Team Fortress 2

Valve, you did it again.

It’s been many years since the creation of Team Fortress 2, considered by many as the greatest multiplayer FPS of all time, and I may have to agree with them. With the vast amount of content available for consumption, the extremely balanced and competitive gameplay, the hilarious characters and well thought out story. All of this, and it’s FREE, yes FREE. Needless to say if you have never played TF2 (as I shall now call it) you should, but for now here is my review.

We start with the story, which at first glance you would be suspect of thinking there wasn’t any. However, as is valve’s fashion, through backstories and extra content the story of TF2 becomes clear. To make things overly simple, basically a wealthy business owner is tricked into buying a large expanse of land by his two sons who wish to take the company from him, these sons were Blutarch and Redmund. When their father died however he left them in his will the plot of land but split it in two between the brothers. The brothers, jealous of each other, decided that they wanted each other’s land and thus war ensued. Each brother hired 9 mercenaries to help them do the job, and thus the 9 classes of TF2 were born. From here the game consists of you fighting these battles as the mercenaries in order to gain access to the land. The story may seem basic and generic at first however it’s the charm and silliness of the game that allows it to really pull through. There is so much wit between not only the characters that the game speaks of but also little details that are shown throughout the hidden story that it really brings it together in order to make a funny and genuinely likeable story.

Meet the Team

The presentation in this game is best described as timeless. Due to the fact that the game is styled in a cartoony and cell shaded way it allows it to stand the tests of time and still look good even all of these years gone by. Each of the characters presented are full of charm and each look unique, being easily distinguishable between each other and having traits that allow them to really stick out for people. The sound design is equally as good, with a mix of jazz style music and all other styles it brings flow to combat and is also capable of not distracting you when playing, especially considering that there is a lot to think about and do while playing competitively. However one problem I noticed is the seeming lack of map variety in terms of the visuals. The main two types of map I found were desert and industrial complex, that’s it. Meaning that the maps are just awash with colours of orange and brown making a lack of variety a little disappointing.

We don’t care about all that though, this is a multiplayer shooter! So we only care about the gameplay! On that note, Team Fortress 2 has without a shadow of a doubt the most balanced and regularly updated gameplay of any multiplayer shooter I have seen in my years of gaming. Each of the classes have a unique role and a counter which can bring them down, from the sneaky spy to the bullet-sponge heavy, everyone has a purpose and can be brought down by the correct class. The item system too allows you to drastically change up the gameplay in ways that can make the game very replayable and full of variety, such as changing the explosives using demoman into a shield wearing, claymore wielding demoknight. One of the things that helps to make these mechanics so good is the fact that you can switch classes at almost any point in the game. Getting bored of shooting down people as a sniper? Switch classes to the pyro insead and burn some people! It helps make the gameplay not stale as each of the classes have a unique gameplay style that helps them to each feel different from one another. Valve have kept this game up to date ever since it’s very launch and now it is simply brimming with content on all sides it’s almost impossible to imagine someone getting bored with this game. Finally the fact that this game is FREE helps it, definitely. It isn’t in the style of pay to win either, as the entire game is completely accessible to you no matter what, but if you WANT to then you can pay money to buy a cosmetic item for your character or something similar. You don’t need to buy into anything in order to access the content that Valve intended and thus it’s a perfect game to play with your friends as nobody needs to pay for anything.

Well, Heavy looks pretty happy here

In terms of bad points, there really isn’t much I can say. I mentioned the lack of terrain variety as a problem, but if you are playing a multiplayer shooter you don’t really need to worry about that. Of course as a multiplayer shooter you will need to be online in order to play however if you don’t feel like doing that you can simply play offline with bots instead, making the fun last no matter what the situation.  The game can also be slightly complex if it is your first time and so you may need someone to help you out if you play for the first time.

Overall however, if you own a competent PC, an internet connection and you are interested in gaming then I would be genuinely surprised if you haven’t played Team Fortress 2 already. It’s one of the greatest gaming experiences you will have for a long time with regularly updated content (with a co-op mode fighting against robots added fairly recently!), perfectly balanced gameplay, hilarious characters and a general sense of that this is a game meant to be an actual game rather then simply a way to make money. Honestly guys go out and get TF2 right now if you must, download it from Steam and have a go, you will not regret it.