An Sneak-Peek Overview of Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress, the multiplayer complement to the original Half Life, was a beautiful game in its own. Playing the role of a medic, sniper, heavy machine gun holder, spy, and other nifty military personnel - the game was an endless act of re-spawning and killing, unlike the Counter Strike series which is known for its wait time upon death for the next round (although this feature can be turned of.) With this said, the anticipation of Team Fortress 2 into the gaming scene has been long awaited.

Developed by Valve Corporation, Team Fortress 2 is a first person shooter that revolves around team based multiplayer combat with the use of weapons and heavy artillery in addition to medical gear and knives. Unlike games like Counter Strike and Nintendo 64's famed Goldeneye, Team Fortress characters look overly cartoonish and somewhat simplistic. Its presence was felt at the July 2006 Electronic Arts press conference through an announcement stating that Team Fortress 2 would serve as a complement to the Half Life 2 series. According to Gabe Nowell, managing director at Valve Corporation, the goal was to make "the best looking and best-playing class-based multiplayer game."

As of today, the nine different characters have been confirmed. There will be soldiers, medics, heavy weapons personnel, spies, scouts, pyros, demomen, engineers, and snipers. Each will hold primary, secondary, and melee weapons that can include fists as is the case with medics who are the weakest characters overall. A nice touch to the game involves scouts using aluminum baseball bats as their melee weapons - an oddity in a weapons based war game.

Team Fortress 2 is noted for its exceptional gameplay stressing team work and roles. Players get to choose between different role players like spies and medics, each with their own pros and cons. They all have distinct characteristics, with scouts (a.k.a. infantry soldiers) moving at faster speeds than machine gun touting heavy weapons characters that tread slowly destroying everything in its path. Usually, fast characters have lesser armor than heavy characters, so there is a balance with these roles. In addition, Team Fortress 2 graphics are a step above its predecessors. Unlike Counter Strike with realistic features, Team Fortress is more simple and cartoonish. The Source engine, the program behind Valve's software, has come up with new technology within the game that emphasizes lighting techniques and in-house rendering as well.

One of the most noted attractions of the original Team Fortress game involved its creative maps. In the first game, the most popular maps included dustbowl, 2Fort, and the Well, with 2Fort being the clear cut winner. In Team Fortress 2, the 2Fort map makes its presence felt with added features. Other games include capture the flag maps and territorial control games.

The technology advancements found in Team Fortress 2 that are an upgrade over its original is enough incentive to purchase the game. With new parametric animation that allows characters to move life-like, with heads moving in the direction looked at and differing leg strides, along with the entire cache of features described above - Team Fortress 2 is a bona fide action game that should hold a long shelf life for years to come.