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Play That Game: Team Fortress 2

Since its release on The Orange Box in 2007, Team Fortress 2 has developed a really strong online community. The community has been such a driving force that users have gone as far as helping come up with weapon concepts that exist in-game today. Everything about Team Fortress 2 is for you, the fan, and recently Valve started offering one of the most entertaining first person shooters to date for free.

That’s right, Team Fortress 2 is now a free-to-play game and there really isn’t an excuse as to why you shouldn’t give it a try. However I’d like to talk about a couple of the reasons why it would be in your best interest to give it a shot.

One thing that has always turned me away from first person shooters is the repetitive nature of them. Whether the weapons are on-map and require you to strategically use map control to your advantage, or the weapons are pre-loaded, like in a game such as Call of Duty, you still approach each match from nearly the same angle. Team Fortress 2 is different in that sense. The game offers nine classes in total and each class’s gameplay varies severely from one another, and each class is really deep within their own right. This gives the game unlimited replay value. Some classes have an advantage against others so your approach is specific based on the opposition. Also, the nine classes are broken into three different overarching roles. There is offense, defense, and support.

Along with the complexity that comes along with having nine distinguished classes, there are also tons of maps and game variants. This is equally as game-changing. You have the ability to change classes as the rounds are going on, so if you’re playing capture point and your nodes are being pushed you might want to switch to Heavy or Demoman to help defend your base.

The gameplay has always been thoroughly enjoyable and frenetic, but one area of the game that originally was lacking was the incentive to play. Besides fun, there were no real rewards for the hours you put in. Now there are games that don’t offer the player rewards, such as Counter-Strike, but Team Fortress seemed like the type of game that had a lot of potential for customization. Since then, Valve has delivered and released a complex crafting system for players to deconstruct items they receive while playing to raw materials used for crafting. There are several recipes you can obtain, and most of which allow you to make unique, class specific hats. These items require a lot of raw materials, so players with unique hats are usually those who spend a lot of time playing Team Fortress 2.

Thanks to constant updates, each class now has several unique weapons to choose from and the game has a nice way of balancing itself out as far as the weapons go. Any new weapons you get that aren’t default have interesting buffs and advantages, but they also come along with a debuff and it is up to the player to decide if the weapon is good for their play style; it really is a matter of preference in most cases. On the topic of balancing, this has been Team Fortress 2’s biggest hurdle, but after consistent patching I’m happy to say that the game is impressively balanced considering all of the extraneous variables launching across the screen.

It really is this simple: Team Fortress 2 is one of the best first person shooters you can play in this generation, and now it’s free. I can’t stress enough how good a deal this game is. The graphics are cell-shaded, and the game has a comical tone, so if you a Call of Duty fiend and you take realistic shooting experiences super seriously, you may be turned off by this game’s style, but it would be a total shame if you judged this game’s merit off of aesthetics before taking a look at a rich gameplay included.  

There are few games this entertaining, so I urge you…

PLAY THAT GAME!