Team Fortress 2 Review
King of the castle.
Version tested: PC
Thanks to failing eyesight (thanks, Suicide Girls) and this newfangled obsession with making everything look gritty, online FPS games are harder for me than ever. Half the time I can't pick people out from the environment until it's too late. Even in Counter-Strike, which is clearer than most, I often get popped in the head by a distant Colt and then have to cycle the chase-cameras to work out who killed me and from where.
So it's important to start this review by jumping up and down waving excitedly about Team Fortress 2's brilliant graphics: not only is everything extremely clear and intuitive, with character classes that you can easily distinguish at distance, but when you get killed the game crash-zooms to and freeze-frames your killer, so you can immediately identify who, why, how and where. Other FPS developers: copy this immediately.
Making a complicated team-based online FPS like Team Fortress into an accessible experience was obviously one of Valve's objectives. Each map comes with a short video that tells you about the game-type and goals; all the level architecture is distinct when you move between sections, with big sign-posts telling you which capture-point or area you're heading to; and all the weapons and abilities are really intuitive, like the Medic's healing gun, which fires health into your target and illustrates this by pumping little red crosses along the stream.

One of the most important things about any FPS is its gibs. TF2's are like a sort of splattery ketchup, rather than syrup. Delicious.
Thankfully that doesn't mean TF has been dumbed down. There are nine classes, and, while several are easy to pick up, getting the most out of each will take hours of experimentation and intuition. The Spy, for example, perfectly captures the sense of the name. Armed with a flick-knife and the ability to disguise himself as the enemy, the Spy can infiltrate enemy bases and even make himself invisible. But he's fragile, and you can uncloak him by shooting or brushing against him. And while his flick-knife kills with one hit, it only does so from behind, and using it gives up his position.
Along with the Medic, Heavy Weapons Guy, Scout, Pyro, Sniper, Demo Man, Engineer and rocket-jumping Soldier, that makes nine classes, which you can pick from before each respawn. Your team's objective, depending on the map, may be to run the enemy off control-points or defend them, to capture and hold them in a tug of war, or simply to race into the enemy base and nick a briefcase of intelligence (so, CTF).

By remaining zoomed in for a few seconds, the power of the sniper's shot increases.
Again though, TF is accessible without feeling slight, and the key to that isn't the six maps, or the game-types, but those nine classes. Individually each has a trio of weapons and various specific attributes, like an amount of health and movement characteristics that are relative to the character's stature, as well as the occasional special ability.
Some classes, like the Soldier and the minigun-toting Heavy Weapons Guy, are easy to pick up and easy to integrate into a team with which you're not familiar. Slightly more skilled players, or those with TF experience, will happily slot into less glamorous or obvious roles like the Engineer, Demo Man or Pyro. The latter's flamethrower is great over short distances, but won't finish enemies off quickly, so you mousewheel to the shotgun for a killing blow, while the Demo Man is a mixture of high-impact projectiles and remote-detonation mine-launching, giving it offensive and defensive flexibility.

Respawns aren't instant, but the downtime is a good opportunity to survey the action through chase-cams and decide whether to change class.
The Engineer also has that flexibility. As a support unit, the ammo- and health-dispensing stations it produces are great for maintaining forward positions, while the teleports it can set up help reinforce them. But these things are also important in defence, along with the all-powerful sentry guns, which completely disrupt an attacking team's momentum until they're cleared.
Engineers are particularly susceptible to Spies, though, because they're often kneeling down and working on something. And Spies are drawn to their location, because Spies can also undo entrenched sentry guns, sabotaging them at the potential cost of exposure. That relationship is typical. Each class is a cunning set of contradictions. It's not so much rock, paper, scissors as rock, paper, scissors, flick-knife, fire, sentry-gun, mini-gun, sniper rifle, double-jump, bone-saw.
Figuring out how best to fight for your team in the role you've chosen is very intuitive, but so is figuring out how to support your team, and it's all important work - the Medic, for example, is one of the easiest classes to play as in the game, but also the most important in the right hands. His "medi-gun" is useful for healing team-mates in advanced positions, but the other element of it is the ability to build up "uber-charge". This involves lots of healing and staying alive, and allows the Medic to unleash ten seconds of invulnerability for him and his target comrade. Medic-and-Heavy combinations are great for holding down capture-points, or assaulting them in more claustrophobic settings, while other combinations yield other benefits.
In contrast with other, less accessible team-based FPS games, TF2's clever concoction of classes, artistic choices and relationship trackers help you establish effective attack and defence routines almost without the need for voice communication (although it, and finger-bending voice-command menus, are present). The good thing about that instinctive adaptation is that it allows you to slot onto public servers without feeling self-conscious, but the further you progress the more likely you are to experiment with tougher classes, and the more strategic depth you uncover. The victor, in every situation, is simply the team who adapted best first. Where we perhaps expected baffling complexity, instead we've got a game that rewards mental agility, but doesn't struggle to cultivate it.

Visually there are all sorts of effects to enjoy. As the Heavy builds up killing momentum, his grin broadens until he's laughing maniacally.
In a team-based FPS - especially one that plays at such a fast pace, where death can be frequent - that's potent. The best difference between Counter-Strike and TF2, for instance, is that failure in TF2 is often immediately instructive, and a successful tactic or an unrivalled twitch-killer are never the panacea they are in on the fields of Dust or Militia. After all, what good is the best Sniper in the world if, in sudden-death overtime, he misses the fact that his comrade on the balcony is actually a cigarette-chomping super-Spy preparing to slit his throat?
The game also does a lovely job of framing your relationship with other players and nurturing them. If someone is dominating you, the game says so, and revenge is sweeter. The scoring system, of course, helps reflect this - if someone is dominating you, they get more points for continuing to do so. Valve also includes a range of Achievements (which we witnessed on both PC and 360), that - rather like celebrated Geometry Wars 360 achievement "Pacifism" - push you in the direction of new ideas as much as they celebrate or laugh along with your accomplishments.

Each character also has a range of taunts - one per weapon. The Medic plays his bonesaw like a violin.
It is a game where even a day's worth of play could fill a website's worth of anecdotes. Standing at the top of a tower trying to avoid Demo Man rounds while Heavies mount the stairs and Spies attempt to get behind you is a science-fiction Helm's Deep. And as with another of the Orange Box games, Portal, Valve's ability to teach players without over-encumbering them, or even without giving away that they are doing so, in no way diminishes the game's long-term appeal or its bounteous variety.
As an aside, there are certain things about any multiplayer FPS game that ultimately prove critical to its acceptance that no review scenario is ever likely to convey, and it would be churlish not to recognise these in the text: we had minimal exposure to the server-side control of the game, and our experiences were limited to LAN play. We believe that the developer's pre-release period of beta-testing, its capacity to make CS work long-term, and its history of offering free and feedback-based support should mitigate potential problems, but we thought we'd mention it.

The Scout's best for retrieving the briefcase in 2fort. Providing there isn't a sentry-gun in the corner.
Looking beyond release, TF2 will get more maps (for free), but even the initial six will struggle to wane thanks to sheer gameplay density. TF2's been in development since B*Witched were top of the pops, and the result is a game that should scale to the needs of everyone from the clumsiest neophyte to the staunchest supporter.
In an uncharacteristic burst of intelligent observation, the game's Wikipedia entry remarks that the old design of TF2 is "quite possibly the only game to have spawned a thriving sub-genre without ever being released itself". For the people who make up that sub-genre, as well as those addressing it afresh, we're confident the reaction will be "ten years well spent".
9 / 10
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Comments (138) Latest comment 4 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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magical words
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EDIT Suicide Girls are nasty.
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Nice, I was hoping some of the facial animations would make it into the game.
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Each classes has several. Under certain circumstances (sorry, haven't got my notes in front of me), even more amusing ones manifest themselves. Robin Walker (lead chap on TF2) was telling me that the Valve guys themselves were still discovering new ones after months of playtesting.
Plus of course there are still 6 more character videos to be released. Woot!
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(on steam that is not 360)
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It's supposed to be *now*. That's why we had to hold off the review.
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Have fun, beta-people.
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I saw less of it on 360, but if our experience of Portal and EpTwo is anything to go by, it's pretty much identical. The only difference I remember is supported players - 16 on 360, 24 on PC. I don't *think* I'm breaking the Portal/EpTwo embargo if I point out that they run brilliantly on 360!
I probably am though. Keep it to yourself.
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I have the same problem about not being able to see people in FPS', spending half my time whirling around firing at anything trying to work out exactly who is draining my health so quickly. With the good graphics, hopefully nice and bright i won't have this problem anymore. Actually come to think of it maybe i am just sh!t at this type of game. Back to being the servers whipping boy
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Now just to finish pre-loading TF2...
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I'm still trying to finish TFC!
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Sounds like the "Kill-Cam" from Call Of Duty.
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There must be some flaw you can point out to justify it losing 10%
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Eurogamer has an unspoken but nonetheless clear agenda of rewarding innovation, and a game has to be not only a pinnacle, but a pretty damn astonishing pinnacle, for it to achieve a ten by simply doing old things exceptionally well.
Maybe TF2 wasn't quite the pinnacle...
Makes you wonder how they'll score Halo3. The crushing weight of hype and expectation will make awarding anything less than a 10 an incendiary thing to do.
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Then I realised I've already got Bioshock and my Orange Box pre-order is waiting on Steam already, so its not like a 9 or 10 made a lick of difference to me... and I deleted it all :-D
Engineer, here I come!! I just wish they still had Insta-kill EMP grenades
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And is it any doubt Valve would make this game good? Only problem, 9 years and 6 maps! Damn Valve!
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Please send flowers.
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Canny timing, releasing it for review just before the beta
I guess all these scores will take the wind out of any trolling. Wish I could afford to get it for both the PC and 360, just so I could get in on the beta...
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Are the pipes green or yellow?
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CoD 4 - goes one better and actually shows, from a camera fixzed to show everyone in the fire fight, who killed you and from the display of pre-action death you can work out if it was you being crap of them being brilliant or just a lucky shot.
So on the end of that, with regards CoD 4, other FPS developers: copy this immediately.
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On COD4, I keep twitch-killing bits of litter flying around - giving away my position and, inevitably, leading to death.
TF2 sounds much more my cup of machine gun spraying, blood spattering tea.
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With TF2 out, there's only DNF left lurking in the bushes.
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hurry up and download!!
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Fixed blasphemous spelling mistake
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I thought i'd be able to do without this awhile, what with all the excellent 360 and Wii stuff around the corner. I'm really not so sure i can now. Gnnnnn.
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I do play FPS games but more often then not its just the single player side (prefer the story driven ones), so I'm not all that used to the team side. I tried playing GoW online a couple of times... and let's just say it made me give up online play for a couple of months. Think this crowd will be better?
Really like the cartoony style they've gone with, genius!
oh and I'll be playing it on the 360.
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So, as I'm deep into chasing that Nene freak I'll give this one a miss.
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Spare some change?
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Medic + heavy ftw.
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Its not that hard to find a sniper. I swear developers nerfed the sniper badly overtime. Not only does a sniper have a very absurdly large tracer and large muscle flash, they also have to pinpoint your exact location to the person you kill, in most games these days. The sole purpose of a sniper is to be concealed and do as much damage as possible that way, while being concealed.
Now I've learned to live with it, and it doesn't really bother me all that much, since I'm more of a upclose and personal guy with my shotgun. But I still think a kill cam defies the whole point of being a sniper
I can live with the red flash on the screen indicating the direction one got shot from, so you know the general direction the person is next time you spawn. But Killcams are stupid in my opinion. Killcams take away the element of where the f did he shoot me from.
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It sounds like this just eliminates camping rather than sniping. Good snipers will still do well.
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Graphics are fantastic though. I think Fortress Forever will have better lasting appeal.
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get a job!
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I think TIME will vindicate valve on the killcam though. Those of you worried about snipers being undermined: this is a game with six levels. All the sniper points are going to get found pretty quickly, and most players who get to know levels well work out where snipers might be pretty much intuitively. All this does is allow n00bs like me to reach the same conclusions.
Secondly, as most of the levels have bases, knowing where mr. snipey is doesn't necessarily equate to being able to instantly take him out, especially if he's playing as a team with a soldier and engineer (for instance). And if it does, I'm with JHuxley - forcing the sniper to do some adaptive gameplay every so often might not be such a bad idea.
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With Enemy Territory:Quake Wars here next week, this game is totally overshadowed for me.
Sorry Valve, not this time.
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You obviously don't know how reviewers work, when they get their review versions etc., calexico. Also, the release of TF2 is just being artificially pushed back so that the Orange Box comes out as a whole. A beta released 3 weeks before a game goes gold is simply no beta.
I find the look really truns me off this game.
With Enemy Territory:Quake Wars here next week, this game is totally overshadowed for me.
Have you played ET:QW or are you just going with the hype? If you played the beta you'd know that no matter the looks, QW sucks balls... It's worse than BF2 when it comes to vehicles and worse than CS:S/DoD:s when it comes to teamplay... As generic a multiplayer shooter as can be...
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calexico, I would assume this beta is part pre-order bonus/demo, part stress test, and part crash test. If that's what you're asking
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And teamplay is definded by who you play with, so I guess you played on a shitty server.
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Wow, seriously? TF2 looks absolutely amazing, in my opinion. Not just artistically, but also technically. Fantastic (soft) shadows, particle effects, motion blur, HDR, great looking surfaces (like metal), etc. The elegance and subtlety with which the cartoony look is pulled off is deeply impressive. The real thing looks a lot better than the videos which make all these subtleties disappear - but I guess if you generally don't like the style, there's not much that can be done.
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Well, so basically you're just an ET fanboy? =)
And teamplay is definded by who you play with, so I guess you played on a shitty server.
Nope, I played on lots of servers. Either a game encourages teamplay (like, TF2?) or is just pretending to be doing so (ET:QW).
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And as for working out who killed you and how in CS (and most things since), you may have noticed the list of red and blue names and pictures of guns that pop up in the top right corner? Combine that with where you were, what you were doing, where the bang came from and what it sounded like, and it's not hard at all to work out how you died, who did it and from where. Like most MP FPS games, knowing the maps is the key, and why MP gets boring.
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Think about it, the team behind ET:Quake Wars created QW:Team Fortress !
Its bloody crazy, they are getting beaten by a product that they created/set up 10 years ago!
No 1 elses seems to of mentioned this ,,,,,
Also how does this play on the 360 controllers? For example as a soilder how the hell do you rocket jump?? Because u really need a key+mouse for this, unless they have given the 360 owners the option of doing it with one press of a button which would be a good idea imo.
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best mp game ever.
adieu, social life.
hope my girlfriend won't miss me.
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I'm going to be playing FF from now on.
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(The other Valve games work fine under the same environment. They even have a 64-bit compiled core EXE.)
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I've had problems connecting to quite a few servers though
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seriously seriously good fun, no matter what class you pick. getting a double knife-in-the-back kill with the spy just felt sublime, and when i went on a heavy MG rampage and killed more than 10 fools (thanks to a medic buffing me) it was the biggest adrenaline rush ever. just total carnage.
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way to review a beta, idiots. Can we expect a review of cod 4 shortly then?
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Agreed. Luckily, the g/f is away for a few weeks
Also, I've been having random crashes on Vista-32. The Valve forums suggest ensuring the latest video drivers. Can't be arsed right now...
I couldn't play at all initially, had to set the load options on the shortcut to my native res.
Awesome game.
Managing to plow through 7 people and 3 sentry guns to get a HMG to the briefcase in 2fort (with a medic propping me up) was my highlight so far.
Is EG planning on supporting Valve community stats like it does with Live?
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Looks too kiddy to me
kids game!
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Great review - very true. Cheers
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I find that after the greatness of Halo's system and its ranked team skill matches, I can't bring myself to go back to a 'pick a server' type shite with my group of friends.
Gears of War I'm looking at you! You could have been so great, if you just let my team of friends play ranked matches against another team.
/sob
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This game takes some getting used to. Due to its exceptional fast pace it can seem a little overwhelming for new players. Any tips for a new player (a good starter class)?
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No, it doesn't. That said, I generally hate playing online too. But TF2 is so much fun that it was easy to make a rare exception.
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I've been playing the beta for a week or so and it's a fantastic game, so many little tricks and tactics to learn. The community's generally been pretty good during beta - I've seen some "OMG noob fag team you suck" style comments, but not much.
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All from the same guy, pretty much without pause for breath/rest of fingers. It was actually strangely impressive to see someone sustain that level of smack-talking hatred over a prolonged period.
I love online gaming.
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I found the demoman quite a good class to start with, you can play defensively to start with using the sticky bombs or "area denial" style grenading until you get better at it.
TF2 actually seems to be quite forgiving for non-twitch players because of all the indirect combat classes (Spy, Engineer, Medic).
Experience definitely helps - I've gone from normally being bottom of the score table to the upper-middle in a week.
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As with all our other reviews, it was because we had played it sufficiently to render a score against the cost of the game. Which I imagine is self-evident. I got to play as each of the classes for long enough to be sure of their worth and position in the game as a whole. It wasn't my first exposure to the game, either, and I spent most of the time I was playing it chatting to the lead designer about how everything worked and then putting it to the test.
So I don't think I did a bad job, but if you disagree you're welcome to comment here. Or post sarcastic rebuttals on your websites. Hurrah for the internet. And Rich Kyanka, who was always such a nice chap when I worked with him at GameSpy when I was about 8.
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But my eyes hurt.
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pyros still the best
add me on steam:zam786
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does the medic look like Gregory Peck in The Boys from Brazil?
Where he played the crazy nazi doctor?