Team Fortress 2
Team based shooters. You either love ‘em or leave ‘em. By far the most successful online team shooter of all time has to be Counter Strike: 1.6 with most of the community gradually and sometimes reluctantly moving to Counter Strike: Source. But a barrier for many new players has always been the incredibly steep learning curve for a game that has a well established and extremely skilful mass of regular players.
Even on public servers the n00b will find themselves looking at the spectator screens for a lot of the time… and surviving for more than a few minutes at the start of each match is incredibly tough. The biggest problem with Counter Strike is finding a clan that’ll be patient enough to help you learn the game and give you a chance to get better. Clans like this are out there and it is worth hunting them down but still expect to get headshotted more often than not.
This leaves an obvious gap in the market for a team based shooter that makes it easy for the new player to get to grips with and that’s where Team Fortress 2 comes in. But don’t let those cartoony looks fool you into thinking this is a simplistic shooter, it’s not… it’s just been made more accessible to n00bs.
Click for larger imageThe basic principle of Team Fortress 2 is far from new. You choose a side and then pick one of nine character classes to play. Each class has their own set of unique abilities and, as with other class based shooters such as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, you’ll need your team to have an even mix of classes to win.
Most class names are self explanatory of what each class can do. A scout is lightly armoured but very quick, Pyro can take average damage but has a devastatingly powerful short-range flame thrower, Heavy is slow moving, can take huge damage and has a massive minigun, Medic takes average damage but can heal other players etc etc.
Click for larger imageNow where Team Fortress 2 departs from the norm from class based shooters is primarily in the graphics department, where cel-shaded caricatures are the order of the day. So you Scout is a bit like a teen skateboarder, but with a gun instead of a skateboard, the Medic has rim-glasses and a white lab coat, the Spy is a dressed in a James Bond-style suit with added balaclava and the Engineer has a construction hat and overalls.
All of these serve to clearly indicate, right from the very start, what class each player is. Honestly, Team Fortress 2 is one of those games where you can lob the manual in the bin and just get in a play, it really is that easy. And, for the new player, the game is also quite forgiving. Sure, run around without a care and you’ll go down quickly, but play as part of a team and use your character’s abilities as they should and you’ll start to see some success.
Click for larger imageThat’s not to say that Team Fortress 2 has simplified the gameplay down to Tomy Aged 3+ levels, not one bit of it. You’ve still got all the depth and complexity of the original and team tactics really are essential if you want to trounce the enemy, what Valve have done is to spend a mass of time figuring out how to make the game accessible and they’ve managed to do that with spades.
Oh, and worthy of a mention here is the voice work for each class, which superbly fits the cartoony aspect of the classes. The Soldier has a gruff military voice, a bit like the Drill Sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, the Demoman is a brilliantly funny pissed-up Scot, Heavy has a completely over-the-top Russian accent whilst the Engineer speaks with a Red Adair style Texan drawl… great stuff.
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