Yes, I finally gave in and bought the beta of Team Fortress 2. Yes, I own most of the stuff in the Orange Box and I have moral issues with Valve trying to sell people something they already owned, but I couldn’t resist TF2 after all the favorable impressions people were giving it. Considering I would play $45 for just TF2 alone, I figure I might as well get in early.

I’m amazed at how good TF2 looks even on my lower-end machine. See the in-game screenshot above? The whole game looks like that. It’s outrageous cartoonish fun.

When I first heard of the lack of grenades, I was disappointed. I lived (and died) on grenades in Team Fortress Classic. How is an engineer supposed to defend himself without the classic EMP grenade? After just a few minutes with TF2 and no nades, I loved it. The game is definitely a lot less spammy.

I don’t know what they did with the game to promote teammwork, but it works well. I was in a public server where practically my whole team was cooperating: a heavy guarding my sentry gun, a medic following a scout and healing him while he had the enemy briefcase, medics actually coming to my help when I shouted ‘medic!’. It was beautiful.

When I first heard that they were going to make TF2 and make it “more serious” I was afraid that they would make it drab like Day of Defeat, which is a fine game when you’re in the mood for it. I find it ironic that when TF2 finally came out, the visuals were a lot more cartoony than TFC yet the gameplay is definitely more serious and strategic.

I was afraid that my computer wouldn’t be powerful enough to run this game, but it actually runs it decently. Almost better than it runs Day of Defeat. I’m glad I finally broke down and bought this game.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 10:35 am and is filed under Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.