Reporter

Administrator
Team fortress is still a good game to pick up if you want a good first person shooter online
Hi, all- I have about 900 hours in Tf2 (and that's partially a brag), and wanted to contribute to the sub by commenting on how competent of a shooter game it really is, and why if you're looking for a bit of action, it's a good choice as a free game.

***

Basically, team fortress has 9 playable class characters, and usually features a 12v12 game. This is where the first big positive of the game comes in- absolute endless chaos. It's quite hard to describe, but I'm well accustomed to the feeling of walking out of the spawn door and hearing the typical morning noises of a demoman shouting, a heavy revving up his gun and a sentry firing rockets. It's refreshing compared to the more mellow/watered down 'chaos level' modern shooters have. They create chaos scenarios, but they don't seem as real as the player created ones in tf2. With 24 players in a tight space, funny shit happens, and it makes it a better game because of it.

The weapon variety is also pretty great. I think the class with the least melee weapons is either the spy or the engineer- and engineer has some of the most diverse playstyles, because all of his weapons bring something meaningfully different to the experience. The Eureka Effect, for instance, unlike the stock weapon, allows you to teleport to spawn or to your teleporter entrance at will. The Gunslinger introduces a whole new building and essentially a new class of mobile engineer. It's truly interesting how diverse playstyles can get- in contrast to games with a lot of classes but fewer changeable weapons (a la Overwatch- not a bad thing, just different), it seems as though different combinations almost offer a whole new class in in of themselves.

That leads on to my other point of tf2 being a good game to play even now, and that's the art-style and design. I won't go into detail because I don't actually know a lot about design, I just know it's good when I see it. Tf2's characters always pop out from the surroundings- and they don't need an outline or flashing UI to do so- the colouring is simply different, and allows the player to see who is on their team, and who isn't. Weapons are always obvious- even smaller ones- for example, I can spot the type of revolver a spy is using from across a field of battle, and judge my approach accordingly. You can't really do that in other games, at least not as easily. I think this is what makes the game the most playable 12 years (!) after release- the graphics hold up well, and it's still playable because of them- unlike some older shooters where enemies just blend into the surroundings and make it a pain to do anything.

So that's how I come to it- because of visuals, varied weapons and classes and big maps with loads of players, I think tf2 is worth a try even today. Last I checked it has 60k players online at peak hours, which is a lot for a game older than a big chunk of modern players. A big issues is the updates (it's been put on hold until valve is done with some of their other projects). The last big one was 2 years ago. It'd be fine if it wasn't for the wave of hackers that flooded in- on EU servers you can find one per 3 matches or something like that. To avoid that, you could navigate on to a Skial community server or something along those lines. I'm fine with them since I learned to have fun in spite of hackers, but most new players wont be able to have fun constantly being killed.

Also tf2 has a super steep learning curve, so if you want to get good either go to MrPaladin/UncleDane on youtube or open the voice coms and ask for help which someone might give.

E: While it's downloading (or to get a good intro to the game) watch any of the "Meet the Team" videos on youtube. Maybe "Meet the Spy" since most references come from that.

Author: PiniataLad47

https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgam..._fortress_is_still_a_good_game_to_pick_up_if/
http://www.reddit.com/r/patientgame..._fortress_is_still_a_good_game_to_pick_up_if/