Team Fortress 2 Review

Now, when I first picked up this game, I have to admit, apart from small doses of halo 1 + 2 I was a pretty big FPS noob. In fact, if I had to say it, Halo 1 and 2 could really only class as foreplay, they were only fleeting and not full on encounters.

So, with my 1 month gold trial, and no wish to try out Half Life 2 just yet, I picked up my controller, created a Live account, and rushed my FPS virginity out of the window. Now, as shameful as it is now, I can definitely say like the real deal, losing your FPS virginity is an extremely embarrassing ordeal you will never live down till the day you die. Me, being the absolute whore for flames and burning pick to play as a pyro class. Not a bad choice for those who know how to use them, and it's a fairly simple class to learn the game on, with a shotgun (as with a large percent of the classes) and the ability to deal death fairly quickly.

Of course, never playing more then a few hours on an FPS, and never online, I automatically figured the average player was intelligent as your average AI.

Boy was I wrong.
First game down, and no kills.
As you can expect, my "team mates" flamed the hell out of me for not flaming the hell out of the other team, and to say the least at the end of the 3 game run of 2fort, I was booted.

Feeling as if I had been robbed of what should have been one of the biggest landmarks in my gaming career, and feeling like a cheap whore who'd failed to please his man, I through my controller away and went and playing some crackdown with a friend.

Two days later I had finally built up enough courage to re-try to shake off my newby ways and enter the hardcore world of FPS gaming. And so it went, me slowly gaining an ability with A pyro, then a short affair was spent with the scout class, acquainting me with the scenery and locations of health spawns and giving me a general look around the maps.

Moving round the classes I quickly found a love for the Sniper and Engineer class, two of my most played classes, as well as medic and heavy.

Little pyro and scout seemed a little too fidgety for my tastes with lack of any range, and spy was useless unless you know all the tips off by hearts and used your cloak well. Which of course I had no idea.

So there you go, a little history of Cyberfreak's first (and most dreadful) attempts at playing an FPS. Forward 5 months and a hell of allot of playing on the halo games and a few other FPS games (including the Half Life titles, which reviews are pending) and I've slowly gained myself some skill, especially in the 4 classes I've mentioned.

Now, onto the real bulk of the review. I guess you can say out of all the big Multi-player FGS games out on the 360, when you ask "Which is your favourite?" hearing an answer like "TF2" is almost as uncommon as hearing people in the streets shouting "WOOO I'VE GOT AIDS AND I'M GOING TO DIE!!!". Well I guess that might make sense, with Halo Fan-boys at every corner and the madly talented game-whores who live breath and shit COD4, an admittedly brilliant and clever game.

So why would one such as myself pick TF2 over all of those games? The answer is simply these, so please read on if your actually interested.

Firstly is TF2s community. Unlike games such as Halo and COD4, where Winning is rewarded with levels and special things to show off your awesomeness on the game, TF2 tends not to focus on that. Although there is a ranking system, besides those users who are bred to be ultra-competitive on games like COD4, it's more of a back feature few care about. And that's a great advantage for TF2. The community isn't watered down with overconfident idiots who believe that because they're awesome on a game they deserve some sort of shiny medal with "I have no life and proud". Team Fortress two has a much more laid back feel to it, the users are usually incredibly chatty within their teams, which always ends up having hilarious results. I can recall several times I have accidentally spent 40-50 minutes in the lobby before starting a game just because of the chatter going on.

And sadly, this sense of laid-back comedy is lacking in allot of Online FPS games. Make of that what you will.

My next love of the game comes in the class system. Unlike Halo, in which your ability to find a good weapon may make your ability either as amazing or incredibly shit, people can pick a class they're abilities are suited to. It also leads to allot of more playability.

However, there is one thing the class system holds as a problem. And that's the ability to react to scenario's quickly because of the limits of a class. Now, with almost half the classes having shotguns, especially for classes such as Pyro, they have no ranged ability and if they come up against a heavy/medic combo there's very little chance they'll even get in for a good flamebash. Of course, that may still be down to my lack of skill, but there's times I've wished the sniper had a better mid-range weapon then the useless piece of shit he has. Seriously, is he shooting sesame seeds out of that thing or something?

But confining weapon limits aside, there is another problem.
And that is lack of maps. Now, I'm aware this is not the case for the PC version, however, where are the map packs that games like halo have on every know and then. I'd kill for two or three more maps. Also, each map has a set mission style. And although that kind of makes sense, seeing as the maps are built around fitting that game style, it can get a little bit annoying, seeing as with a little bit of thought there could have been one map with all types of mission on.

But again, that's just small personal feeling. I know allot of people who feel different.

And I guess that's all there is to say on it.

Also, fyi, taunts are awesome.