My first review on this blog, and I’m starting off with something easy: Team Fortress 2, the most recent hype shooter by Valve. This game was released October 10, 2007, and originally available only as part of the Orange Box or through Steam. Meanwhile you find it solo in stores as well.

So, it’s a shooter. What is it that makes this game special, what makes it stand out?

As a sidenote, I’ll try and lay out a couple of generic review structure categories for games here, bear in mind it might change in the future but I hope it won’t.

Graphics:

Well, obviously, they’re comic graphics. However, there’s more than one kind of comic graphics; this one here still is hard work for the graphics card. There’s plenty of particle effects for flying rockets and shots, critical hits are visible from miles away, the textures are high-res and not washed out anyway, and there’s tons of polygons everywhere.

What distinguishes the art direction in TF2 from other shooters are exactly those comic graphics: Whenever you see an enemy, you know what class he is – quite a feat with 9 classes (more on this later); the outlines are distinct enough to make it clear at a glance.

Alpine Concept Art

The game just got another theme with the Heavy Update last week, an alpine setting in addition to the desert theme the game originally featured already, expanding possibilities of course. Community maps are being produced all the time and, because the assets Valve provides are so flexible, look great.

Sound:

The sound is definitely above average: The levels themselves have good soundscapes, with croaking birds and beeping computers where appropriate. Weapons have distinct sounds as well, with unlocks often getting their own, they sound fat and meaty. Shouts and voice chat have the right volume, the voiceover speakers did their job well, everything fits together nicely.

The reason why I only give 3 stars here is, 3D audio positioning is far from perfect. Comparing it to UT3, where the flight path of every rocket is clearly audible, the sometimes crude positioning here is bugging me. Also, Valve could have done more with audio effects – hall, reverb, frequency dampening. There are some few effects, but they’re used very sparingly only. And finally, occasionally the sound bugs out and the computer in the basement is audible in the entire level.

All those things don’t really break the immersion that much (except for the bugs), but they are something that could’ve been done better.

Gameplay:

Engineer with Sentry

While the levels do have quite some complexity in detail, the stock levels’ layouts are very clear, bordering blocky, and without much fuss – which is exactly what I’m looking for in a multiplayer shooter: No edges to get stuck on, no places where an enemy can hide between some filler bushes in the scenery, still plenty of obvious cover for both attackers and defenders.

Map play styles are reasonably varied, and with play styles goals also differ: Either you’re pushing a bomb into an enemy hideout (followed by a big explosion of course if you succeed), capturing secret files from the enemy (aka CTF), you try to take control points or kill the enemy team in last-team-standing type arenas.

Ubercharged Pyro

The 9 classes are very varied too, with differing weapons (of course), but also hitbox sizes, speeds and hitpoints (comparison), and still balance is great: The Pyro might be fast and deadly up close, but from afar he has nothing but a pea shooter. The Heavy has a huge bullet throughput, but is lumberingly slow and can barely avoid incoming rockets. Engineers have strong Sentry Guns, but are rather weak themselves.

User Interface

Whenever you’re killed, you get a freeze screen with the player who killed you – particularly interesting when this is showing Sniper hideouts. There’s hotkeyed voice commands and shouts, ingame voice chat, a working and fast server browser with favourites and “my friends are on there” list, extensive online stats overall and per player, Steam integration (and thus friends list and text chat ingame), everything you’d expect from an up-to-date PC game.

My only gripes would be the pretty long respawn time, although luckily there’s servers who lowered that. Some few maps aren’t all too awesome (Warpath, Hydro), and after playing too much the gameplay does get a bit repetitive. Since most weapons have quite the spread, and there’s crits, precision while shooting plays a smaller role than in other games (well, maybe that’s a strong point with my skills). Alt-Tabbing occasionally crashes the game. But still, those things are minor.

Fun:

Pyro

I already mentioned the Heavy Update. Regular updates are then when makes this game special, too. Not only does the game get patches on a very regular basis (every couple of weeks, more often after a big update), but it already got the third class-specific update meanwhile, with the Medic and the Pyro having gotten love before the Heavy. Every one of those adds class-specific achievements, like “ignite a rocket-jumping Soldier while he’s in midair”, and special weapon unlocks.

The additional weapons aren’t really must-have upgrades or stronger versions of the same weapons, but rather sidegrades that enable alternate playstyles – a prime example is the Medic’s Kritzkrieg, sacrificing the famous Ubercharge (a short-time invulnerability for the medic and his healing target) for a 100% crit charge – letting Soldiers and Demomen in particular reign destruction from afar when the Medic properly uses it, instead of letting a Heavy breach enemy fortifications or a Pyro set everything in its wake ablaze.

With every update also comes additional content, and Valve selects the best community maps and packs them along.

Then of course there’s the awesome voice taunts and shouts where every class has its own style too (the Russian Heavy, the German Medic, the Scottish Demoman), the Meet the XY video series, things like the new Heavy unlockable Sandvich, and overall a very humorous approach, all of which make the game tremendously fun to play.

Overall:

I told you this review is easy: A community that’s active and supported (and likes doing comics and machinima for their favourite game, or invents silly achievements that are more like big DON’Ts), a developer team that still likes its product, a game that in and of itself is fun and draws more people into the flock by the day – what is there not to like?

Top grades for this one, and add me to your friends list

Some more links to get you started with class strategies: The TF2 Wiki, and some Slightly Less Than Conventional TF2 Class Strategies I like.