Team Fortress 2 Game Guide

As one of the first shooters to pioneer team- and class-based gameplay, the first Team Fortress quickly became a favorite among the online community, inspiring devotion and spawning innumerable user-created modifications that many still play today. Players on both teams select one of nine character classes, each with their own unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. TF2's cartoon aesthetic and stripped-down classes belie its complexity, and the dynamic interplay of abilities and strategies is nuanced, hectic, and challenging. As a purely multiplayer game, Team Fortress 2 has no need for a storyline. For example, the soldier class comes armed with a rocket launcher, a shotgun secondary weapon, and a shovel for close quarters combat. Engineers have the unique ability to build structures, like sentry guns, ammo/health dispensers, and teleporters. This gives both teams the flexibility to change strategies on the fly, and it's one of the key elements that make Team Fortress 2 so dynamic.

This flexibility can also cause problems, especially for teams that aren't communicating properly. Your success is tied to your team's success and, in part, so is your enjoyment of the game. Just as being part of a fluid, coordinated team is truly excellent, so too is being part of a fractured, dysfunctional team truly frustrating. In the Control Point mode, teams fight to capture all the control points on the map. The Attack/Defend mode challenges one team to capture the control points while the other team defends, and teams switch roles between rounds. Each of the maps is designed for one or two specific game modes, and all are meticulously designed to create numerous strategic approaches for both teams.