Team Fortress 2 :: PC

In multiplayer gaming, it is important to know your role. This can be accomplished through team communication, doing what you do best, or by forcing you to be a team player. The last is the case with Team Fortress 2. In Team Fortress 2 you will get the best team-based experience available, assuming you can do your assigned duty.

Team is truly the most important part of the name. In Team Fortress 2, players are given nine classes to choose from, each of which is crucial to the success of the group. Each class is unique not in just weaponry, but also in abilities, speed, and scoring factors. Simply put, each one is a different experience all together. While playing Scout affords you amazing speed, jumping and capturing abilities, most weaponry makes very short work of you. Engineers are not great fighters, but the teleporters and sentry guns they construct are essential to the success of the team. It is easy to go on discussing the importance of every class, but that will be for each player to discover, finding what fits their natural play style and what surprisingly works for them.

When you are not concerned with your class, Team Fortress 2 makes it remarkably easy to associate with all other players classes on either team thanks to the wonderful style choice made by Valve. The graphics are stunning, not because of high end luster, but because of the smart design choice. The world of Team Fortress 2 is made up of the wackiest assortment of cartoon characters, all of which exude more personality than any avatar I have ever fragged. They make surprised expressions, the way each model shifts and walks is immediately identifiable. Truly, this was all crafted with a care not often seen. The maps, on the other hand are mostly cartoonish, but not interesting. They could be any environment and it really would not matter. However, putting lit signs point towards capture points is not only genius from a humor standpoint, but also assist you in avoiding the annoying habit of getting turned around when running to get in the fight.

Sound is another important identifier that Valve uses to a successful end. To go with the caricature of each class is a silly, yet appropriate, voice that provides laughs and a good understanding of the battlefield. Another voice that speaks volumes are those of the various weapons. When you first recognize the spinning of a Heavy's mini-gun around the corner, you will be thankful it was clear.

In keeping with the group effort that Team Fortress 2 encourages, all game modes are more than Deathmatch. You do have a rather standard capture the flag style, but it is accompanied by much better attack and defend capture point maps. The strategy required of both teams in these battles is easily where this game shines the best. A new mode added after the initial release, known as Gold Rush, is a great take on the traditional escort mission, replacing the escorted person with a bomb that must be pushed all the way to the opposing teams base.

Like many of Valve's new games (Orange Box) they have instituted their own achievement system, pulling some of the addictive nature from Xbox Live. Unfortunately, the first update to Team Fortress 2 has tied the achievements to unlocking new weapons and powers (at this point only for the Medic class). The idea was to get more players to use the Medic in games, but the obscurity and random difficulty of the Medic achievements have resulted in many players creating a map simply focused on attaining these achievements. Not only does this leave players skipping what Valve intended, it has also set a tricky precedent when gameplay-effecting abilities are tied to achievements. We can only hope that this is an experiment by Valve that will be re-evaluated.

Team Fortress 2 is an amazing game than continues to show greater depth every hour I spend with it. Every new strategy I discover makes the limited number of maps feel fresh again. When everyone works together with a successful result, the smiles of everyone can be felt. For some players being a cog in the wheel may not interest them, but for the rest there is no better option available.