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Team Fortress 2 Beta Impressions October 02, 2007 John JCal Callaham |
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Summary: We're just a week away from the debut of Team Fortress 2! In this article Jcal goes over his favorite aspects of the TF2 beta.
 Team Fortress 2 Beta Impressions | Page:: ( 1 / 3 ) |
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Near the end of Valve's development of the original Half-Life game, they announced plans to release Team Fortress 2, a stand alone game that was designed as a step up from the original game in terms of graphics and features (Valve released the free mod Team Fortress Classic that was basically a port of the original Quake mod with Half-Life's graphical basis). At E3 in 1999 we saw a demo of Team Fortress 2, with character models that resembled U.S. Army soldiers and facial animation that was a huge step up from Half-Life's original voice animation features.
And then...nothing.
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Until recently Valve has not been terribly open about the development of their games. Half-Life 2 was created in near secrecy until its debut at E3 2003. Team Fortress 2 was also created in near secrecy as well. At one point Valve wanted to put in a Commander role, in which a player would command first person troops in a kind of RTS setting, but Valve couldn't make that concept work. So instead of making a game with a ton of new features, Valve decided to refine what was already present in the original Team Fortress mod. They added classes and created some new gameplay conditions, but mostly they kept what worked in the original mod.
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The result is the "new" Team Fortress 2 which is one of the three new games included in the five-game Orange Box collection that will be released by Valve next week for the PC and Xbox 360 (and for the PS3 a few weeks later). PC owners have been able to play a pre-release version of Team Fortress 2 for a couple of weeks now and our initial impressions are that the game is still an addictive experience.
| Team Fortress 2 Classes | Page:: ( 2 / 3 ) |
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The nine classes in Team Fortress 2 have been balanced down to a T (indeed Valve is still balancing out some classes before its official release next week). Each class is deadly on its own but one of the big reasons why the game is so fun is that it encourages true team play. Having a medic heal up a Heavy Weapons Guy as he charges into a battle is a common team up, as is teaming up a Demoman with some of the constructs of the Engineer to defend a base. One of the big problems with the "support" classes in any team-based FPS is that they aren't really all that fun to play, but playing as the Medic, Spy and Engineer in the new Team Fortress 2 eliminates that issue. There's nothing quite like stabbing an enemy while playing as a disguised spy or getting a feeling of satisfaction as your machine gun turrets take out a slew of bad guys. Protecting a fellow teammate as the Medic is also a cool feeling.
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That's not to say that playing the offensive and defensive classes aren't enjoyable. Firing the big mini-gun on the Heavy Weapons Guy or blowing apart enemy teammates with the Soldier's rocket gun has that visceral effect that you would expect. The Demoman can fling grenades with ease and the Pyroman's flame thrower can be quite deadly in close quarters. The Sniper is still a class of patience and skill and is for those players who just need to watch and wait. We still aren't that crazy about the Scout class; yes, it's fast moving but in our playtime we found it was the hardest to use in terms of killing foes.
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Valve has decided to only release six maps for the initial version of Team Fortress 2 but as the developers state in the audio commentary portion of the game (a must if you have any interest at all in multiplayer game design), they would rather make six really great map rather than, say, 20 maps of which only a few might get played with any great frequency. The maps of Team Fortress 2 might not be the massive maps of, say, a Battlefield game, but its clear that the level design has been created to make players think about strategy; where bottlenecks are, where to defend and where to attack. This is not an attempt to make a level that is a "realistic" setting but one that is designed for fun gameplay (Valve does plan to release additional maps for Team Fortress 2 in the coming months).
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| Team Fortress 2 Graphics | Page:: ( 3 / 3 ) |
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Of course, the biggest different in Team Fortress 2 from its earlier versions and indeed from any multiplayer shooter yet released is its unique art design. In the commentary, Valve developers stated they were inspired by early 20th century illustrations for creating the visual look of the characters and settings. The highly stylized look of each character was made specifically so that players could easily identify what character each player was using and it works. It also works as a highly fun game element as well; graphics have evolved that having a photo-realistic look for games isn't really necessary anymore. We hope other game developers will consider expanding their art palette for upcoming games.
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There's lots of other things we could discuss about Team Fortress 2; the way that the game lets you know who killed you in a match; the stats announcements that let's you know, say, how you played as a Sniper compared to your last round; how the gameplay types are not so cut and dried as capturing a flag or holding onto a control point..but we have to leave something for our review next week of The Orange Box, which will have the final non-beta version of Team Fortress 2 along with the puzzle shooter Portal and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the next chapter in Valve's continuing story on the trials and tribulations of Gordon Freeman. We will just say that Team Fortress 2 looks like it will once again be the addicting experience that the original Quake 1 mod was 10 years ago, and that's saying something.
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