With fast and frenetic action and enough complexity for purists, anyone even remotely interested in multiplayer shooters would be foolish to pass this one up.
MULTIPLAYER SHOOTER
Release Date: 10/10/2007
Published By: Valve Software
Developed By: Valve Software
The Orange Box, released in October last year, was highly anticipated for a number of reasons one of which was Team Fortress 2, the long awaited follow up to the class based multiplayer shooter, Team Fortress Classic. The original TF: Classic was initially released as mod for Half Life and became an instant hit because it was one of the very first games to focus on class-based online shooting gameplay rather than just the deathmatch modes present in most online games at that time. Long since then, Valve took over development of the sequel to Classic and having undergone many changes, it now presents itself as Team Fortress 2 nearly 10 years later.
During those years, many online shooters -- both class based and otherwise -- have been released from Battlefield 1942 to its sequel and another Half Life mod has gone on to dominate the PC online shooter field for years now in the form of Counter Strike. 2007 also saw a myriad of online shooters released like Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Call of Duty 4 and the question does definitely arise whether a game based on nearly 10 year old gameplay concepts will be able to hold up to such stiff competition. The good news is that, it does hold up to, if not even surpass, the great number of other good online shooters out there.
Right off the bat, the best aspect of Team Fortress 2 and arguably the aspect that differentiates it from other online shooters is its audio-visual presentation. The Source Engine which has been the base for the beautiful Half Life 2 and its episodes has been utilized to its maximum potential and the result is visually engaging to say the least. Cel-shaded games have looked good in the past like Ubisoft's XIII but Team Fortress 2 literally resembles the cartoons that appeared on TV during the late 80's and early 90's. Each class has a unique appearance which certainly helps in the thick of the battle from the bulky heavy to the skinny spy; all the classes have been visualized perfectly. That is not to say Team Fortress 2 is just about the cartoon-style graphics, the nuts and bolts of the Source engine are present here too, from the amazing lighting effects to the reflections and refractions seen on the water to the beautiful textures appearing on each of the maps reflect the amount of time and effort that has gone into making every aspect of the look and feel of Team Fortress 2 unique.
Audio presentation is every bit as funny and cartoonish as the graphics. The voice acting is of the highest quality and similar to the graphics, each class has its own unique voice. You will not forget the first time you hear a Heavy scream, "Ahh! I am on fire!" from a Pyro attack. The voice acting just adds a lot more personality to each class. The weapon sounds are all well done with all of them packing enough power in them to sound subtly realistic.
Of course, the meaty part of any online shooter is the gameplay and Team Fortress 2 doesn't fail here either. In total there are 9 classes which the game separates into 3 categories - offense, defense and support. The primary offense classes are Scout, Soldier and Pyro. The scout has minimum health but moves around the fastest and can also double jump and capture intel and control points the quickest. The pyro and soldier have their basic flamethrower and rocket launcher that heap lots of damage on the opposition. The defense classes are Heavy, Demoman and Engineer. The heavy carries a huge machine gun and can take lots of damage before dying but is the slowest of all the classes. The demoman has a grenade launcher and a remote controlled sticky bomb which is quite handy when defending. The engineer is the primary defense class and can mine metal from fallen weapons to build teleporters for fast transportation, dispensers for replenishment and turrets for defending intel and captured control points and is arguably one of the most important classes in the game.
Finally, the support classes consist of Medic, Sniper and Spy. The sniper is your basic sniper class and no different from other shooters apart from carrying an SMG for those close range skirmishes. The medic is the most important class in the game and carries a medgun which is used in healing injured teammates. But the catch is, as the medic heals teammates, an ubercharge meter fills up and when fully charged and deployed can render the medic and a teammate invincible for a period of time which can be devastating when used properly. Finally, the spy is the stealth class who can disguise as any enemy class, go invisible for a period of time and plan sappers on enemy turrets, dispensers to destroy them. Adding to all of this is the fact that each class is perfectly balanced and no one class has any advantage over other classes. So, as you can see with over 9 classes to choose from, it is not an easy choice just choosing which class to play as a lot of it depends on what your style of play is and what your team's current situation is.
The game is a little short when it comes to the sheer number of maps available with only 6 at the time of release, with one more added recently and another one in the pipeline. 2Fort is the remake of the classic map from Team Fortress Classic which has teams trying to capture intelligence present deep inside the opponent's base and is the most played map in the game and is similar in every respect to the Capture the Flag mode of other games. The capture control point maps are Dustbowl, Gravelpit, Well, Granary and Hydro which is a territorial control point map. Well is a symmetrical map with a total of 5 control points of which one is neutral and a team wins when it captures all the control points. Granary is similar to Well in terms of gameplay but takes place in an industrial environment instead. Gravelpit and Dustbowl have the Red team defending while Blu tries to capture all the control points and time is added when a CP is captured. Hydro is the only territorial control point map in the game and has the teams trying to captures all the territories in the game eventually leading to the capture of the enemy's base. While six may seem like a small number of maps, the amount of tactics and variety required in each map means that you can extract a lot of gameplay out of each one of them. Very recently, Valve also released a CTF map, Well, based on the CP map of the same name and the remake of the classic Badlands map has also been promised.
Combine all of the above aspects together and you have one great multiplayer game to play. Each server is split up into 2 sides, Red and Blue with a maximum of 16 players each (on most servers) for an overall maximum of 32. Team Fortress 2 emphasizes team work more than most online shooters and it is almost a necessity here as the goal in each map can only be achieved through completing tasks rather than killing every player on the other team. Valve has added humor to every aspect and when you are killed in a particularly gruesome way, each of your body parts is highlighted and instead of getting frustrated, you laugh your death off and prepare for respawning. As already stated, the voice acting, graphics and all the other stuff come together meaning, you never end up taking the game very seriously and always end up having fun which is sort of the goal of any online shooter.
Team Fortress 2 is also the first game for which Valve is officially tracking stats. All your stats are recorded and displayed each time you log on to a server including stats like kill count, death count, playtime with each class, playtime on each map and so on which can be helpful in getting better at the game if not anything else. There are also numerous achievements that Valve has integrated from achievements for getting 1000 kills to 25 headshots to completing a target for a specific map and so on which gives extra reason to play the game. However, unlike Xbox Live there are no additional points for achieving any of them.
The only deterring factor that the game has is the number of maps. But that is only a minor gripe in what is surely one of the best multiplayer shooters in years. Team Fortress 2 comes polished with a mirror shine. In my playtime, I experienced absolutely no connection issues whatsoever and no hiccups in frame rate and not even a single crash. Valve is also constantly fixing balance issues, adding new achievements and has also promised new content over the coming months. With fast and frenetic action and enough complexity for purists, anyone even remotely interested in multiplayer shooters would be foolish to pass this one up.
Posted on: 01/30/2008 by Balaji Sivaraman