Team Fortress 2 - A Technical Achievement? (56k Avoid)

Just bought Orange Pack today and gave Team Fortress 2 a spin. It's a blast. Probably the best multiplayer game to come in years. But one of the greatest things about it is how amazing the graphics are. Extremely slick and optimized. Facial expressions are a blast to watch and are very fluid. The HW Guy will be grinning as he's shooting around, and laughing as he kills people. It's just all too good for a multiplayer game. See for yourself.

The art direction in this game is better than in Bioshock IMO.the_ChEeSe_mAn2

[QUOTE="the_ChEeSe_mAn2"]The art direction in this game is better than in Bioshock IMO.yellonet

It sure does. One of my favorite parts about the game too is how clever it is. In case you haven't noticed, your killer is represented by a photo each time you die. If parts of your blown up body are in the photo, it'll show arrows saying "A bit of you here" and "Here's your torso!". The HW Guy steals the show for sure. His gun's representation is perfect. There's literally an ammunition barrel attached to the thing and when it fires - it seriously "Spews" bullets everywhere.

Another extremely cool guy to watch is the spy. When a friendly spy is disguised on your team, it shows the spy wearing a cheesy mask of whatever class he's disguised as. Occasionally he'll even bust out a cigarrette mid-fight and will start smoking. To fix spys being too easy to spot, they will also give the disguised spy the name of an enemy member. For example, if there is one enemy Engineer named "CoolDude", enemies will highlight you and see "CoolDude" if you're disguised as an engineer.

[QUOTE="yellonet"][QUOTE="the_ChEeSe_mAn2"]The art direction in this game is better than in Bioshock IMO.GodLovesDead

It sure does. One of my favorite parts about the game too is how clever it is. In case you haven't noticed, your killer is represented by a photo each time you die. If parts of your blown up body are in the photo, it'll show arrows saying "A bit of you here" and "Here's your torso!". The HW Guy steals the show for sure. His gun's representation is perfect. There's literally an ammunition barrel attached to the thing and when it fires - it seriously "Spews" bullets everywhere.

Another extremely cool guy to watch is the spy. When a friendly spy is disguised on your team, it shows the spy wearing a cheesy mask of whatever class he's disguised as. Occasionally he'll even bust out a cigarrette mid-fight and will start smoking. To fix spys being too easy to spot, they will also give the disguised spy the name of an enemy member. For example, if there is one enemy Engineer named "CoolDude", enemies will highlight you and see "CoolDude" if you're disguised as an engineer.

Ah, must be fun when you see a team mate with the same name as you then :P

The HW Guy steals the show for sure. His gun's representation is perfect. There's literally an ammunition barrel attached to the thing and when it fires - it seriously "Spews" bullets everywhere.GodLovesDead

Ah, must be fun when you see a team mate with the same name as you then :PTwin-Blade

[QUOTE="GodLovesDead"]The HW Guy steals the show for sure. His gun's representation is perfect. There's literally an ammunition barrel attached to the thing and when it fires - it seriously "Spews" bullets everywhere.yellonet

Ah, I get it now. Makes more sense. :-P

Just a little bit ago I had a great encounter with a spy. It was Sudden death with everyone alive at the time and all of a sudden this medic named "Craze" was following me around. So early in the round I thought nothing of it. But then all of a sudden it says "Player Craze has disconnected from the servers (Timed out)." and here's this now-nameless medic standing next to me. Safe to say I shot him up.

Is it possible to purchase the game without the entire Orange Box for cheaper?yoavA

Not at the moment, but it will probably be in the future.

How did you guys buy the Orange Box? I thought it would come out oct10 as it says here on GSatrechi

you can preorder it off of Steam.

This game is theawesome-sauce. Definitely recommended, even if you aren't big on competitive multiplayer games.

Pros (IMO)

• Awesome art direction. It makes you feel like you're in a Pixar movie gone terribly bad (in a good way)!
• Classes are all fun and unique. My favorites are the Scout and the Soldier, with the Heavy and the Pyro close behind.
• Weapons are great and seemed pretty balanced. I really like that the weapons are part of the character. It's almost like the character is a personification of the gun they carry.
• Very well optomized.I know I have a pretty sick computer, but I get close to 300 FPS with vsync turned off. I've never had a ping higher then 80 so far.
• Addictive as hell! I have a really hard time putting the game down.

Cons (IMO)

• Time limits. The match starts at 6-8 minutes, and as teams complete objectives, it adds more time. But if two teams are pretty evenly matched, a round might only last 6 minutes. Very annoying to constantly have to start over. I'm pretty sure you'll be able to change the time limits in the full game though.
• Sudden death. Cool in theory, but it also means that if you get blasted right away, you could have up to a four minute wait before you get to play again, and that's assuming the map doesn't change. If the map is changing, you could be waiting up to six or seven minutes before you actually start playing again. Maybe I'm just really impatient, but I'd rather just call it a draw and start a new round.
• Engineers are the best defensive class with their sentry guns, but that also means Sudden Deaths usually turn into engineer camping festivals. Essentially, the engineers on each team set up their sentry guns and wait. And wait. And sit. And do nothing but wait. Until sudden death is over.

Is it worth the 30$?yoavA

Eh, you might as well spend an extra $15 on the pre-release of The Orange Box, so you'll get Ep2 and Portal as well. Its a fun game, i'm just not sure its worth $30.

First off, nice screenies mate you picked some good ones to show us lol and yes this game is by far the best MultiPlayer game to be released in a long time. Truly unique and great to play, each time the game is a different experience i think. Check out my blog for a more in depth review of TF2 that i wrote straight after the BETA release.

THe gibs....theyre back! After a long absence, when you finally shoot someone with a rocket or fully-charged rifle shot...THEY EXPLODE INTO ARMS, TORSO, and HEAD! Wooooooo!

And ya, the game looks amazing. The fact that celshaded art direction looks better than many games out now is just awesome.

Wow, why haven't I preordered the orange box yet? (Rhetorical question, I'm broke).

Is it possible to purchase the game without the entire Orange Box for cheaper?yoavA

Yeah the game itself it like 29, however if u want to buy anything else in the orange pack like portal or episode two you wil be spending more than 49 so its worth it.

[QUOTE="Twin-Blade"]Ah, must be fun when you see a team mate with the same name as you then :Pyellonet

Maybe i'm just stupid, but when i aim at an enemy spy, it doesn't display his name as being one of my team members, hence i know that he's a spy, which makes him easy to kill. Should enemy spies display names of my team members?

[QUOTE="yellonet"][QUOTE="Twin-Blade"]Ah, must be fun when you see a team mate with the same name as you then :Pspierdalaj666

Maybe i'm just stupid, but when i aim at an enemy spy, it doesn't display his name as being one of my team members, hence i know that he's a spy, which makes him easy to kill. Should enemy spies display names of my team members?

[QUOTE="yellonet"][QUOTE="Twin-Blade"]Ah, must be fun when you see a team mate with the same name as you then :Pspierdalaj666

Maybe i'm just stupid, but when i aim at an enemy spy, it doesn't display his name as being one of my team members, hence i know that he's a spy, which makes him easy to kill. Should enemy spies display names of my team members?

Enemy spys when disguised will be named after your team members. One time I was the only engineer on the team and another "friendly" engineer was standing next to my Turret sharing my name.

Ehh...I'd say its much more an achievement in art and design than anything else. Tech-wise it's a lot of static lighting, low-res textures...nothing really fancy. I've also never been particularly impressed with Valve's HDR implementation. Guess its nice that it runs on low-spec hardware though.Teufelhuhn

It's a technical achievement considering how it looks Pixaresque while running on lower ended system with eye candy. The facial features and all of that too is also a technical achievement. But it is art and design over anything else too.

Ehh...I'd say its much more an achievement in art and design than anything else. Tech-wise it's a lot of static lighting, low-res textures...nothing really fancy. I've also never been particularly impressed with Valve's HDR implementation. Guess its nice that it runs on low-spec hardware though.Teufelhuhn

Yep it is art and design over tech... and let me tell ya it works a lot better than all those game tech fancy that run like crap and dont even look as good as this one...

I think it is one of the game with best graphics this year... even when it isnt breakthrough using technologies and that makes it even better

[QUOTE="yellonet"][QUOTE="Twin-Blade"]Ah, must be fun when you see a team mate with the same name as you then :Pspierdalaj666

Maybe i'm just stupid, but when i aim at an enemy spy, it doesn't display his name as being one of my team members, hence i know that he's a spy, which makes him easy to kill. Should enemy spies display names of my team members?

[QUOTE="GodLovesDead"]

[QUOTE="yellonet"][QUOTE="the_ChEeSe_mAn2"]The art direction in this game is better than in Bioshock IMO.Twin-Blade

It sure does. One of my favorite parts about the game too is how clever it is. In case you haven't noticed, your killer is represented by a photo each time you die. If parts of your blown up body are in the photo, it'll show arrows saying "A bit of you here" and "Here's your torso!". The HW Guy steals the show for sure. His gun's representation is perfect. There's literally an ammunition barrel attached to the thing and when it fires - it seriously "Spews" bullets everywhere.

Another extremely cool guy to watch is the spy. When a friendly spy is disguised on your team, it shows the spy wearing a cheesy mask of whatever class he's disguised as. Occasionally he'll even bust out a cigarrette mid-fight and will start smoking. To fix spys being too easy to spot, they will also give the disguised spy the name of an enemy member. For example, if there is one enemy Engineer named "CoolDude", enemies will highlight you and see "CoolDude" if you're disguised as an engineer.

Ah, must be fun when you see a team mate with the same name as you then :P

hah i love when i see that, its so weird seeing your name calling out for a medic when youre already dead! great game i love it so much

IMO, easily the best (read: FUN) game since the original UT which I played competitively for ~1.5yrs. What I like is the game looks good and runs fast but most importantly it is easy to contral and tell what is going on. For example when UT 2004 came out I found the game hard to play because it was really hard to see people against the terrain. I'm not a fan of games like CS where you last 1 second before getting sniped, if I wanted realism I'd join the Army not play a game online! TFC2 has a nice blend of action along with a lot of strategy particularly in how you use the classes.

It's still a Beta so I expect some tweaking, more maps, and I hope some top notch community features.

I'm so happy i bought my 2900 XT now with the new drivers it can run some games better than the GTX & yes thank ATi for the black box ... i'm playin TF2 like a nutt especially with the enginner let me just tell you that evan if you loose you will not get pissed because of the funny theme of the game is totaly uniq .....i usually play Day OF Defeat & CSS to but after 2 hours it kinda gets frustrating ... yes its a tehnical achivment ... have you evan considered that the SOURCE engine appeared in 2004 & its an ever evolving technology & it look better evan than some games that just appeared just think of Ressistence , HALO 3 ... SOURCE in ep2 is either at that level or evan better & 1one thing is for sure that the SOURCE engine will never be surpassed is the facial animations + what chould you expect from VALVe bad games yeah right ...think about they spent on HL2 30 mill $ maybe thats 1one of the reasseons it has won more than 35 game of the year awards ! & I don't know about you ppl but i think VALVe is hiding a surprise from us a very big 1one for withc the gaming industry isn't prepared for .....so prepare to meet the whirlwind gentlemen !

Ehh...I'd say its much more an achievement in art and design than anything else. Tech-wise it's a lot of static lighting, low-res textures...nothing really fancy. I've also never been particularly impressed with Valve's HDR implementation. Guess its nice that it runs on low-spec hardware though.Teufelhuhn

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]Ehh...I'd say its much more an achievement in art and design than anything else. Tech-wise it's a lot of static lighting, low-res textures...nothing really fancy. I've also never been particularly impressed with Valve's HDR implementation. Guess its nice that it runs on low-spec hardware though.beckoflight

This game is theawesome-sauce. Definitely recommended, even if you aren't big on competitive multiplayer games.

Pros (IMO)

• Awesome art direction. It makes you feel like you're in a Pixar movie gone terribly bad (in a good way)!
• Classes are all fun and unique. My favorites are the Scout and the Soldier, with the Heavy and the Pyro close behind.
• Weapons are great and seemed pretty balanced. I really like that the weapons are part of the character. It's almost like the character is a personification of the gun they carry.
• Very well optomized.I know I have a pretty sick computer, but I get close to 300 FPS with vsync turned off. I've never had a ping higher then 80 so far.
• Addictive as hell! I have a really hard time putting the game down.

Cons (IMO)

• Time limits. The match starts at 6-8 minutes, and as teams complete objectives, it adds more time. But if two teams are pretty evenly matched, a round might only last 6 minutes. Very annoying to constantly have to start over. I'm pretty sure you'll be able to change the time limits in the full game though.
• Sudden death. Cool in theory, but it also means that if you get blasted right away, you could have up to a four minute wait before you get to play again, and that's assuming the map doesn't change. If the map is changing, you could be waiting up to six or seven minutes before you actually start playing again. Maybe I'm just really impatient, but I'd rather just call it a draw and start a new round.
• Engineers are the best defensive class with their sentry guns, but that also means Sudden Deaths usually turn into engineer camping festivals. Essentially, the engineers on each team set up their sentry guns and wait. And wait. And sit. And do nothing but wait. Until sudden death is over.

SentientGames

Sentery's have some easy counters though to get around them, first you have the spys hack thing he puts on them and destroys them, an invuln Hvy/Doctor combo makes quick work of them and naders can chuck grenades at them from behind cover.

I actually love sudden death!

The only thing I can really complain about is the level Hydro, I hate that level and the games poor auto balance is by far the biggest problem, I'm really getting disgusted going into server after server were you have one team completely dominating and the other just crushing the weaker team over and over again round after round as if thats the way the game should be played, I've given up on asking people to do the fair thing and balance the teams because I just get called a whiner for having the nerve to suggest the teams should probably be rebalanced.

I love sudden death too. Hydro isn't that bad either, I like it.GodLovesDead

They need to fix the pyro though its a gimped class..

[QUOTE="GodLovesDead"]I love sudden death too. Hydro isn't that bad either, I like it.sSubZerOo

They need to fix the pyro though its a gimped class..

That I will agree with completely. The flamethrower doesn't deal enough damage, and most classes will kill you before you can even get close enough to flame them. And even if you do get close enough, it doesn't deal enough damage.