Team Fortress 2 Review

Stand alone cover for Windows

One my favorite games and without a doubt my favorite PC game, Team Fortress 2 is just an endless world of possibilities.  Released by Valve on April 9, 2007, but was originally released October 10, 2008 with The Orange Box for Xbox 360 and Windows. On June 23, 2011 it became a free-to-play game, which dramatically increased the amount of gamers and I remember that day; I was just playing with my buddies on a server playing payload and the game crashed. Turns out all the nine year olds that just got the game, jumped online all at once, and it crashed the game afterwards.  A few days later I jumped online and my worst fears had been confirmed.  Let me tell you something about PC gaming, its where I go when Im sick of listening to all the little kids screaming and cussing at you on Xbox, because PC gaming is mainly free of that kind of thing and people are nice and good sports..  So nothing annoys me more when I get on my laptop and run into the same scenario.  Thats pretty much what that day was like, along with the rest of the month.  It was bugging me because I knew how to play, at first this was good because I always beat these kids.  Then about half way through the month they figured out how to boot you with a vote, which is an option that TF2 has, but is rarely used because people are nice. Although these kids usually played together so they  used to their own skill level and when a experienced player like me or my friends comes along they think that were hacking because we know how to play the game, so we got booted. It was like Combat Arms all over again, but in a game I loved and cherished.  Anyway back to the game.  TF2 is mainly a multiplayer game but has a general background plot that is revealed through comics on the official website. Redmond, Blutarch, and Gray Mann were born in 1822 as fraternal triplet sons of Zepheniah Mann, the owner of a successful arms manufacturing business. Gray, already sentient, intelligent and capable of fluent speech, was kidnapped by an eagle within minutes of birth during the Great Eagle Scourge of 1822; Zepheniah would withhold knowledge of Gray from everyone else. Redmond and Blutarch were extremely competitive, attempting to vie for favor from their elderly father as to inherit the company after his death. In the 1860s, they convinced Zepheniah to purchase numerous pieces of land in the United States as assets for the company, but once they traveled there, they found the land to be barren dustbowls and gravel pits. Further, the travel caused Zepheniah to come down with numerous maladies, and soon died thereafter. In his will, Zepheniah bequeathed his munitions company, Mann Co., to his aide and tracker, the Australian hunter Barnabas Hale and his estate to his maidservant, Elizabeth. As punishment for their reckless and short-sighted scheme, Zepheniah's will ordered that Redmond and Blutarch were to fight over the worthless land they had made him acquire. Soon, Blutarch created his own company Builders League United (BLU) and hired mercenaries to fight for him; Redmond followed suit with his own company, Reliable Excavative Demolition (RED).  Their battles continued for forty years, with neither brother relenting. Blutarch realized that they would die soon, and hired an engineer, Radigan Conagher, to build him a life-extending machine, believing that by outlasting his brother, he will have won. Conagher was later met by a mysterious woman that offers him a stash of the valuable metal Australium in exchange for building Redmond an identical machine. Conagher agrees, but later it is shown that he also built a third identical machine for an unknown entity. Battles between RED and BLU continued for over sixty years; both Redmond and Blutarch hired new mercenaries to fight for them in 1968. By that time, their battles are overseen by the Administrator, the granddaughter of Elizabeth, while the Australian Saxton Hale, (who is just awesome you should read about him)  has become CEO of Mann Co, the company that provides all the weaponry, equitment, and hats for both sides of the war.  Some time in the future, Redmond and Blutarch are brought together through letters they believed were sent by the other; both having cheated death for many years realize their folly and propose a truce to create a machine that will make one of them pregnant as to continue the heir. Gray reveals himself as their brother and arranger for this meeting, trying to convince them that instead of fighting over worthless gravel, to instead take over the technology-savvy Mann Co, which should be theirs by birthright. Neither Blutarch or Redmond agree to budge on the new technology, having become obsessed by gravel in the long conflict, and Gray kills them both.  Gray uses his own army of robots to attack Mann Co. facilities all across the world. Saxton Hale hires the mercenaries, who are jobless since their employers were killed (RED and BLU unite as a result), to defend the Mann Co. sites against Gray's army of robots (who are themselves based on the mercenaries) There are nine characters awesome classes, not just with different abilities, but with different looks and personalities, I like that in a game.  (I've included videos introducing all the characters at the end of the blog that I think you'll like)  My favorite classes are the Heavy and the Sniper which I think you'll understand if you play the game.  Now I'm going to take a moment to pay tribute to the awesomest guy in the game, Heavy.  Hes Russian, hes big and hes got a great personalty.  Where you ever having lunch with your friend and he said "Sanvich", Heavy said that. So Id like to say thank you Valve for making someone so awesome.  Valve would make millions if they put Heavy and Ellis in a game together, I can see the headlight now, WOO HOO. This is my favorite PC and one of my favorite games of all time, and you want to know why?  Because you can never stop adding to it! Weapons, equipment and hats, all yours to customize forever. And its free to play, so why not try it out, all you need is a Steam account, a computer and your ready to go.  Multiplayer is fun with countless game modes and co-op allows you to work together with your teammate to stop endless hordes of robots.  Hope you've enjoyed and I know you will enjoy the game. This has been Jacob Arnold, sighing off.