Home

News

Reviews

Games

Hardware

Downloads

Team Fortress 2

User Rating:

ESRB: Blood and Gore,Intense Violence
Publisher: Valve Software
Genre(s): Shooting
Home Page: http://orange.half-life2.com/tf2.h...

Game index

System Requirements

Review

Preview

Screenshots

Downloads

By: Jarno Kokko Oct 11, 2007

Gaming at the highest level

Team Fortress 2 is truly something special. As I stated in the preview, it's good. It's very good. It's Blizzard-grade good. The assessment still stands - it's very rare to see such a finely polished and well balanced title from anyone else than Blizzard, and due to the overall quality of the Orange Box games, in my books Valve now firmly belongs to the exclusive club of top PC developers that truly understand the platform. Many developers and publishers do games on the PC, but very few actually take the time to do them right - taking advantage of new hardware without abandoning the old and providing a solid, balanced and fun game to go with the technology.

He's on fire!

Coordinated Ubercharge assaults break stalemates nicely.

The only notable thing in TF2 that could be called a flaw is the fact that it's fairly condensed game with just a handful of maps and little variety in the gameplay - so after long sessions it can feel a bit repetitive. Yet I can't see how you can truly avoid that while keeping the game simple to pick up and play, even in small doses. Many online shooters these days are overly complicated and reward hardcore players with all the advantages, all in the name of depth. Team Fortress 2 is fun even for someone who hasn't played online shooters much, and even for those who don't have the skills to pull off flawless headshots. Heck, as an engineer you can do valuable work for your team (and rack up kills like nuts) without ever firing a shot. Yet, skill and, above all, teamwork does play an important part without becoming a huge barrier for entry for a newbie who just wants to frag some people for fun.

In my opinion, Team Fortress 2 alone is worth the price of The Orange Box, and if you insist that you are not interested in Portal or Half-Life Episode Two (and if you are, you need a lobotomy - Ed), you have the option of purchasing just TF2 as a separate game on Steam - not that you should miss Portal, as it too is a truly unique and good game. If you buy just one team-based online shooter this year, you can forget the rest - Team Fortress 2 is it. Now if you excuse me, I have to get back to blowing up stuff - writing this review has already taken up far too much quality Team Fortress 2 time...

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

The publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:

Component	Publisher's Minimum	Publisher's Recommended
Processor	Intel Pentium 4 1.7 GHz or AMD equivalent	Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz or AMD equivalent
Memory	512 MB	1024MB
Graphics Card	DirectX 8 compatible 128MB graphics card	DrectX 9 compatible 256MB graphics card
Graphics Card Example	ATI Radeon 8500 series / NVIDIA GeForce 3 series	NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256MB / ATI Radeon X1800 256MB
Free Disk Space	5 GB	5 GB
Net Link	not specified	not specified

To learn more about how YouGamers performs its hardware testing, click here. Through our extensive gameplay and hardware testing across the full spectrum of PC configurations, YouGamers suggests that one should use the following guidelines for an appropriate minimum and recommended setup:

Component	YouGamers Minimum	YouGamers Recommended
Processor	AMD Athlon XP 2000+ / Intel Pentium 4 2000 MHz	AMD Athlon 64 3000+ / Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Graphics Card	ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB / NVIDIA GeForce 6200 128MB	ATI Radeon X1800 GTO / NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB
Free Disk Space	5 GB	5 GB
Net Link	Broadband for multiplayer	Broadband for multiplayer

Scores

To learn more about our scoring methodology, please click here.

Gameplay	96	Simply the best team-based online shooter. Ever. Proudly takes the torch from the original Team Fortress (and Team Fortress Classic), and runs away with it in style.
Graphics	94	Incredible combination of great art direction and nearly flawless technical execution. No DX10 buzzwords or overcomplicated shader overload no card can run properly - just pure visual finesse rarely seen in today's games.
Audio	93	Catchy theme, but mostly leans on the solid sound effects and priceless comic relief provided by the hilarious character voices that fit the game perfectly.
Technology	92	Runs on anything you can remotely call a gaming computer, but still provides extra goodies for those with the latest video cards. Notably polished and bug-free - a rare sight in PC gaming these days.

OVERALL

When the biggest flaw of the game is that it gets a bit repetitive after the first hundred or so hours of play, you know you have something special. Definitely a classic, at least among those who just want mindless fun instead of the more skill-intensive action provided by something like Counter-Strike: Source.

If you wish to comment on this review or discuss the game further, then please click right here (registration not required).