The Orange Box: Team Fortress 2
494 words, 1 image 
Continuing my The Orange Box ramblings, let’s talk about Team Fortress 2.
I have an ignoble history with multiplayer first person shooters. Basically, I get lost, or I get shot, and I don’t know why, and it’s no fun.
The hype about Team Fortress 2 gave me hope though. The cartoonish design made it seem approachable, and there was a lot of talk about designing the game to guide the player to improve. For example, if you get killed, you get treated to a display of your killer taunting — so you know who it was and where they were, and maybe what you could have done to avoid it.
TF2 is a class-based team game. No, not like rugby. It means that you play in a team, and each player can choose to play as one of a selection of player classes:
- Heavy - a big lumbering man with lots of firepower, but who’s easy to see and shoot.
- Scout - nippy, mobile character without much firepower. Hard to hit, but vulnerable if you do
- Soldier - has a rocket launcher
- Sniper - he has a sniper rifle
- Engineer - able to build and maintain various gadgets, including gun turrets
- Demolition man - can fire grenades
- Spy - can disguise himself as a member of the opposing team, and briefly turn invisible
- Medic - can heal other players with his health gun
- Pyro - has a flamethrower
I like the way things are willfully abstract. There’s no pretense that this is a simulation, and hence although you are shooting things that look like people (and they frequently end up as a widely spread selection of body parts), it’s more like paintball than war. If you get “killed”, you spend a few seconds out of the game, watching a team-mate, before re-spawning at your own base. This is more like a sport or a board game, than war.
The games generally involve capturing either territory or a “flag” (in the form of an “intelligence” briefcase, which leaves a trail of fluttering paper as a player attempts to rush it back to their own base).
I am still useless at this, but it is nevertheless fun. The game encourages you to interact as a team — and if you stumble upon a friendly group of players, there will be frequent voice conference. The most solid example of teamwork is the common coupling of a heavy with a medic: the heavy can pepper the enemy with fire, while the medic replenishes his health, ideally while hiding around the corner.
This also means there’s room for varied abilities. For example, I don’t really know the best routes to take through the play areas, but if I take the medic’s role and pair up with a heavy, he will lead the way. I can have the satisfaction of winning from time to time, even if my contribution to the victory isn’t as great as that of others.
It’s good, solid fun, that doesn’t run out. I’ll be going back to it for some time.