http://www.mguinc.com/staffimages/Team_Fortress_2_Group_Photo.jpg
Opening Statements
Team Fortress Two is one of the few shooters I respect for one thing: It doesn?t fool around with a story. Nothing against stories, obviously, but when a game?s entirely about the multiplayer, having a melodramatic story just tends to put more time between the current moment and the next enemy you get to gib.
If you are even remotly connected to gaming, you should already know about TF2, but I?ll put down the basics. There are two teams, RED and BLU, that are attempting to sabotage each other in a variety of ways (all of which are objective based). There are nine different classes you can play as to accompish your goals, all of which play vastly differently.
You can play as the scout, a fast character meant for distraction and hit and run tactics, the soldier, your basic slow, strong, high damage dealing rocket user, the pyro, an ambush class designed to catch enemies off guard and incinerate them, the demo, an indirect-firing Scot great for setting up traps with sticky grenades, the heavy, a very slow minigun weilding tank, the engineer, a guy who specializes in building sentries and other buildings to help his allies, the medic (self explanatory), the sniper (again self explanatory) and the spy, a class designed to disguise, get behind enemy lines, and screw up the enemy in a variety of ways.
http://www.gameogre.com/reviewdirectory/upload/Team%20Fortress%202.jpg
I wonder who get?s more kills, the mean looking sentry or the mean looking sniper?
Visuals and Physics
As you can tell from the above image, the art direction is a bit cartoony, to say the least. However, it is not bad by any means. In fact, the art for the game is pretty amazing. The characters and weapons are all detailed and, more notably, destinct enough you can tell what class somebody is from across the map. Enemies are soaked in blood where they got hit, the bullets drop from the guys and bounce around, and the enemies gib in beautiful cartoony fountains of blood. Overall, the game just looks great, even if you don?t normally like cartoony graphics.
The physics in the game are also great, and they are actually pretty useful for things besides having ragdolls be flung into the air. Rocket and sticky grenade jumping are both easy to use and a blast to look at, and explosives can and will launch your enemies into the air. One of the best use of physics would have to be the pyros compressed air blast, which can send enemies flying away from their medics, destroying their ubercharge. Gibs and ragdolls flying through the air also look awesome, but that?s just icing on the cake.
http://durhamregion.typepad.com/pressing_buttons/images/2007/09/28/tf2_everywhere_else_2.jpg
Colonel Massacre gives us a lesson in the beauty of gibs.
Sound
The game sounds great as well. All of the voice acting is spot on for the characters and, at times, legitimatly funny, even in game. The Meet The Class series of videos are awesome and are the closest thing you can get to a ?backstory? of the game, and although that isn?t really a part of the game I just want to say that you can watch them to see how great the voice acting is. The menu music is pretty catchy as well, though you probably won?t hear much of it. All the action sounds great as well, and there isn?t much more to say, besides how cool the lightning sound is when you fire a critical shot.
Gameplay
Now for the true make or break test of a game, the gameplay. Overall, TF2?s gameplay is just superb. All the official levels are polished to a point of near perfection and the teamwork aspect is a refreshing change of pace from the typical ?go it alone? style of other shooters. The different game types are nice, and though some people may say that it?s not interesting without a generic deathmatch type game, those people probably aren?t very knowledgable about the game.
The game controls great as well. I know it?s a PC game, so you can?t really screw it up, but for all the voice commands you have access to and all the weapons you can switch to, you can easily learn the default controls in about 10 minutes and play pretty well. It?s nice how they made sure that all the commands are easily accessible by the left hand, since you aim with the mouse. I know that should go without saying, but some games have screwed that up before so it?s always a good thing.
Every single class feels completely unique. No class plays the same as another class, even remotely. Every style of play is not only possible, but encouraged, due to the fact that every class fits like a glove with a specific style of play. No longer do you have to ambush, attack head on, and sneak behind the enemy with the same gun, but you have a class for each of those play styles. What?s amazing is that they managed to keep it all balanced nearly perfectly. The gameplay is also almost completely glitch free, and any glitches are fixed pretty quickly.
http://image.hazardstrip.com/ico/sprays/fyi.jpg
FYI, you are about to get backstabbed.
Criticism
I do have to criticize Valve for a couple things, though. They are generally pretty late with their updates, and although the updates in general are nice, the way they set them up always leads to a flood of people playing the same class, which gets fairly annoying. There aren?t many ways to prevent that from happening, and it?s mostly the communities fault for all playing the same class, so I can?t blame Valve too much, but they are the easy targets for complaints when this happens:
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/7048/medic2ef3.png
Another thing to criticize about the game is that most of the maps can take forever to win or lose. I know that?s not necessarily a bad thing, and in fact I personally like how games don?t usually take two minutes or less to win, but I don?t think it would have killed Valve to make a few maps that can be won or lost fairly quickly to widen their fanbase, because not everybody want?s to play matches that last twenty or more minutes each.
The final criticism I have is the total lack of singleplayer, but considering this is only meant to be a fun, less twitch based multiplayer shooter, that isn?t really much of a criticism at all. A tutorial mode might be nice, but the learning curve is shallow enough you aren?t likely to drown by diving headfirst into the game.
Closing
Overall, Team Fortress Two is a great game. The artwork and sound are both unique and easily identifiable, instead of the usual ?ultra realistic? fare that may as well have been made by the same design team at various stages of laziness in most every FPS created in the past few years, the gameplay is balanced and fun, and the only flaws I can think of are subjective or the fact I have to wait a bit longer than I expected for even MORE content, so there aren?t really any major turn-offs.
Verdict: Buy it.
Side note: Could anybody tell me how to change the size of the opening image? It's stretching the screen a bit, and it didn't really seem to be when I previewed my post. There has to be a code to set the size of images somewhere...
EDIT: For the above side note, I beleive I fixed it by putting in the same image but smaller from a different site, but I'd still like to know the code for manually setting the size of images.
Side side note: Any criticism of my review is welcome and encouraged. I want to get better, so if there are any flaws you think should be addressed with my review, no matter how small, I encourage you to point them out.
Opening Statements
Team Fortress Two is one of the few shooters I respect for one thing: It doesn?t fool around with a story. Nothing against stories, obviously, but when a game?s entirely about the multiplayer, having a melodramatic story just tends to put more time between the current moment and the next enemy you get to gib.
If you are even remotly connected to gaming, you should already know about TF2, but I?ll put down the basics. There are two teams, RED and BLU, that are attempting to sabotage each other in a variety of ways (all of which are objective based). There are nine different classes you can play as to accompish your goals, all of which play vastly differently.
You can play as the scout, a fast character meant for distraction and hit and run tactics, the soldier, your basic slow, strong, high damage dealing rocket user, the pyro, an ambush class designed to catch enemies off guard and incinerate them, the demo, an indirect-firing Scot great for setting up traps with sticky grenades, the heavy, a very slow minigun weilding tank, the engineer, a guy who specializes in building sentries and other buildings to help his allies, the medic (self explanatory), the sniper (again self explanatory) and the spy, a class designed to disguise, get behind enemy lines, and screw up the enemy in a variety of ways.
http://www.gameogre.com/reviewdirectory/upload/Team%20Fortress%202.jpg
I wonder who get?s more kills, the mean looking sentry or the mean looking sniper?
Visuals and Physics
As you can tell from the above image, the art direction is a bit cartoony, to say the least. However, it is not bad by any means. In fact, the art for the game is pretty amazing. The characters and weapons are all detailed and, more notably, destinct enough you can tell what class somebody is from across the map. Enemies are soaked in blood where they got hit, the bullets drop from the guys and bounce around, and the enemies gib in beautiful cartoony fountains of blood. Overall, the game just looks great, even if you don?t normally like cartoony graphics.
The physics in the game are also great, and they are actually pretty useful for things besides having ragdolls be flung into the air. Rocket and sticky grenade jumping are both easy to use and a blast to look at, and explosives can and will launch your enemies into the air. One of the best use of physics would have to be the pyros compressed air blast, which can send enemies flying away from their medics, destroying their ubercharge. Gibs and ragdolls flying through the air also look awesome, but that?s just icing on the cake.
http://durhamregion.typepad.com/pressing_buttons/images/2007/09/28/tf2_everywhere_else_2.jpg
Colonel Massacre gives us a lesson in the beauty of gibs.
Sound
The game sounds great as well. All of the voice acting is spot on for the characters and, at times, legitimatly funny, even in game. The Meet The Class series of videos are awesome and are the closest thing you can get to a ?backstory? of the game, and although that isn?t really a part of the game I just want to say that you can watch them to see how great the voice acting is. The menu music is pretty catchy as well, though you probably won?t hear much of it. All the action sounds great as well, and there isn?t much more to say, besides how cool the lightning sound is when you fire a critical shot.
Gameplay
Now for the true make or break test of a game, the gameplay. Overall, TF2?s gameplay is just superb. All the official levels are polished to a point of near perfection and the teamwork aspect is a refreshing change of pace from the typical ?go it alone? style of other shooters. The different game types are nice, and though some people may say that it?s not interesting without a generic deathmatch type game, those people probably aren?t very knowledgable about the game.
The game controls great as well. I know it?s a PC game, so you can?t really screw it up, but for all the voice commands you have access to and all the weapons you can switch to, you can easily learn the default controls in about 10 minutes and play pretty well. It?s nice how they made sure that all the commands are easily accessible by the left hand, since you aim with the mouse. I know that should go without saying, but some games have screwed that up before so it?s always a good thing.
Every single class feels completely unique. No class plays the same as another class, even remotely. Every style of play is not only possible, but encouraged, due to the fact that every class fits like a glove with a specific style of play. No longer do you have to ambush, attack head on, and sneak behind the enemy with the same gun, but you have a class for each of those play styles. What?s amazing is that they managed to keep it all balanced nearly perfectly. The gameplay is also almost completely glitch free, and any glitches are fixed pretty quickly.
http://image.hazardstrip.com/ico/sprays/fyi.jpg
FYI, you are about to get backstabbed.
Criticism
I do have to criticize Valve for a couple things, though. They are generally pretty late with their updates, and although the updates in general are nice, the way they set them up always leads to a flood of people playing the same class, which gets fairly annoying. There aren?t many ways to prevent that from happening, and it?s mostly the communities fault for all playing the same class, so I can?t blame Valve too much, but they are the easy targets for complaints when this happens:
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/7048/medic2ef3.png
Another thing to criticize about the game is that most of the maps can take forever to win or lose. I know that?s not necessarily a bad thing, and in fact I personally like how games don?t usually take two minutes or less to win, but I don?t think it would have killed Valve to make a few maps that can be won or lost fairly quickly to widen their fanbase, because not everybody want?s to play matches that last twenty or more minutes each.
The final criticism I have is the total lack of singleplayer, but considering this is only meant to be a fun, less twitch based multiplayer shooter, that isn?t really much of a criticism at all. A tutorial mode might be nice, but the learning curve is shallow enough you aren?t likely to drown by diving headfirst into the game.
Closing
Overall, Team Fortress Two is a great game. The artwork and sound are both unique and easily identifiable, instead of the usual ?ultra realistic? fare that may as well have been made by the same design team at various stages of laziness in most every FPS created in the past few years, the gameplay is balanced and fun, and the only flaws I can think of are subjective or the fact I have to wait a bit longer than I expected for even MORE content, so there aren?t really any major turn-offs.
Verdict: Buy it.
Side note: Could anybody tell me how to change the size of the opening image? It's stretching the screen a bit, and it didn't really seem to be when I previewed my post. There has to be a code to set the size of images somewhere...
EDIT: For the above side note, I beleive I fixed it by putting in the same image but smaller from a different site, but I'd still like to know the code for manually setting the size of images.
Side side note: Any criticism of my review is welcome and encouraged. I want to get better, so if there are any flaws you think should be addressed with my review, no matter how small, I encourage you to point them out.
