Team Fortress 2 tips & quick review

Team Fortress 2 - Tips and a quick review

It’s taken me a while *cough* but I’ve finally bought The Orange Box for the Playstation 3, the successor to the Half Life Generations box, where the Half Life, it’s expansions and a multiplayer game were bundled together.

My first impression of the game was literally that it sucked balls. There was just so much that I didn’t like about the game, things that were to heavy to ignore. I honestly thought that it was the worst multiplayer experience I’ve ever had.

But here we are, later in time and more experienced because of it. I’ve managed to study the game more closely and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not really that bad a game as I first presumed. Quickly mastering the controls, since they are fairly basic and generic even, I focused more on trying to understand the game instead of mastering it. Finding that it’s really all about tactics, I decided to really try and use strategy. Because, like always, good teammates are hard to find, I wasn’t only forced to take in account the enemy troops, but my own as well. What was on the field? Where were they? Are they any good?

What I also needed to take in effect was how crappy the game was. Take for instance the classes. Way outbalanced. The Heavy class is a class with double health and a rail gun. However, distance is shit and speed is shit. On short range, it has potential. But not much. Balancing him out is the fact you really can’t take him out easily. 6 direct hits with a missile and he wasn’t dead. A full 10 seconds of close contact flamethrower and he wasn’t dead. Barraging him with scatter shots with a scout from close range and he wasn’t even halfway dead.

Then there was the fact that the action is way to fast for your guns, making sure you’ll miss your shot most of the time. By the time you press shoot, the other person would have moved an inch and you’ll the shot by miles, no matter which class you are.

At one point, I was a pyro and the other guy was a pyro. We both had full health. I started flaming him from behind for a full two seconds before he turned around and started with me. He killed me and still had 15% health.

What breaks this game is its gameplay. But the music, the sound effects, the graphics and more are just insanely awesome.

I just wish people went to other maps now and then. All I see this day is Dustbowl and 2Fort.

Now it’s about 2 days after I wrote the above and I have to say that I somewhat changed my mind. Because, after a while, you start to get more acquainted with the game and you see something that lies a lot deeper. Therefore I wanted to amp up my time with the scout, really learn how to play it. After that I searched the internet for some educational guides and videos. And you want to know something? The scout is amazingly fun to play if you know how. But, I’ll get in to this in another blog.

Because of this, I feel a lot better about this game than I did before, seeing that it has a lot of potential and that it’s just a damned shame that it’s being neglected like this. I hope that with Valve’s new love for the consoles, they’ll soon release Team Fortress 3 as a game good enough to be stand-alone. Slap it on to The Pink Box with Half-Life 3 and Portal 2 and Voila! Awesome sauce. (Yes, I do think that they should skip Episode 3 and go straight for Half Life 3, making major changes to the formula in the process.)

Final score:

8/10

Last time I played I managed to find three points that could be very useful tips to other people. Even those who want to play this game on other platforms. So, ladies and gentlemen, here goes!

1) Know your classes!

Every class has its up and downs. Take for example the Scout. It’s a very fast character with a lethal swing and a very powerful, short-range weapon. Downside is that he has 25 less points of health than the average class. This class is best used on the offensive as support, or as a Zerg rusher when you’re on the defense. I’ve won countless of battles with the Scout just by Zerg rushing the enemy intelligence or the enemy control point.

But, when the time was right and I saw a shift in the enemy’s classes, then I too changed my class to something else. If the enemy’s defense became too strong, I would go Engineer and pull up a dispenser and a turret at our intelligence. If the balance was tipped and I was still alive, I would destroy that turret and set it up again at the enemy base if I could. If I died, I’d switch to a more devastating class to keep the enemy down. If you have your enemy pinned down to single locations, like their spawns, take a spraying class like a Pyro, a Heavy or a Demo. If you see a Sudden Death is imminent, become a medic and keep your troops healthy. When you see that the enemy has a lot of annoying fucking turrets, become a spy and SAP THEM GOOD.

Just know that the better you support your team, the better your team can cover you. Pick a class as your favorite and stick with it when your team is easily winning.

Most importantly though, don’t forget to fight as every class once in a while so that you know what you’re up against! Know their weaknesses and learn how to exploit them.

2) Know your maps!

Now this is an important one kiddies. Lucky for me, the only two maps being played at the moment are Dustbowl and 2Fort so I managed to learn these two maps rather quickly.

Learning your maps is always important in any game, but double so for this one. You see, in every corner, you have the probability of being shot to smithereens by a sentry gun. You wouldn’t even last a second. (cheaters not withstanding. And yes, I have encountered them a lot in this game, unfortunately.)

So not only do you have to get a good reading of where people usually place the sentries, but you have to know the places from where best to take them out if you’re not a spy. Or how to bypass them.

Another important aspect of this tip is that you know the quickest routes. Speed is everything in this game. The slower you are, the harder it’ll be to furfill your goal of the map.

Knowing every nook and cranny will also help you hide from attackers if your health drops too low. Normally I wouldn’t recommend this but this is the kind of game where you have to run back from your base spawn. And it’s a real pain in the ass.

As a last note on the previous two: Pay Attention to as much as you can.

3) Know yourself!

Combining the previous two items can be very tricky if you don’t have a firm grasp of what you like and what you can do. If you have seen videos or reviews or whatever of this game before, then don’t let that make the calls for you. Maybe you liked the Sniper in the Meet The Sniper video and you want to use him. All I can tell you is that you better get over it fast if you suck at it.

Also, know what you want to do. Do you want to be in on the action, be on defense or be support, then chose that and stick with it. Change it up once in a while if you must, but stick with what you can do best. The longer you play with one set, the more experienced and the better you become.

If you know yourself, then you know what to chose and then you can kick some ass. Remember, it’s not about points, but about getting victory for your team. The best way you can help out to achieve this is by doing what you do best.

This has been PJ and that have been tips and a quick review on Team Fortress 2. See ya.