PC Game Fun Time

After months of inactivity, the official Team Fortress 2 site has finally been updated with some of the new ideas that are in the pipeline.  Veteran players will be happy to learn that Valve has put some of their people back on the task of upgrading the TF2 experience.

Very soon we should be seeing a few interesting changes to the Engineering class, namely the ability to upgrade both dispensers and teleporters.  Higher level teleporters will cool down more quickly, and higher level dispensers will give out more ammo and health.  The teleporter change in particular could substantially change the balance on some maps where getting troops to the front line is important for the attacking team.  The dispenser change sounds like it will be less notable, but then again it may prove critical for Heavies trying to defend a key point without the assistance of a Medic.

Probably most interesting, however, is that Valve has indicated that the next class pack will be for the Scout.  I for one am very excited to see what unlockables the Scout will gain, and whether we will see some new uses for the class.

I have been a little lax and haven’t really put in much time with TF2 lately.  If Valve can get their act together and starting pushing out some more regular updates, maybe that situation will change.

Game-ism explains better than we could why we like Team Fortress 2 so much. The secret is the lack of straight-line weapons that I originally lamented when I first came to Team Fortress Classic, then quickly realized the genius of. You simply can’t have a varied class-based gameplay experience when all of the weapons are realistic (that is to say, they fire in straight lines, like normal firearms). It takes the removal of all of that vanilla stuff to allow true variation.

I fear that all the buzz over Far Cry 2 in recent days has crowded out other PC games that are no less worthy of mention, so allow me to take a step back and cover some of the PC games that I enjoyed immensely over the past two years or so. If you’re looking for a game to play that’s just as fun as what’s coming out now, but won’t run you the full $50 price tag, look no further than these games.

Team Fortress 2. Yeah, we’re still playing the ol’ Teef regularly in this household. Grokmoo wrote quite extensively about the parts of the game we enjoy, so I’ll just give the bottom line here: the game has been out for a little while yet still enjoys a thriving community. The nine classes seem deceptively simple (only three weapons each, one of which is a melee weapon), but each require completely different strategies, so that mastering even one takes awhile and mastering them all is quite the feat. Add to that the number of different gameplay modes and all the custom maps that are available, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that you can easily get hundreds of hours of playtime out of Team Fortress 2.

Crysis (and its expansion pack Warhead) offers one of the best single player FPS experiences in recent memory. The graphics are simply amazing and will definitely put your high-end video card through its paces. Frustrated by the slowness and general aimlessness of the story missions in Far Cry 2? Then Crysis is the cure. And despite it being over a year older, its engine is definitely better (probably because it wasn’t compromised by having to work on consoles). All it takes to realize the superiority of the engine is to level a copse of trees — full of enemies attempting to hide — with a mounted machine gun. There’s nothing else quite so satisfying as to take out not just all of your enemies, but also all of the trees.

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Over the past several months, Cyde Weys and I have been enjoying some of the finest multiplayer gaming yet devised.  Of course, I am referring to none other than Team Fortress 2.  This class based multiplayer FPS has provided us with countless hours of engrossing gameplay.

Team Fortress 2, or “Teef”, as we affectionately call it, has one key advantage over many other multiplayer shooters.  The class based nature of the game, the gamemodes, and the overall balancing greatly encourage and reward team based gaming.

This format provides a lot of value to gamers who actively play often with friends.  Cyde Weys, another friend of ours, and I often form a formidable trio when we play.  In fact, I very rarely play the game without being accompanied by at least one friend.  This is because it is simply a great deal more fun playing with people you know.  The three of us together are often capable of dominating the scoring on servers, in large part due to our ability to coordinate with one another.  This is often a decisive advantage over an enemy team with less cooperation.

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