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Tuesday 4 March, 2008
Gamelog Entry #2
GAMEPLAY
In the second session I was still having fun. I could probably play for a few more hours before I felt the need to eat, sleep, socialize, etc. I had a real intense round where I basically held off the whole attacking team by myself, and at the end of the round it labeled me as the “MVP” of the team. That made me feel good because our team was getting owned before that round. Being crowned the MVP is one of the many subtle but satisfying rewards for doing well in the game.
In this session there was a player who was abusing the in-game voice feature, he was playing classical music, then changed to fifty-cent. A few players on the team lost their cool at that point, and cursed at him. This happens a lot, again the in-game mic is a mixed blessing. Some people play things that are awesome like Rick Astley, and others hurt our ears and minds with things like ‘Boots wit da Fur.’ Valve has mostly fixed this problem though with the addition of the mute player mic feature.
DESIGN
Team Fortress 2’s game design is an interesting thing to talk about. Let it be known that it is an awesome, well designed game. It’s got a few things that have never been done before, that work really well. Simultaneously, the thing about TF2 when compared to the first team fortress is that conceptually they are exactly alike. The eight playable classes are the same. There have been a few tweaks to them, but they have very few things that are actually new. Even the maps are the same.
But I think the mastery of how improved these things are is what makes this game so awesome. Examples of improvement in classes: The medic has been drastically improved for healing, where his healing in the first team fortress was impractical. Now he can heal at a range and still have mobility to dodge enemies, or hide behind a wall. He also has a game breaking ability called the Ubercharge, where he and a teammate become invincible for ten seconds.
The scout has been outfitted with a double jump that allows him to switch directions in midair, making his movement untouchable in comparison to the other classes. He also has a more powerful shotgun, making him a formidable opponent in the hands of a good player. In the old Team Fortress, the scout was essentially useless because of how fragile he was in combat.
The gameplay improvements are huge as well. They do something with collision in this game that I’ve never seen before. It’s a simple concept: instead of being blocked while running into friendly players or devices, the avatar appears to kind of squeeze by. If you intentionally try to run inside of a still player you can see how it works. There is technically no collision, but a force that pushes you to the edges of where collision would be. It also pushes the avatar with the perfect amount of force: not so much that it jars or interrupts your movement, but not so little that you can overlap numerous players and appear like a Doppleganger to the enemy.
Then theres one of the coolest things about TF2, which is the feel of the game. The original Team Fortress was actually a very silly game, with people flying around the map with various purposeful explosions, as well as a gratuitous amount of gore and yelling from the different avatars. Team games tend to be more tactical, moment by moment strategy operations with navy seals and Tom Clancy. This is what Team Fortress 2 looked like in its early stages of development. But somewhere along the line, it was decided that they’d take the originial ridiculous chaos of the first Team Fortress and take it to the next level, and it was executed Beautifully.
The graphics are key in this execution. The artwork in this game is 3-D cartoon-esque, looking very similar to the artwork in the animated feature The Incredibles. These graphics allow for the ‘silly chaos’ of the game to take form. Unrealistic features, like shooting a rocket launcher at your feet to propel you high into the air wouldn’t work as well in a more serious aesthetic environment.
So whether or not Team Fortress 2 has much innovation, it’s still very well-designed and a ton of fun.
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