Gryphon Gazette

The student news site of Animo Pat Brown Charter High School

The student news site of Animo Pat Brown Charter High School

Gryphon Gazette

The student news site of Animo Pat Brown Charter High School

Gryphon Gazette

    Team Fortress 2 Review

    The year was 2007. Valve (who were responsible for titles such as Counter Strike, Left 4 Dead, Portal, Team Fortress: Classic and the almighty Half-Life series) released their new Source Engine game called “Team Fortress 2”, sequel to Team Fortress: Classic, it became a large-hit and became an instant fan favorite. From small advertisements and to competitive events, Team Fortress 2 became a well known and respected class-based first person shooter during its current life-span. That’s right, it is still currently played and still maintains a huge fanbase. From a game that was announced in 1998, released on October 10 in 2007 and is still being actively played and updated to this day.

    In the modern gaming industry, battle royale seems to be the pinnacle of anything related to gaming. Unlike this, Team Fortress 2 is a class based, first person shooter with many different objectives depending on the map selected and a huge trading community who trade player cosmetics and “other things.” Community wise, you’ll expect everything you get from playing with PC users so you will most likely play with a handful of “unique” people. From people who blast humorously self-made earrape into their microphones to people who tear each others throats out because of a in-game debate on whether or not “the use of the N-word with the hard R can be justified.” If you are not easily offended and can take a joke, then you’ll fit in the TF2 community (or Steam Source community as a whole) just fine.

    The game uses 9 character classes. The Scout who is a fast talking, cocky baseball fan and street runner who is capable of double jumping and captures control points and pushes payloads twice as fast as other classes.The Soldier is a highly patriotic American military man (despite the fact that he has never been in the Army) and is the second slowest class out of the 9 and has the second most health.The Pyro is a deranged pyromaniac who doesn’t speak and has an undetermined origin and gender. The Pyro’s flanking tactics make it the best class to choose to start an ambush.The Demoman (demolition man) is a black, Scottish, one eyed alcoholic. He is capable of spamming explosives from his grenade launcher. The Heavy is a large Soviet man who is heavy in stature and accent. He has the slowest class and has the most health and is armed with a minigun. The Engineer is a texan with a very calm demeanor and is capable of placing sentry turrets and teleporters that help his team. The Medic is a German Doctor who has no regards for the Hippocratic Oath and is capable of healing their teammates, giving them special “perks” or making them invincible. The Sniper is an Aussie/New Zealand. The name is all you need to know. The Spy is a French double agent who is able to sneak behind enemies lines and become the reason why people stop playing competitively as every stab in the back will kill you instantly.

    The gameplay varies by map played. You will either be playing CTF (Capture the flag), Control Points (attack or defend control points), King of The Hill, Arena (King of The Hill with no respawns), Mann Vs. Machine (protect control points from waves of robots), PASS Time (a combination of sports elements such as hockey, basketball and soccer plus normal TF2 combat) and Payload (escort a bomb through numerous checkpoints or prevent it from reaching these checkpoints). With the addition of community-created maps, players could experience some servers/maps that include a large amount of unique custom gamemodes and VERY unique and strange maps. They are so strange that I could spend countless hours just describing 1 map that a college student probably made when he was listening to K-pop and overdosing on Flintstone vitamin gummies. Those maps are THAT strange.

    Team Fortress 2 had a huge impact on the gaming community for a game that came out in 2007. It spanned from limited promotional events in other games, ongoing comic books and even sponsoring cooking appliances (strangely enough). The TF2 promotional events in other games were very interesting. Killing Floor had promotional TF2 playable characters, Poker Night at The Inventory had The Heavy as an opponent and Sonic & All Stars Racing: Transformed had The Pyro, The Spy and The Heavy as playable characters if you have a TF2 save file.

    Team Fortress 2 is still a fun game to pick up and play, even to this day. The best thing about it is that it’s free. If you are interested, head down to the Steam website and download it.

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