Just Got Team Fortress 2

[IllegalPaladin]

Some tips,

Learn about the classes and their abilities. Gone are the days of TFC where everybody has grenades and it's a matter of who uses them the best.

Medic - The Medigun (I believe it's called) can heal friendlies and raise their health cap for a short time (125% I believe) from a distance and the longer you heal people (without getting yourself killed), the 'ubercharge' will charge up and when it's fully charged, you can activate it and make yourself and one other person temporarily invincible for a short time.

Heavy - They're big and slow, but their firepower with their main gun will tear people to shreds at close range. It usually helps to have support from a medic to allow you to press foward.

Engineers - They can build a sentry gun that starts out being a slow shooting turret, but you can upgrade it twice to shoot faster, and then also include a rocket launcher which fires 4 rockets. The sentries are pretty brutal, but can be taken out by spies with a sapper weapon that will destroy them after a short time. To stop this, use the wrench to smack a sentry and destroy the sapper charge. Engineers require 'metal' to build things so if they build a dispenser, the dispenser will resupply your team with ammo, engineer metal, and health which is useful if you're far away from the ammo/health lockers at your spawn points. Lastly, they can also build a teleporter entrance and exit to do just as the name implies, send a friendly from point A to point B.

Spies - These bastards can be rough if you're not expecting them. They can disguise themselves as enemy team mates and also go invisible for a short time. Friendly spies in disguise will look normal to you except for a paper cutout of the class they are disguised of covering their face so you don't have to waste any ammo shooting who you think is an enemy (like in TFC). Also as stated above, they have a sapper charge which they can place on enemy engineer's sentries, dispensers, and teleporters which will take them out if not taken care of. What makes the spy dangerous is that with their knife, hitting somebody in the back will mean an instant kill.

Demoman - They have a pipe bomb launcher (I like to call it the pill launcher, but that's me) which will shoot an explosive cylinder that will explode after a short time or on contact with an enemy. They also have sticky bombs which are spiked balls that will stick to whatever surface (don't know about people) they hit and have to be detonated by the Demoman. It's useful to cover an entrance to a door where one can clump up the bombs to cause a world of hurt or you can shoot one on the ground and detonate it as you jump over it to propel you into the air to get to a high up place. The one weakness of the sticky bomb is that enemies can shoot them and they'll fall off the wall (or wherever you shot them) and be rolled out of harms way with more shots.

Scout - These guys are all about the speed. They can capture control points the faster than the other classes and with a useful double jump, they can get to harder to reach areas and even escape some harm. The trade off is that they're easy to kill (if you're not freaked out at their speed or were using a controller...), but their double barreled shotgun they have can be pretty powerful though. If you're quick, you can make a mad dash and nab the objective before your enemy can have a chance to set up defensive positions.

Pyro - These guys can be great at close range with their flame thrower. The flame thrower does more damage the closer you are to it and enemies will be lit on fire for a short amount of time which can cause them to try and make a mad dash to a dispenser, medic, ammo/health locker in their spawn, or even the few health pods lying around the map. If you're a Pyro and you meet another Pyro, it'd probably be better to switch to your shotgun and go from there because with their flame suits, the flamethrower wont be as effective because they wont catch on fire for extra damage.

Sniper - My favorite class, these guys can annoy the hell out of you if in their line of sight. When you zoom in with your rifle, you can 'charge' your shot up after a few seconds which will cause the bullet to do much more damage. Snipers can also score headshots which will pretty much mean instant death if you have a fully charged shot. Even though they're best at a little distance from the enemy, they also have a sub machine gun that they pack just in case. Demomen, Soldiers, and Spies can usually make quick work of them because they can get to higher places (such as the battlements on 2fort) easier and faster than the other classes.

Soldier - The Soldier is your typical guy with a rapid fire 4-shot rocket launcher. He can use this to make short work at close range, annoy snipers at long range, and even rocket jump himself to high places.

I'm sure I'm missing a few things, but I've mainly tried to touch on the unique weapons and abilities of each class and hopefully this can help you pick out strategies to attack, defend, or to suit your play style.