just finished a 3 hours session of TF2. Its pretty rare that I play this long, and thats a good sign. So far I'm loving this game!

I think the Scout and SPy are really fun playing.

Scout is very fast and agile with his double jump and running speed. He can take out slow characters with ease at close combat.

The Spy gives you that hide n seek feeling, disguising yourself in enemy territory is thrilling. Its really funny when you get enemy Medics to heal you and then kill them haha.

I find it hard to get kills with Soldeir and Demoman due to their slow attacks, its hard to hit enemies.

I also like how the classes seem fairly balanced, for now at least. Almost every map there are 1-3 of every class, unlike CS where 80% of the people are using AK47, M4A1, or AWP.

For the sound of it, I think I will be picking spy. Sound just so f-ing fun.

This game is very fun...I played for 3 hours straight tonight....lost track of time...the game is very well balanced and a ton of fun.

It looks gorgeous too.

For those unsure of buying this...just get it already! This is practically worth the price of Orange Box alone...I can't imagine how I'll feel after playing HL2: Ep 2 and Portal as well haha.

I've played this game for 18 hours so far this week.

It is really fantastic.  I've played online multiplayer FPS games of all kinds.  I played a lot of TFC and CS back in the day (CS beta 5 on up through CS Source), I've played a lot of BF1942, UT2004, even Goldeneye.  Most of the games I mentioned have put their own spin on the team- and/or class-based gameplay with objectives, capture points, respawn timers, rounds, vehicles, you name it, it's all been tried.

Team Fortress 2 is the real thing.

Valve knows what they're doing, they've put a huge amount of testing, tweaking, and polishing into this game, and it shows.  The years spent developing this game have paid off big time.  Every aspect of the game is centered around making it fun to play.  Even the graphical style of the game was chosen to make players easy to see and maps easy to understand, yet it still looks stunningly beautiful, even on 3-year-old midrange graphics hardware (I have a GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB).  I haven't had this much fun online since TFC launched in 1999.  Valve has finally re-raised the bar and shown the development community how it's done.

I absolutely agree Entroper, interestingly enough I have actually spent 18 hours on it according to my stats as well.

There is a lot of thought that went into the game but I do personally think there are some issues with it albeit minor ones.

The biggest complaints so far from other players and myself center around the sudden death mode. A lot of people I have talked to in game think it doesn't really make much sense and would prefer the game to end in a tie then to play it out with no respawns and have to sit out for long periods as 3 or 4 people fight it out.

The other big complaint seems to be that the spies are quickly becoming obsolete already. Basically everybody shoots their own teammates on a regular basis to see if they bleed and since engineers put dispensers close to the battlefront its not an issue to blow through some ammo to make sure somebody isn't a spy. Luckily they do have the stealth mode but its pretty short duration.

My own personal complaint that I haven't heard anybody else mention is that both the Heavy and Sentry have the ability to completely lock down most classes. What I mean is there are times where you might duck around a corner and get shot at by a sentry but you are unable to move back behind cover because the sentry bullets freeze you in place presumably from stunning you. This would be fine if respawns didn't take upwards of 20 seconds. But its annoying when you want to dodge and feel cheated.

Now that thats out of the way, some of what they got right...

Medics...the medic class is AWESOME. They are fabulous support for heavies and they have a pretty decent weapon that won't kill as fast as most weapons but can put some hurt on folks pretty quick regardless. But the part that is awesome is their invulnerability charge they get occasionally and how much it adds to the game.

To watch a medic and a heavy go invulnerable and see a team push forward into the enemy base is exhilarating. The game takes on an ebb and flow as two teams clash over a midpoint constantly surging forward and falling back as the upper hand is gained and lost based on the skill of the players participating.

Notice I said skill...thats right the invulnerability charge only provides a short term advantage and it still has to be pressed and utilized properly or its easily wasted. Invulnerability is pretty useless in the hands of an unskilled medic or used on an unskilled heavy. This is why I think the medic is done right, its not too overpowered but provides a medic character with something they rarely had in other games, meaningful impact beyond just another heal.

The maps with multiple locations to capture are pretty awesome as well, mostly because each set of 2 areas is fought over as a single skirmish and it keeps everyone focused into a reasonable area.

All the classes have a great feel and personality to them as well making each one very distinct. Whether its the beefy slow moving heavy or the light weight speedy scout. The voices compliment the personalities perfectly and it all ties together the ambiance of the levels and the music is pretty awesome as well.

All around for a game that only has multi-player I am extremely happy with this game. Scoring it as just an online Multiplayer I would give it a 9.8/10, by the merits of full game I would give it a 9.2. I highly recommend the game to anyone who enjoys teamwork elements in online games. Even if you aren't big on teamwork there are still classes that do quite well by themselves.

@Ben,

I had a pretty good run in that game we were playing in last night, set a bunch of personal records. Hit 35 points in a single life (25 of those were kills). Now if I can just manage to maintain that ratio lol =P

Anyways, I was noticing that one of the achievements you unlock is to play in a game with 8 people from your friends list...at first I thought this meant at the same time but after playing last night it appears to mean just total/ever.

I am hoping to get all the achievements done before beta ends (because apparently I am somewhat of an achievement whore), but it seems like some of them could be pretty hard (for instance Defending Gravel Pit without giving up a single control point).

PS - I told my sentry not to shoot you but it wouldn't listen QQ

@Sqrl

Yeah...you and your damn sentry haha.

I didn't realize this game had achievements until last night...very nice addition. TF2 is pretty much the first Steam game to fully utilize the Community features...the consistent stats are very nice.

This game is freakin amazing!