Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is a team-based multiplayer first person shooter developed by Valve.  The game was first released in 2007 for PC and xbox360 as part of Valve’s ‘Orange Box’ and has since then seen a PS3 release and even had a standalone release.  In 2010 Team Fortress 2 was released for Mac OS X and also made free-to-play and eventually was playable on Linux in 2013.

Team Fortress 2 follows the same premise as the first game pitting two teams against each other, Reliable Excavation Demolition (Team RED) and Builders League United (Team BLU) and has nine classes available for each team.  Each class has its own unique strengths, weaknesses abilities, weapons and roles.  However the abilities have evolved as the game has progressed.  Since being released on different formats, only the PC/Mac OS X/Linux version still has a very loyal following, with over 60,000 unique users playing the game each day.  Making Team Fortress 2 the third most played game through the Steam platform behind Counter Strike and Dota.  Team Fortress 2 was created with a cartoony feel instead of going with realistic graphics, however still has a great deal of graphic violence.  However the game still holds comic value and shouldn’t be taken too seriously, even although the players can take it very seriously. 

Since its release on PC, Team Fortress 2 has seen many updates that have evolved the game which has kept the game interesting.  One of the most frequent occurrences that happens in game is players will receive random weapons which can be equipped by one of the classes with different bonuses and weaknesses.   In 2011 when the game was made free-to-play, Valve opened an in-game store where players could use real money to buy new costumes and weapons to use in the game, and this has been the primary source of income for the game now.

Team Fortress 2 was first developed with three game play modes: 

Capture the point – where the objective is to capture all the areas of the map to win,

 Payload – in which one team has to move a bomb to the enemy base to blow it up.

Capture the flag – in which You must retrieve the enemy teams briefcase and bring it back to your safe zone to earn points.

As the game more popular, more game types were added later.  In 2012 Valve released their much anticipated ‘Mann vs. Machine’ update which pits six players against increasingly difficult waves of robots, intent on destroying your base.  This update came with two versions to play ‘Mann Up’ which you use tickets you buy from the online store to play where afterwards you receive a special weapon or outfit.  And ‘Boot Camp’ which is the free to play version, but does not come with any rewards.  Most players who play this MvM will choose the ‘Mann Up’ version so that they can play with competent players.

All in all, Team Fortress 2 is a game that I’ve personally played since its release and always feel that the game feels different every time you play it.  This is down to the amount of players and variations of weapons that have been implemented into the game.  With its fast paced and sometimes frantic games Team Fortress is a great game to just drop into and play a few rounds when you have a bit of spare time.  However one of the main reasons that people play Team Fortress 2 is quite simple...HATS!  Team Fortress 2 will still holds up from its first release nearly 8 years ago, and has the potential to still be one of the most played games a further 8 years from now, or until Valve release Team Fortress 3.