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It’s not often a games company releases a box of perfectly polished games for the price of one. Valve released “The Orange Box” in late 2007, containing five games. Among this treasure trove was a game known as Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress 2 was released in April of this year for PC gamers and to my amazement, is one of the best games I’ve played.

I began playing Team Fortress 2 on the Xbox 360 console, needless to say, many problems existed. The game relied on players to actually “create” a server which would just piggyback on the player’s connection. No “ranked” matches actually exist on the console’s version as most of the players seem to enjoy the quick unranked matches and the unranked matches that exist are unbearably filled with lag and connection problems. This ultimately left the servers lonely and vacant. It was a shame because the game was packed with so much fun.

After selling my Xbox 360 version of The Orange Box, I was able to buy Team Fortress 2 for Windows and after a month or two of playing; I’ve finally reached a rather superior conclusion.

Unlike other class-based games, TF2’s classes spread across a wide range of abilities and they mean wide! TF2 contains the following classes: Spy, Pyro, Soldier, Heavy, Medic, Sniper, Demoman, Scout and Engineer. Two of my favourite classes being Spy and Engineer. The mere ability to choose from nine different classes means less repetitiveness and a fresher gaming experience. To give an example of two very different classes, I have outlined the skills and tasks of both the Spy and the Engineer.

Spies have the ability to “cloak” themselves, appearing as members of the opposing team in order to infiltrate the team’s base. Spies also have the ability to “sap” engineer structures and even come equipped with a knife and revolver.

Engineers can construct sentry guns, dispensers and teleportation devices. These structures can be demolished, upgraded and have to be maintained by the engineers in order for them to survive. Structure survival is difficult as enemy demomen and spies love to destroy sentries and dispensers and upon doing so, leaving the fortress unprotected and this opens the floodgates to enemy Soldiers, Pyros and of course, other Engineers who can also build structures anywhere in the map.

Moving onwards, away from character classes, Team Fortress 2 has an artistic style of its own. Unlike Valve’s previous games and in fact, any game, the visual style of TF2 is smooth and takes on a cartoon flavour. Something one wouldn’t expect from a first person shooter, though the art style works perfectly for Team Fortress even if die-hard Team Fortress fans might claim it to be childish.

When it comes to maps TF2 has a handful to choose from and being a Steam game, is blessed with a community of professionals fanboys who are constantly developing new maps which again, keeps the game fresh and stops things from becoming stagnant. Even if this doesn’t stop me from playing ctf_2fort twenty-four hours a day.

With this said, I highly recommend Team Fortress 2 just for the crazy, exaggerated parts of the game. With the ability to taunt other players and jeer at your team. What’s not to like?