This game has totally surpassed my expectations. So much greatness. Some random things:
The pace and scale of the game are just about perfect. When a round starts, the action is almost instantaneous, and it keeps running at 11 until the end. I love that you don’t have to look around for 10 minutes to find someone to shoot (y helo Quake Wars).
There’s something for everyone to do, depending on your playstyle. I’ve always enjoyed playing defense, so I’ve been focusing on the engineer and setting up turrets in the intelligence area or control points, and having a blast. If someone else takes the engineer role and plays D, I’ll go soldier and put a little firepower down there to help the turret. One guy from my site likes sneaking around and stabbing people in the back, so he was a spy most of the time. Another rotated around between a few classes, but seemed to enjoy the medic’s abilities. BTW the medic/heavy weapons guy combo is pretty rough.
The visuals are beautiful. The style works perfectly, and it’s great to (a) be able to tell friends and enemies apart easily and (b) tell what class everyone is easily so you know how to react (hint: HW Guy = run).
I love LOVE how the game keeps track of what’s going on. When it was announced to all that “Slacker is DOMINATING Lollan!” (the spy mentioned above) a smile appeared on my face that may never leave. I haven’t seen it yet, but apparently if you and one other player kill each other enough it establishes you as nemisises (spelling?) of each other. It also keeps track of “revenge” kills, aka killing the person who just killed you. Awesome.
The game keeps all kinds of stats, which are fun to read. There are also Xbox Live-style achievements that you can rack up while you’re playing. Stuff like getting a certain number of kills with a certain class, setting up a certain number of turrets, winning a round in a set time limit, and so on. The only negative is that it doesn’t appear to tell you when you’ve achieved something. Not a big deal, but I think it’d be cool if it popped up like it does on the Xobx. Also, there are currently 17 achievements, how about a few more?
When you die, the camera zips over to a freeze frame of the person who killed you, and you can hit F5 to take a screenshot. Some of these shots are particularly hilarious depending on how you died, especially if you get a shot of an engineer standing by a turret laughing.
It’s a little buggy. I’ve had the “tab” issue (where pressing tab wtfcrashes me to desktop) happen on and off at higher resolutions, so I’ve been playing at 1024x768 with AA/AF cranked as high as they’ll go to compensate. It still looks excellent fortunately, but I hope they fix that soon so I can play at 1680x1050, the way God and Samsung intended.
There are only six maps at the moment, so I’m really hoping more will be coming 'round the mountain after the game is officially released. We definitely need more CTF maps (2fort is the only one so far right?).
No “hunter” mode. I loved that in TFC. However…
This game is going to get modded out the wazoo. I can’t wait to see what the community does with this sucker. I think people are going to be playing this for a long long time.
Yeah there are still some TFC servers out there. I think the last time I checked through STEAM there were a couple hundred active servers. Most were filled with BOTS, but there are a couple of good ones left. Drippy’s 2-Fort server is still around. There’s one called [DAD] that’s good. I just recently got back in to it after taking a few year hiatus. Can’t wait to try out TF2 though…looks great.
I pre-ordered the Orange Box and got to try out the TF2 beta a bit more last night, and I absolutely love it as well. Pyro is still a bit underpowered, but it’s so much fun to drop down in the center of a bunch of enemies and torch everything. I also love the muffled Kenny-style voice they have for him. “Medddghhhh!” = “Medic!” Also of great fun is the Heavy once he gets on a killing spree, he starts laughing maniacally and making snide comments to the enemy.
Getting a medic to back you up while you go on a heavy weapons rampage is a joy like no other.
One of my favorite kills last night came while I was trying to defend the basement in 2fort by myself as an engineer. Story time:
I had put up my transporter entrance and exit at the top of the two stairways leading down to the basement. I do this not because anyone ever needs to travel between those two spots (which are only about 15 seconds apart anyway), but because the incoming marauders can’t resists blowing up those suckers on the way by, handily letting me know that (a) they’re coming, and (b) which way they’re coming from.
I saw the transporter entrance disappear from my HUD, so I knew they were on their way down the long straight staircase at the back. I ducked in the resupply room and waited, and soon saw the dreaded HWB (Heavy Weapons Bastard) & Medic combo come lumbering into the basement. I took a few potshots at the medic while ducking behind the door (it automatically closes and they can’t open it), all the while zipping back to the back of the supply room to refill whatever health the HWB had chipped away.
After trading a few shots they rounded the corner to go into the intel room, taking out my turret along the way. That’s when I decided it was time to make moves. I whipped out my trusty wrench and ran like hell out of the supply room, charging around the corner at the intruders. As luck would have it there were in perfect position: the HWB was facing the briefcase and the medic was behind him healing him up (my fully upgraded turret probably did some van damage).
WHUMP! I brought down the wrench on the back of the medic’s head, and he went down like a sack of potatoes. The HWB started to turn to defend himself, but alas, bang bang Slacker’s Silver Wrench came down upon his head. Two shots and he folded over like a cheap suit. I hit the taunt button to laugh, then leaned back in my chair, taking a moment to ponder just how awesome this game is.
Team Fortress 2 is absolutely awesome. I’d highly advise anyone to buy the Orange Box so that you can play it right now. And while you’re at it, join the SDMB on the Steam Community so we can play together.
I’ve played it twice so far- but the weird thing is that I don’t get any sound. My sound card plays nice with all of my other games, but not TF2. I really need to figure out what’s going on, 'cause it’s hard to get into a game with no sound.
The original team fortress for quake is probably my favorite FPS game of all time, I played it a whole lot.
When I got half-life, I tried TFC and I just couldn’t get into it. It was too action-oriented… players moved faster, things seemed more cramped… it was more about spamming grenades and such all over the place and flooding areas to get kills than TF, which had a slower pace that seemed to leave more room for strategy and tactics. TF just overall was a whole lot more fun.
Unfortunately from your description it sounds more like TFC than the original.
I got my sound working- I had it set to “4 speakers”, but it would only give me sound if I set it to “2 speakers”, even though I’ve got four of 'em. shrug
Get it! TF2 is worth $45 by itself IMO. TF2, Episode 2, and Portal are more than worth the cost of the box. Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 are pretty much just freebies, likely intended to be given away by purchases to friends to get them hooked on the franchise too.
It’s 90% the same as TFC, with much better graphics, ragdoll physics, etc. The look, feel, and gameplay are just right. I played a few TF mods for Unreal Tournament and they just didn’t capture the TFC feel.
TF2 sounds a lot better than I expected though, I didn’t like the cartoony look of it, but sounds like the gameplay is very good.
I am a cheap bastard. If I wait a few months, I can save $15! Then, either everyone will be sick of the game or they will all be experts and they can hand me my newbie ass all night long.
Damn this sounds like fun. I may have to get in on it at some point. I’m already hooked up to the Steam SDMB community, I just don’t have any games to play over it right now.
Just got the Orange Box pre-load last night and played TF2 for about an hour. It’s definitely a fun frolic but I wish it would have had a few more elements. First being the damn grenades!!! Gah how I miss those! I saw on the Steam message boards that the grenades are not coming back even when it’s out of beta status. The reason cited was spam. I thought that in TFC some servers had a way around spam by limiting how often grenade packs respawned, etc. Oh well. I also miss the rocket jump for the solider. I had some wicked binds set up for my solider in TFC one of which completed the whole rocket jump maneuver in one keystoke…I didn’t even have to look down the bind would do it for me in a split second. All that being said I do love the bloody giblets in TF2. I joined the SDMB community on Steam and look forward to seeing some of you there…and fragging you too!
One guy from my site likes sneaking around and stabbing people in the back, so he was a spy most of the time. Another rotated around between a few classes, but seemed to enjoy the medic’s abilities. BTW the medic/heavy weapons guy combo is pretty rough. 
I loved that in TFC. However…
Also of great fun is the Heavy once he gets on a killing spree, he starts laughing maniacally and making snide comments to the enemy.