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Monday 14 January, 2008
GAMEPLAY:
Having spent some time with the game already, I found the game to be much less frustrating this time around. I was playing a different map, so perhaps that has something to do with it. I found myself having genuine fun while playing, and I was able to help out my teammates more than in the first round of play. I definitely got a more solid sense of the 'team' in Team Fortress 2.
I'm starting to get more of a feel for the individual characters in the game, which is odd to say because multiplayer FPS like Counter-Strike don't tend to have any sort of characters, just two opposing teams. In TF2, the individual classes definitely have personalities. I've been playing the Soldier, who has a very gruff, gung-ho, war movie personality, whereas the Spy is a very reserved, fastidious fellow with a European accent; The Heavy is a thick-headed Russian, the Scout is a gleefully manic Brooklynite, the Medic is a German Dr. Kevorkian, and so on for all the rest of the classes - the Sniper, the Pyro, the Demoman, and the Engineer.
All in all, I can say that my experience with the game, apart from my initial lack of skill, has been a very positive one!
DESIGN:
Team Fortress 2 is a very carefully designed game. The most obvious quality of the game from a design perspective is the garish, almost cartoony nature of the graphics. This makes the game an immediate standout among the crowd of modern hyper-realistic online FPS games, and also allows for a host of other design differences that would only make sense in an exaggerated environment.
One of these differences is the use of color within the game. Territory controlled by the RED team is subtly warmer and redder, whereas territory controlled by the BLU team is cooler and bluer. This is most obvious on the map 2Fort, where the two team bases are static throughout the game. The BLU base is constructed of blue-tinted concrete and similar materials, whereas the RED base is made up of redwood and dirt. This design choice makes it immediately obvious when one is in enemy territory, but without being obnoxious.
Another critical element of the gameplay is the assumed conflict between the BLU and the RED teams. The game rewards the execution of this conflict by awarding points to either team for successfully completing objectives while preventing the other team from completing theirs; however, this does not mean that the conflict is mandated. Put otherwise, the two teams can agree to a spontaneous armistice, as I witnessed in one particular match.
Player agreement works in other ways, such as spontaneous agreements to attack only with melee weapons. While there is no "rule from on high" that this behavior is mandatory, players cooperate with the informal agreement to a surprising degree, and the result is a more fun experience for all. The game design allows for these meta-games by stripping the core game experience down to comparative simplicity, so that emergent behavior is almost guaranteed by player experimentation.
If there is any part of the game I take objection to, it is the part that frustrated me the most - the initial period of inexperience that can only be alleviated by getting thoroughly beaten by other players for an indeterminate period of time. While it could be argued that this learning curve is common to all online first person shooters, I see no reason why some sort of tutorial or sandbox environment couldn't be provided to help new players learn how to play the game. It is frustrating and even embarrassing to play an online FPS for the first time, only to find that you are being utterly destroyed by more experienced players. I can easily see casual gamers and first-timers being discouraged by this if they have no other motivation to continue playing.
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