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Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is a multiplayer team-based first-person shooter with strategy elements, being developed by Valve Corporation.
The game was announced in 1998 as a sequel to the original Team Fortress mod for Quake, but has since been through various concepts and designs. In 1999 the game appeared to be deviating from the original Team Fortress (and Valve's own Team Fortress Classic, a mod for Half-Life) by heading toward a more realistic and militaristic style of gameplay, but the design metamorphosed further over the game's seven-year development. The final rendition of Team Fortress 2 bears more resemblance to the original Team Fortress and Team Fortress Classic games, and sports a cartoon-like visual style, based on the art of J. C. Leyendecker[3], following a popular trend in recent CGI films (in particular, films recently made by Pixar/Disney, such as The Incredibles).
The lack of information or apparent progress for six years of the game's development caused it to be labeled as vaporware, and it was regularly featured in Wired News' annual vaporware list among other ignominies.[4]
The beta release of Team Fortress 2 for pre-purchasers of the The Orange Box is now available on Steam.
The HD Video trailer is here:
http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=game&AppId=923
Team Fortress 2 will feature nearly all of the classes from the original game, including the Heavy, Spy, Scout, Demolitions, Engineer, Medic, Sniper, Soldier and Pyro, making for nine classes in all. Valve hasn't released any sort of information on what loadouts each class will carry.
IGN wrote:
While the classes have largely stayed the same, one thing that's extremely unique about Team Fortress 2 is its look. While the video that we saw was an edited-together montage, it featured in-game footage of the characters posing smugly for the camera, giving us a great look at the game's art and rendering style. Characters have been designed in a highly exaggerated fashion, drawing attention to what we'd assume would be their main attributes. From the sickly-thin frame for the sniper (the better to hide with) to the massive hulking arms for the heavy, it looks like you'll easily be able to spot character classes in the middle of a battlefield.
IGN wrote:
The most unique thing about the characters' looks however is the way they're rendered. Using a brand-new lighting system implemented into Source, the characters look like a cross between an action figure and a cartoon. They're clearly 3D, but feature very little texture detail. The lighting is extremely smooth however, giving them the appearance of being sculpted models or something similar - Toy Story-esque is the description that probably comes closest.
The teaser that we saw showed little more than the characters posing for a quick bit, so as of yet we know nothing about game types, map designs or anything else of that sort. Team Fortress 2 (along with HL2: Episode Two and Portal) do not have a firm release date as of yet, but being as Valve plans to ship Half-Life 2 (along with Episode One and Two, Portal and TF2) to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 at the same time as the PC release of Episode Two, we can expect mid-November to be the earliest we'll get our hands on it. On the other hand, Valve had planned to ship Episode Two roughly six months after Episode One, which released on June 1st, so plan on seeing the game sometime this winter season.
Looking beyond release, TF2 will get more maps (for free), but even the initial six will struggle to wane thanks to sheer gameplay density. TF2's been in development since B*Witched were top of the pops, and the result is a game that should scale to the needs of everyone from the clumsiest neophyte to the staunchest supporter.
In an uncharacteristic burst of intelligent observation, the game's Wikipedia entry remarks that the old design of TF2 is "quite possibly the only game to have spawned a thriving sub-genre without ever being released itself". For the people who make up that sub-genre, as well as those addressing it afresh, we're confident the reaction will be "ten years well spent".
The game ships with six maps[7] with more planned for future updates.[7] 2 Fort is the only capture the flag map initially available. The maps included in the initial release are:
PlanetFortress: The only remaining fansite for the "original" Team Fortress 2 to follow TFC, which differs significantly from the current product. Not maintained, but still available.
TF 1 sucked so bad so I don't know. I'm in class right now so I cant see those videos. I will look at them when I get home. I think I'll stick with WoW, lol.