|
Team Fortress 2 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Guns By: PoisonRamune, the Apathetic Lizardman To say that I don’t like FPSs would be a lie. However, I don’t like a lot of “modern” first person shooters out there. Before Valve taught me to love again (through Portal, Left 4 Dead, and TF2), the last FPS I played and actually liked was Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I felt Counterstrike was a joke in terms of competitive shooter, in that it was really a matter of simply out pointing and clicking your opponent (rather than using any strategy). I absolutely hated the Halo series to the point where I had to bribe myself with drugs and booze to finish Halo 2. The thing I hated about the Halo series is that they held your hand through the games. That and the story was incredibly lacking. However, I’m not a drunken frat boy or ADD addled teen (I only play one on the net), so the story wasn’t written for me anyway.
The thing that makes Team Fortress 2 good is that it’s a very repetitive game. While normally repetition makes a game boring, it really works for TF2. Since Team Fortress 2 is a competitive online shooter, learning every nook and cranny of each map is essential. However, because TF2 is a competitive online shooter those familiar maps become way different each play through depending on your teammates and your opponents. This is what makes this game so great. Playing a round of TF2 is like playing a pick up game of basketball, everything works on constants. The ball is never going to levitate out of the blue or start falling faster than 9.8 m/sec squared. The game stays constant and it’s either going to be your team’s greatness or suckiness that causes its rise or downfall. While this can be said for most other co-operative/competitive games, it seems all the more important in Team Fortress 2. Unless you’re playing a match with a very low player count, you’ll never get ahead trying to do it all yourself or win by getting lucky.
The game itself is pretty straight forward. In fact, the modes are very similar to any other online FPS you’ve playing in the past. There’s the standard capture the flag, where you have to infiltrate your opponent’s base and bring their intelligence briefcase (flag) back to your base. There’s also attack and defend maps, where one team is the aggressor and has to take over the other team’s capture point while they (the defending team) try to hold them off. Finally, there’s a mode in which both teams scramble to capture all the control points on the ma (there’s also 2 other modes called arena and payload that I know nothing about because I play TF2 on 360… And Microsoft could care less about us TF2 fans, unless it comes to updates which I’ll go more into on part 2). The only thing Team Fortress 2 seems to be missing is a full on team deathmath mode, but this can honestly be overlooked since a rousing game of attack and defend can become a deathmatch in itself.
Another big draw on TF2 is the voice chat. Voice chat is absolutely essential in this game; since it’s normally not the “newb” that’s mucking your team up, it’s mostly going to be the cheapskate that didn’t spring for a mic (or the destructive 14 year old that broke the mic that came with his Xbox). Talking to your team members not only helps you set up strategic attacks and “spy check” (more on that in part 2), but it’s also sorta fun just to have a conversation with new random people (gawd, this sounds like an ad for eharmony). One thing that makes this game really stand out is the art style. As a professional designer, I love the stylization and design in this game. Gone is that gritty, red, brown, and gray theme from other modern war shooters; and in comes a very whimsical yet still very grown-up style of design. Imagine the style of Pixar’s Incredibles with a slight Norman Rockwell influence and you have Team Fortress 2’s powerful visuals. Everything in the game is bright and vibrant (except for the shadows) and has a really clean art deco feel to it.
Perhaps, this is the main reason why I like this game. As many of you know, my favorite war time era is the Cold War and this game screams 1950’s – 1980’s war in terms of hybrid visual style and clever cast of characters. Speaking of characters, people who may have played the game a few times or have read about it will notice that I never mentioned any of the 9 different classes in this game. However, I cordially invite you to part 2 of this article where I’ll introduce my 9 new best friends.
|
