This is a guest post by TheNewagecaveman. If there’s something you’d like to share about gaming email me darren@zomghow.com I’d love to hear about your idea!
I am not a man who would normally play a shooter game. I am not a man who would play Modern Warfare or Gears of War like most college frat boys that would say they are gamers because they play those games (they are not), and I am not a man who would buy an Xbox just to play Call of Duty or any other dime-a-dozen shooters that happen to be in the market now a days.
That was, until my friend Daniel told me about a rather popular game in the market: Team Fortress 2. I didn’t care as much, until he told me that the game was free to play now. Yeah, a game like that would definitely work on my Mac.
Until I realized that the game was on Steam, a digital game retailer. When I looked it up, I noticed that it was also Mac compatible. Then a word, a single word, rang in my mind, a soft specter of my subconscious, echoed into my cerebellum. A single word: WANT.
And now we are here. I got that game and it is awesome. Let me tell you why good sir!
Team Fortress 2 is a Steam-based game for PC and Mac (hooray!) that was developed by Valve. Y’know, the game company that created the Counter Strike, Half Life, and Portal series of games. The basic gist of the game is that there are nine different classes to choose to fight in various challenges between a Red team and a Blue team. And, best of all, it’s free, and what better price is there than free?
As to the story, well, there isn’t much. I think it has something to do with two brothers fighting over their father’s land after he dies, and they make opposing companies to fight the other for their father’s riches, but story isn’t very important in this game. It just means that there is a R.E.D. team (Reliable Excavation Demolition) and a B.L.U. team (Builders League United), and they have to kill each other. There are several modes to play in that pit these teams against each other, like capture the flag (the flag is a brief case with enemy intelligence), king of the hill (capture and hold on to a certain point or points to win), push the cart (one team pushes a cart with a bomb into a certain area while the other team tries to stop you), with different variations of each kind of game. Maybe there are a certain number of points your team must obtain in a certain order? Or maybe both teams each have a cart and you must stop each other? That depends on the game you choose and the map you’re placed in, and that gives the game a certain amount of variety, which makes each game different from the others you might play.
The classes you can choose from in each game aren’t just classes, but they’re actual characters with their own personalities. The classes to choose from are the Soldier, Scout, Pyro, Heavy, Sniper, Demoman, Medic, Engineer, and Spy. The Soldier is a gun-crazed maniac who thinks himself to be a great general during World War 2 (despite being told the war was over), the Scout is a wise crackin’ Brooklyn boy with a knack for baseball and running fast, The Pyro is a mysterious, masked figure that uses a flamethrower as his offense (Considering that he is a “He”.), the Heavy is a large, Russian machine gunner who loves “Sanviches” and his large gun, whom he calls Sasha, the Sniper is a polite, Australian marksman who uses his sniper rifle and his “Jarate”, a jar filled with a certain yellow liquid, the Demoman is a drunken African Scottish explosives expert with an eye patch (“Imma black Scottish Cyclops!”), the Medic is a German doctor who lacks in any medical education, but makes up in his hunger to plunge large needles into exposed flesh, the Engineer is a Texas country boy with the technological skill to make turrets and teleporters, and the Spy is a French espionage expert with the finesse to kill silently without anyone the wiser. Each character has their own set of weapons, being a primary, secondary, and melee weapon for each., with a few exceptions.
Of course, with each class, they come with their own skills, strengths and weaknesses; The Scout is much faster than the other classes, but is much weaker in health, the Heavy can take much more abuse and can mow down enemies with his minigun, but he is much slower while firing, the spy can turn invisible and disguise as opposing players, but they can be reveled from being blasted with the Pyro’s flamethrower, the Medic can heal allies, and so on. Depending on the character you choose, and what that character is equipped with, will decide on how you will perform in battle, as well as the obligations you can make for your team. Let’s say you chose an Engineer for a game of capture the flag. The other players are expecting you to build your sentry to defend the point, a dispenser (a construction that provides health and ammo) to give you a steady source of metal to maintain your turret, and a teleporter system to provide your allies a quick way to the intel, should you need any help. But what if you don’t want to do that? Then choose a different class. But what if you want to defend the intel with a turrent but you don’t want to be the Engineer? Well, then you have a choice to make. Go out there and have fun (and naturally die from being mowed down by a Heavy or shot in the head by a sniper), or get to work on that turrent and tough it out back there. It isn’t so much that you choose a class and stick with it forever, but choosing a class, die, and having the option to be a different class is a defining feature for TF2, because maybe you want to be a Scout or a Spy for a while, as long as you can use that class with skill.
There is a certain detail I want to point out within the game, and this is where I have a bit of a beef with the game. There is a crafting system in the game, not like it hasn’t been done before, and it isn’t bad, you would never say that. The system actually really well-built. To craft certain items, such as hats, which many people make jokes of on the internet, you have to scrap your weapons to make scrap metal, which you would use three of to make reclaimed metal, and using three of those to make refined metal. I you want a certain weapon or hat, then you have to make a class token or a slot token. A class token is made from the weapons of a certain class to make an item for that class, and a slot token is made from the parts of any weapons from a certain weapon slot (primary, secondary, or melee) to make a certain weapon for any class in that slot. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but during my crafting experience, I hit a wall. I was only allowed only a few item slots to hold items, and I couldn’t make certain items. You know why? Because I have to spend actual money in Steam first to make my account premium. It’s one thing to charge people to get certain items in the game, most of us can do without, but when the system is pressing you to buy stuff to access basic functions of any game software, like inviting friends and such, that becomes a bit aggravating. Sure, many of you can ask a parent to help you with that, but as of now, this has been a little difficult for me.
Team Fortress 2 isn’t all serious like Call of Duty or Halo and such. It’s a great change of pace from the more traditional shooters in the market, mainly because the game doesn’t take itself too seriously to begin with, with the crazy characters, interesting weapons, and fun game mechanics that will keep you coming back for more. But if you really want the full experience, you might have to sink about five bucks minimum to go premium, but it would be money well spent. Besides, Steam is a reliable, safe downloadable game system, and it won’t save your credit card number unless you want them to.
Try telling my mother that.
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