made. I wish others would adopt these clear gameplay-focused visuals.

    Sadly, I can't really get into these class-based team games. Teamplay is not for me, I guess, I prefer deathmatch by a mile. Even as a Counter-Strike veteran, I ended up playing only Gungame Deathmatch. So much more fun than the main game.

  • ShiroBen #76 10 months ago

    I don't play online games, but if I did, I'd play Team Fortress 2.

  • Mister-Wario #77 10 months ago

    I remember buying this as part of The Orange Box. Like Valve's other games, it near-flawlessly marries gameplay atmosphere and humour. If you have a half-decent PC, give it a try, I implore you.

  • GldnSldr #78 9 months ago

    I agree for the most part. I've been playing since it was released (or TFC if that counts for anything) and during those few years before it was released I was really hoping they wouldn't go for the ultra-hyper-realistic shooter that they initially thought of doing.
    I do have to be that person that points out the article was incorrect about the invulnerability+crits, it's only one or the other.
    I did have my qualms on some of the things they've added over the years like the pyro's backblast, not that they added it but that anything it repels seems to be a little too good at finding its way back to its target even if they have long moved from the original place of firing it, and magically returns as a crit. And Demoknights, but that one's just a personal opinion. Nothing that I can't live with and I'm sure everyone has that one thing about the game that's annoying.
    I'm also surprised you didn't mention the more recently added strange weapons, the incentive to buying keys to open crates.

  • Azazel #79 9 months ago

    TF2 - Game of the 00's?