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Special Feature: An In Depth View of Team Fortress 2Reviewed by Carl “uLTraCarL” Custodio
I’m not here to talk about The Orange Box, surprisingly. Instead, I am here to talk about a specific game in “The Orange Box: Team Fortress 2”. Never heard of the game? Let me take you on a trip down memory lane. Back in ‘96, a modification group called “Team Fortress Software” came out with a mod for Quake 1 called Team Fortress which later spawned itself onto Half-Life as a mod called Team Fortress Classic. Team Fortress 2 was supposed to come out before the turn of the century, however, as always, that never happened. While many thought this game had disappeared off the face of this planet, here we are drooling over it seven years later. The objective of Team Fortress 2 is to win as a team, hence the reason why it’s called TEAM Fortress 2. There are various map styles to play on ranging from a simple capture the flag style to zone control and capture points. Sadly, only six maps are readily available with the game. Luckily, the custom mappers are furiously active within the community making new maps while Valve is sitting on their butts twiddling their thumbs. Along with the different types of maps, there are a total of nine different types of classes. Each class has its own unique ability that makes it stand out. The first class is the scout, a part of the offensive lineup. The scout’s specialty is speed. He is the fastest since he is reconnaissance armed with a double barrel shotgun, a pistol and a baseball bat. They also have the ability to double jump, however, their weakness is that they have low hit points and can easily take a lot of damage. The next class in the offensive lineup is the soldier. The soldier is the meat of the team armed with a rocket launcher, shotgun and a shovel. They have decent amount of hit points and do most of the grunt work on offense. The last one of the offensive lineup is the pyrotechnician or pyro for short. The pyro in the previous versions of Team Fortress were pretty pathetic and hardly ever played. In Team Fortress 2 they pumped up his flame thrower and gave it some real damage. Along with the flame thrower, he has a shotgun and a fireman’s axe. It is a really devastating class since it leaves a burning effect on anyone except another pyro because they have a flame retardant suit on. Over on the defensive side, there is the demolitions man or demo for short. The demo is armed with a grenade launcher, a pipe bomb launcher and a beer bottle which you can crack open and whack people with. Such a person is essential for defense since you can detonate your pipe bombs at any time. This is now the only class with actual grenades. The next class on the defensive side is the heavy weapons or heavy for short. This class as you can imagine is a large burly guy with a mini gun just as big as him. Seeing that this guy can do some massive damage, he is also the slowest class in the entire game, and moves even slower while firing the mini gun. Along with the mini gun he also has a shotgun and can use his fists as weapons as well. The last class in the defensive line is the engineer. The engineer’s specialty is the ability to build buildings, mainly sentry guns and ammunition dispensers. The sentry guns are a key piece to a good defense that does not need to adjust often, especially not on the fast paced capture maps (aka cp_well and cp_granary). Along with sentry guns and dispensers, engineers are also wanted on offense sometimes due to their ability to build teleporters. Using those to move people faster to the front lines is always a plus. Aside from their building plans they also are armed with a shotgun, a pistol and a wrench. The other three classes don’t really fit anywhere and therefore are in their own group called the specialists. The first one is the medic. If you played any previous versions of Team Fortress, then you most likely will remember that the medics were very powerful classes back then. In Team Fortress 2, they are just as important as before but in a different way. The medic’s offensive capabilities have been thrown away and it has been replaced by a whole new healing mechanism. In their arsenal they have a “healing gun” which fires a beam of light towards the person you are healing. While healing someone, you begin charging something called an “Ubercharge” on your side, which is basically 10 seconds of invincibility at any time after activation. This becomes a key tactic to pull off at the beginning of matches or can throw off any team’s balance, offense or defense. Along with the healing gun they also have a bone saw as well as the most pathetic gun in the game, the syringe gun. Not only is this gun painfully weak but, it is also the only gun in game to have a pitiful firing arc. The next class is the sniper. The sniper’s duty is simple. He snipes people with his sniper rifle. You can use the weapon with or without zooming in. Upon zooming in, you are given a set of crosshairs and if you let the scope sit for a few seconds, it will charge your shot. When it reaches 100%, it will be more powerful than if you had just taken a normal sniper shot at somebody. Along with the rifle, they are armed with a submachine gun and a machete. The last class in the game is the spy. The spy is a remarkable class because it is hard to play as one. You have the ability to mask yourself as the enemy, disguising yourself as any class. You can even disguise yourself as one of your teammates. Added to the ability to disguise is the ability to cloak, even if it is a limited cloak it is still a powerful ability. Another powerful ability of the spy is the ability to place a sapper on engineer buildings. What a sapper does is disable the building from operation and slowly damage it until it finally crumbles upon itself when it has no more health. A spy can also kill anyone in one hit by backstabbing with the knife. They are also armed with a revolver that is much more powerful than the pistol everyone else carries.
More Screenshots (click image to enlarge):   
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Developer:
Valve
In many ways Team Fortress 2 is awesome, in other ways it looks like a waste of time. If you are thrown off by the graphics and the cartoonish look of the game, don’t be. The game runs flawlessly with such graphics, everything doesn’t need to be a realism simulation, which is what Team Fortress 2 was supposed to be originally in 1998. The only downfalls for the time being would be the total removal of friendly fire which allows you to harm another teammate. This can be a blessing on public servers, but for match play this is more of a hindrance. Another thing that slightly brings the game down is the fact that Valve did not release anymore default maps upon the release of the game. Launching Team Fortress 2 with only six maps is kind of weak, even if there is a good mapping community, Valve should have been on top of things by making a couple more ideal maps for match play. If you can get past these minimal faults then you will certainly enjoy this game for what it is worth. With over 10,000 people play this game at any given time, you will never run out of people to play with or against. Hell you can probably even join a team for some competitive gaming against other teams.
