Team Fortress Classic came out about 10 years ago as a mod for
Half-Life. It was announced that there would be a squeal to Team
Fortress Classic 9 years ago, and today with the Orange Box we finally
have it.
When you pop in Team Fortress from your Xbox 360 or from your PC the
first thing you’ll see is the game’s art style. The game looks awesome!
While they aren’t as good as Gears of War or Call of Duty 4 they still
look cool, and they don’t need to look cool for them to work really
well. Think a Pixar movie with a crap load of weapons and explosions,
and you’ll pretty much get Team Fortress 2. That’s a metaphor for the
entire game actually; this game looks sounds and feels like a cartoon.
As I said Team Fortress 2’s sound is also very much like a cartoon.
While the original Half-Life sounds are still in the game after 10
years, the explosions, water, and the guns all sound like a CGI movie.
This isn’t a bad thing at all, both the sound and visuals are awesome,
and they do the job.
Team Fortress is strictly a Multi-player game only. There is no single
player component, but that’s a good thing since the characters
shouldn’t really be in one. The Multi-player is objective based, so you
will be spending time capturing intelligence and control points.
Normally one team will defend their capture points while the other team
attacks the capture points, with a few exceptions. The map 2fort is a
capture the flag map and Hydro has everyone trying to capture points,
both teams defend and attack at the same time. The problem with the
maps is, there are only 6 out of the box, Valve promises more, but at
this time, there just aren’t too many.
The big selling point for Team Fortress 2 are the classes. The game
offers 9 classes out of the box, each one being totally different and
having a totally different role to play. Classes also work together in
order to succeed, for example a Heavy gunner can clear the front line
of enemies so a scout can run through and capture the flag. Perhaps the
most unique classes are the most helpful, for example the Spy can
disguise him self, and look to see what his team is up against, the
Medic has a medigun with fires a beam and gives people health, and
while a medic is healing you can get more health added to the maximum
aloud, then go into uber-charge to make both he and the person he’s
healing invincible for a short while. All the classes are fun, and it’s
cool to see how they work in different instances.
Team Fortress is a great piece of the Orange Box; it has almost
everything a multiplayer component needs, for now. The game is fun,
fast, and frantic; you could play this game on the same 6 maps for
hours and still have a different experience each time. Whether you buy
it stand alone, or on the Orange Box this game belongs in any action
fan’s collection.
