For the past month Kyle and I have been busy playing our newest multiplayer obsession, Team Fortress 2. If you’re not familiar with Team Fortress you can go to one of those professional reviewers who waste a paragraph on introduction because they’re paid by the word. I’m not paid by the word, so to hell with history and to hell with introductions. Most likely you’re like me and don’t give a shit what came before now, you just know that now is better than then and you want now right now. That doesn’t make much sense but neither does writing a game review for a blog that doesn’t have any substantial membership. In fact, I’m not completely convinced my audience will ever expand beyond the creeping ceiling spider that keeps me company at night.
Anyway, is Team Fortress 2 cool? Yes, it is. It’s so cool it could practically shit ice cream. Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, let’s go in depth. Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer first person shooter where two teams blow each other up. But you probably know that already. What makes TF2 (official acronym) so great is that it supports so many different play styles. If you’re like me and your hand-eye coordination is rapidly going the way of Aleutian Canada Goose, you’ll be happy to know that TF2 allows even the most clumsy players to score high on the leader boards. Sure, the twitching 12-year-old Redbull drinkers can grab a Scout and go nuts, but what matters most here in teamwork. Which, for a genre that is dominated by little kids calling each other “fags” is a pretty phenomenal accomplishment.
What I like to do is grab a Medic and heal Kyle while he blasts everyone to pieces with his Soldier. The Soldier is like a slightly above average B student. He’s all around OK at everything with no crippling overt weakness, kind of like the man your mother was forced to marry when she looked in the mirror and realized she wasn’t getting any prettier. While the Medic heals the Soldier, he gets points for whoever the Soldier kills. And thus, I’m able to share in the victory even though I suck at first person shooters. That isn’t to say that being a Medic is easy, it’s just different. And in a sea of mediocre WW2 shooters, different can only be good.
There are tons of other classes to try out, each supporting a different role and play style. The spy, for instance, skulks around in the darkness and stabs people in the back. It’s not particularly fun for me because I don’t have any patience, but for those who like Splinter Cell games it must be a wet dream.
Was Team Fortress 2 worth the decade long wait? Probably not, but what we get is a fantastic game that is polished out the ass for an affordable price. So go try it out. And if you see us on the battlefield, make sure to shoot us.
Overall: 4 out of 5.
Good: Extremely polished, perfectly balanced, many different play styles supported, teamwork is encouraged, great art direction.
Bad: Only six initial maps, game play is very similar to the original.
“It’s war time, and you’re hiding in a basement with a group of other people. Enemy soldiers are approaching outside and will be drawn to any sound. If you’re found, you’ll all be killed immediately. A baby hiding with you starts to cry loudly and cannot be stopped. Smothering it to death is the only way to silence it, saving the lives of everyone in the room. Assume that the parents of the baby are unknown and not present and there will be no penalty for killing the child. Could you be the one who smothered it if no one else would?”
