Team Fortress 2 Review

Team Fortress 2 is probably the only game of Valve’s Orange Box that’s likely to see serious play in the long term. Well apart from the release of Orange Box, TF2 probably couldn’t have come at a better time; there’s been something of a dearth of class-based first person shooters lately that had some of us fearing the (admittedly fairly niche) genre might well be on its way out.

I don’t mean to demean the Day of Defeats of the world in any way, you understand, but there are times when the idea of fundamentally different player classes is more appealing than variations on a theme. Team Fortress 2 is undeniably a game of fundamentally different player classes, and that brings up a slew of questions about the game’s balance.

Those cartoon visuals…

Before we get bogged down in any description of how well it plays, it’s probably best to mention presentation as early as possible. TF2 is easily one of the most distinctive looking games to grace the Source engine so far. It diverges entirely from the detail of Half-Life 2, the 1940s grit of Day of Defeat Source and the awkward realism of Counter Strike Source. Instead, TF2 is an achingly well-animated array of cartoon-stereotypes. The graphical style is reminiscent of the (sadly often overlooked) RTS Evil Genius.

The combination of cell-shading and careful animation manages to breathe life into characters in a way that few FPSs can hope for; what’s more, the character models and animations fit in perfectly with the overall light-hearted feel. The combination means that TF2 is one of the very few competitive shooters that can elicit genuine laughs (without suffering necessarily being involved). Of course, looks can only get you so far, and the real question is how well the whole affair stands up to some serious play.

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It’s with some relief that we can say TF2 succeeds admirably in keeping all of the plates spinning; the classes are each individual enough that most players should be able to find a class that suits their style of play. At the same time, these classes are balanced enough that it’s relatively rare to see games dominated by particular a class.

Games take place over relatively simple maps and feature reasonably simple strings of objectives. Each requires a careful combination of attack and defense from both teams. On joining a game, players are given the option of watching a short film (on a juddering old projector), which very quickly explains the map. You’ll notice that TF2 is full of relatively simple additions like this that essentially ensure it’s never hard to just pick up and play, even for absolute beginners.