Team Fortress 2 - can this game get any better?

THE BEST OF ONLINE GAMING GETS BETTER

Product Team Fortress 2 (the updates)

Price £14.99 (www.play.com)

Web http://orange.half-life2.com/tf2.html

Age rating 15+

Team Fortress 2 is without a doubt, the best online multiplayer game out now.  But eventually, even the most expertly-crafted games can get a little tired after a while, especially if, like some of us, you’ve been playing Team Fortress 2 at every waking moment.

To counter this inevitable lull, Valve - the game’s creator - has released a bunch of updates, which are designed to give it a new lease of life. To get them, you log into your Steam account and they will be downloaded automatically, which should take no more than an hour.

The updates aren’t designed to totally overhaul the game; after all this might ruin the game’s near-perfect gameplay balance. Instead, Valve has simply given each class of soldier new achievements and special weapons to unlock, and a new map to play.

Called Gold Rush, the aim of this new map is for one team to escort a cart on a railway track from one side of the map to another before the time runs out, while the other team must stop you from getting it there.

Gold Rush feels very familiar because the layout is much like many of the other maps in Team Fortress 2, but the added dimension of being able to shoot from behind the cart as it trundles along makes the map feel like a scene out of an Indiana Jones movie.

It’s good, but the most exciting part of the updates is the new achievements and the new range of weapons which can be unlocked after time.  The Medic class is the first to receive this (the other classes will follow, at a later date). Achievements (there are 36 in total) might be for healing multiple team mates or assisting enemy kills.

The more achievements you’re awarded, the more special weapons you can unlock to customise your own medic. These include a new syringe gun which gives you health when you hit an enemy and a new medigun that makes your team mates’ shots more powerful when you’re ubercharging them. 

To avoid giving players who spend a lot of time playing Team Fortress 2 the edge over newer players, each new weapon modification comes with a downside - they’ve been designed to offer an advantage in a certain situation, rather than total domination of newbies.

There’s a problem with Valve trickling out these updates bit by bit though - everyone wants to play the new class at the same time. In the case of this first update, a team-full of medics trying to earn all their new achievements is all very well and good,  except there are no gun-toting troops to heal or shoot back at the other team.

Hopefully, once each soldier class has been updated (there are eight classes, so it will take a while), this won’t be as much of a problem. It definitely gives the game a much needed dynamic, but many players may prefer to stick with the way Team Fortress 2 plays now.  

OUR VERDICT

Buy it if… You want added longevity from Team Fortress 2

Don’t buy it if… You’re not willing to devote a lot of time to it

The bottom line… Team Fortress 2 was a great game, but the new updates make it even better

4 OUT OF 5