Team Fortress 2

"Keep crying, baby!"

I have never seen the appeal of Team Fortress 2. I mean, I understand how a first-person team shooter can be engaging, and unique classes can work together to form a formidable threat, and how cartoony characters and aesthetics can make it stand out against your more run-of-the-mill FPS titles, but I really, personally, cannot find a reason to pick up Team Fortress 2 and play it for myself.

Except, of course, that the 1001 list says we should. So there's that, I guess.

I know Team Fortress 2 only for it being vastly popular for some reason and having too many hats or something. I don't know, and to be honest, I don't care, but lets at least give it a shot.

Frustrations

These days, Team Fortress 2 isn't just a game pitting two teams of characters against each other. It is a game of cosmetics and microtransactions. It is awful, in other words, and my first experience with the game is of a Halloween themed event of some description trying to get my attention. I want nothing to do with Halloween, in-game or out.

Opting to find a game and just dive in, it appears that it's my first time playing TF2, which it is, despite owning it as part of The Orange Box on the PS3. I didn't care for it then, I still don't care for it now, but sure, let's have a match against some bots to get going.

Of the many ways two teams could face off against each other, I opt for a Control Point match, which I learn to play pretty similarly to something like the Rush mode from the Battlefield series, which is probably a sentence that dates me quite a bit, especially considering my knowledge of the Rush mode comes from Battlefield 3, which won't be released for another 4 years yet, assuming we're in 2007 playing TF2.

Where the hell am I? Right, Control Points. Defenders stop the attackers from controlling points. Piece of cake.

Coaching? Would I like another player to coach me through my games of TF2? No, thanks. I don't want any other players near me if I can help it, helping me out or not. Just put me on the better red team and let's get this thing going.

The class selection screen helpfully groups characters into offensive and defensive classes and this big dude with a minigun is as good as any. As introductions to how TF2 classes actually make use of their skills he's next to useless, but let's just find out how good it is to point and shoot before faffing about with making turrets or donning disguises, shall we?

For the love of Gabe Newell, does this have to be addressed right now, at the start of a match? Offline or not, this is just getting silly. Let me play the game I don't even want to play. Stop giving me reasons to not play it.

We're defending, and are given a few seconds to set up some chokepoints before the blue team emerge on their quest to control all the points. This railroad looks like quite the trench for me to set up shop at the end of. A right-click starts my minigun spinning, ready for contact. A left-click unleashes hell.

It is pretty much inevitable that you will see your character meet their demise in a first-person shooter, and nobody is immune to damage, especially if you stand in one spot and simply hope that you can take it. You can't, and you'll have to play to your class strengths, and hope your teammates play to theirs, to be able to survive for any decent length of time.

Usually, after a death, you hop back to the class select screen and maybe change who or what you play as, depending on the situation or the makeup of your team. Not in TF2. No, I've got to see what I've unlocked first.

I care for none of this. None. This is absurd. I'm trying to see what the game is like in the safety of an offline mode - indeed, trying to learn it because the game itself told me I should - but I'm just being swamped by what TF2 has become: A cosmetically bloated mess designed to get my money. It's not going to work. You're having none of it. I'm a stingy bastard at the best of times.

Switching classes to someone who can lob grenades gives me mixed results, and eventually, the blue team have taken another pair of control points and are matching through the level with relative ease. It's chaotic, and every death has you wait in a respawn window for some 15 seconds, before them having to run all the way through your base to get to the front lines once more.

Obviously, the idea is to not die so often, but in a game as fast-paced and insta-kill as this can be, it's just not happening. You're going to die, often, and have to sit through countdown clocks before being able to try again.

Here and there, during moments of downtime, you get to admire the view. It's a stylised game, Team Fortress 2, known for its exaggerated cartoony look, but the colour palette is perhaps its best feature. I have no idea whether it's useful for the colourblind, but to help add more distinction to this game to help separate it from either the incredibly brown and grey realistic shooters, or the far too saturated neon coloured ones, it's a colour scheme and overall look that works.

But why am I able to admire it for so long?

The opposite bots got stuck in their base and couldn't get out. Nice. I guess I'm ready for a real game then. Casual, whatever mode, don't care, let's go.

What fun.

I didn't stick around for the rematch. Why would I? I'd only be shown more advertisements for hats I have no intent to buy.

Final Word

Someone out there - a great many someones, perhaps - love Team Fortress 2. I know what it feels like to love a game. I know what it takes to dedicate yourself to learning the ins and outs of a character class, a weapon, a map or game mode. Not to an eSport standard, of course, not by a long shot, but enough to know what it means to attach yourself to something.

And yet I cannot see how you could do such a thing to TF2 in 2020. How do new players jump on board? Do kids seriously come here looking for coaches to guide them through what they need to do? Of course they don't. They're off playing Fortnite for hour after hour.

Who is playing Team Fortress 2 then? It's got to be people who grew up with it and perhaps even put up with all of its efforts to grab money from the player base or appeal to new audiences with hats. What new audience wants hats in an FPS game that much?

There's an awful lot I don't know about Team Fortress 2, and I've clearly got some prejudices towards it that are getting in the way now as much as the bloody Halloween hats are. Could I imagine myself actually playing this game for any length of time back in the day?

Back in the day, potentially, yes. Before all the cosmetic microtransaction bollocks, certainly. Strip away all that rubbish and you have an early example of a class-based multiplayer FPS that practically demanded teamwork and playing the objective - almost like a certain Battlefield 3 I used to play.

At its core, TF2 unquestionably has the potential to entertain and engage players across multiple maps and modes and methods of playing. But nowadays, that core is obscured so heavily that it's offputting, to me at least. I don't want to have to wade through this rubbish to find a good time. I just want a good time. Team Fortress 2 doesn't offer me that.

Could it? In another time and another format, yes, it probably could. As it is now? Nah.

Fun Facts

The technical term for the look of Team Fortress 2 is Gooch shading.

Team Fortress 2, developed by Valve, first released in 2007.

Version played: PC, 2007/2011.