Team Fortress 2

This is the sequel of the great Mod: Team Fortress, originally based on the FPS Quake that came out in August 24, 1996.
October 9, 2007 the game saw it's light once again but now it was a game made by Valve Corporation with a Source engine remake.

Why in the god's name am I talking about a 6 years old game? 
well, because it's still alive with all the hats and updates! They are still updating the game with new game modes, items and maps! The latest update came December 20, 2012. And I bet they got more to come!
Sure I must admit the player rate have gone down since the release but there are still players playing it! And thanks to Valve for going F2P on this game which increased the player rate again.

The story behind it all:

"The game was announced in 1998, and was first powered by Valve's GoldSrc engine, but it changed as it passed through several different design stages. In 1999, the game appeared to be to be deviating from it's predecessors by pursuing a more realistic and militaristic style of game play, but its design metamorphosed over an eventual nine-year development period. The final rendititon sports cartoon style visuals influenced by the art of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell and is powered by the Source engine.
The game itself revolves around two teams, each other access to nine distinct characters, battling in a variety of game modes set in different environments or maps, often with a factory-warehouse theme.

The lack of information or apparent progress for six years of the game's original development caused it to be labeled as vaporware, and it was regularly featured in Wired News' annual vaporware list among other ignominies. Upon its release, the game received critical acclaim and several awards, being praised for its graphical style, balanced game play, humor and for its use of full character personalities in a dedicated multiplayer-only game."

You can read more about the background of it all here (wikipedia)

















What is Team Fortress 2?

Team fortress 2 is a Multi player-only game that is based on teamwork, Attack and Defend,  Control points, Capture the flag, Payload, Payload Race, King of the hill, Special Delivery Or the new "Co-op survival" Mann Vs Machine.

Let's not forget the Cosmetics! You got hats, socks, cigars, backpacks, scarfs, medals, balloons, "pets" and paints, a whole crap of stuff just to make your character look awesome/horribly ugly. Certain items do have a set bonus, but it's not overpowered in any way, like the game Battlefield heroes is.

Let's start with the typical Game play that we have all seen in games:

Capture the flag - This is mostly what I remember from Team Fortress Classic really, Trying our best to take the enemy flag back to our base and defend ours. What really makes this a different type of game play in the Team Fortress series is that you have engineers that can set down turrets that automatically attacks enemies in a specific area, which makes this more or less "challenging" for a fast type of class to grab the flag and run.

King of the hill - ah the typical "hold this area for a certain number of minutes" game mode. Not my cup o' tea, but it works for a couple of rounds before rotating to a different game type. For me it concentrates too much on 1 spot rather than a whole map.

Attack / Defend -  When the team works together it really pays off, especially if you are attacking. This is where it all begins, the RED team defends the points and the BLU tries to take it. There is 2 points total for every "phase" of the map (it might be different on certain maps, Community made for an example.)

Payload - This must be my favorite, BLU tries to push a bomb cart to the drop off point, while the RED tries to stop them. The deal here is that it's not like carrying a bomb to a bomb site like you do on CS, here you need to push a cart that goes on tracks, which makes it more needed for the teams to teamwork to push the payload to the checkpoints and the goal. If the payload is not touched/pushed for a certain amount of time, it will slowly go backwards toward the last checkpoint/start. Beware though! If you are pushing it uphill and die/go away from the payload, it will slide back down to the foot of the hill, which makes it a pain at certain choke points.

Payload Race - 2 teams. 2 carts. Basically the same as Payload but here you need to push your cart as well as stopping theirs before it reach it's goal. in my eyes this is a havoc, because mostly wants to push theirs and ignores the others, which can easily ruined if a player sees the opportunity to stop the enemy team.

Control Points - The goal for this game mode is to capture all points to win, sounds easy enough? Well it's not, both teams start with 2 control points each and 1 locked neutral, after a set amount of time the locked neutral point becomes available and the fight begins. You cant capture a point that is behind the enemy lines, you always need to capture the one closest to yours. Which makes this game mode bearable with the back and forth, even when the fight seems lost you can turn it around. 

Special Delivery - A fairly new game mode for this game, 1 flag. 2 teams. 1 common goal.
The goal for this is pretty much to get the flag to the goal and it's done! Not exactly, it's usually something more horrible than that. Let me explain: When you get to the end, you have to actually wait for an elevator to get you to the top of the rocket, so you can put the flag into it, but wait, there is more! The top needs to be unscrewed, which then again takes time. If you lose the flag, the enemy team can't grab it until it's reset back to it's original place. So this game mode makes it pretty much back and forth pretty often, but not only that, in my eyes the maps are too small for it and too fast really.

And last but not least, my favorite!

Mann VS Machine - oh man, I jumped in excitement when I saw this trailer. TF2 finally had a Co-op Survival part, finally me and 5 other buddies could work together as a team to kill robots and stop them from deliver the bomb to the MANN CO. building. ahem... well there is also public too if you want, but the deal with this game mode is that you got "boot camp" which usually means it's a public server, where you don't get any reward at all if you finish. 

"MANN UP" is the Mann CO. server to earn Tour of Duty loot and bragging rights. By bragging rights they mean the Hats, backs and weapons you have a 100% chance to get one of them if you finish off 1 operation tour. I recommend you strongly to bring friends, bring friends and communicate because some of those waves are so horrible you want to throw a damn coffee mug all over the place when you fail and fail and faaail! Especially with randoms when they are so stubborn on being the class they want when they are the "lone wolf" in a party of 6. it's often I've had to change to a different class because of that.





Let me talk more about Mann Vs Machine and the costs of real money for it:

If you and all your buddies uses a "Squad Surplus Voucher" which gives 1 item per player when you finish off a mission, so that means you will get 6 extra items! 
But before you get excited; MANN UP Ticket costs 0,74 euro and the Squad Surplus Voucher costs 1,49 euro.

Waaaait! Don't rage yet! this is what makes it so awesome! You can trade weapons with other players to get scrap metal, or even scrap your weapons for metal. Metal has become the currency for the game, as long as they got the random item drop while you play. you gain "money" to buy tickets from players, hell you can even buy keys for the MANN CO. crates that drops, it's not often it's any good in them though since it's random drop but you see a list of the things what you can get.

So if you even think Team Fortress 2 is lame because you need to "Pay 2 Win" you're wrong, you're so wrong you should just beat yourself with your mother's frying pan until you see the hospital sign! The only thing Team Fortress 2 is selling is cosmetics, even them are tradeable and dropable.  Sure you got those tickets and keys, but you don't NEED to buy them to unleash a badass weapon, because they drop... and you can trade them... 

But let's see some of the expensive hats/items there is in the game:

HAT OF UNDENIABLE WEALTH AND RESPECT
oh man, i want this hat so bad! This was a reward for completing all 28 objectives in The Great Steam Treasure Hunt.

 
NOTCH!
yes, this is really Notch from Mojang, and this is a one of a kind hat just for him, which makes it really expensive and... well invaluable! it's non tradeable and nongiftable aswell.










THE GOLDEN WRENCH
This weapon got promoted in the Engineer update, players that crafted items at that time had a chance of receiving a Golden wrench. There is only 100 of these.
Official list Here

TEAM CAPTAIN with fire effect.
this beauty got sold for 1500 dollars, DOLLARS!  Why the hell some people will even pay this much for a virtual item is just... strange, well if I had the money for it, I bet i would just waste it as well.