Holy crap TF2 is awesome.

TF2 = Team Fortress 2. A source engine game you get to play the beta of when you purchase the Orange Box, which includes Half Life 2 Episode 2 and Poral (Though only the TF2 beta is playable at this time.)


A visual feast, and everything feels right!

Takes you a little while to relearn the controls, and the voices aren't very useful if you have a mic, but the characters do have context sensitive things that they say. Like the heavy says "You are a good doctor!" when healed, and "Get behind me doctor!" when he is being healed while firing.

The action is so fast paced you don't have time to look at all the expressions, but the heavy for example will smile broadly and laugh if you start racking up the kills, and when you die, you get a still shot that you can grab a screenshot of, and I've seen a bunch of cool ones already with a guy who killed me just about to be killed by a spy.

The interface is also cool looking and innovative. For example, you select which team you want by picking one of three doors. And as an engineer when you select the weapon that builds a turret, teleporter, or dispenser, you get a blueprint which shows which which keys build which items.

Also, as far as it being a beta goes, I didn't have a single crash or see a single bug, except for one door that was missing the top half for a moment as it opened.

I was amazed at how awesome it is. That's all I can say. Excuse me while I go and play it some more now, because my god awaits me.

I was wondering why this thread wasn't getting any attention. Then the download finished.
Now I see :)

Nice little game.
I've made a group named 'Blitzers' on Steam. Join up and we can omgwtfpwnd (i had to look this one up) each other sometimes.

Argh I'm so jealous, I'm stuck in an airport lounge with a delayed flight having been travelling on business and I haven't had a chance to play it yet.

Darkheart

Downloading now, waited for this since I ever played the first game ^^

Just joined the Blitzers :P

Seems to crash more when I have it running widescreen at my monitor's max res than it did when running at 1280.

It crashed whilst it was starting up and i was typing in the Steam chat window. But still it is a blast to keep Swift in one piece whole the time :) I wonder, is the first gun of the medic(the one with the needles) for killing or healing?

Really loving it myself. Never got into the classic one but really enjoying this. Not crashed on me yet either :)

Still downloading but once finished the Blitzers will have one more Engineer to rely on (maybe I'll try out the Spy as well ^^).

I like the stylized graphics style a lot, shame its not got a single player campaign mode since I don't like MP shooters.

Evak:
Set up your own server and play it with bots and pretend they're NPC's like Half Life 2. :-)

Knotz:
I'm pretty sure the needle gun is only for killing.

I'm rather amazed that even on my now two years old system, I can run with all the settings maxed out. The subtle motion blur is really great.

If I've ever said anything bad about TF2 before now, I take it back, this rocks.

Makes me wish Steam allowed beta for those who were only interested in the Black Box. ;/

Anyways, screenshots! I need to see how it looks now!

Looking forward to playing the spy when it comes out in retail (as the Black Box), I love playing stupidly-fast characters, it'll remind me of the days I wasted in UT2004 practicing wall-jumps and crap just to out-maneuver my opponents.

I'm pretty sure they cancelled the black box, so if you want Episode 2 as well you're gonna have to get the orange.

TF2 is really awesome. I can see myself spending endless nights finding the best places on each map to set my turrets hrhr...

:(
I was playing with it on another computer, decided to move it over to the better one, and then Steam decided I was hijacking my own account.

No email to the account holder, no warning, just an unhelpful error message saying my user / password may be wrong so the login failed. (A search and the fact that my behaviour would be seen as suspicious has given me this conclusion).

This is the problem with digital content distribution: It is on a per-account basis. Sometimes people have two accounts, sometimes two computers -- and there are people who share time and money on things, but like having their online settings different.
In real life, legitimate sharing with friends and family is completely fine, since what they end up with is a single product. Why should people have to pay multiple times for digital content? Steam should be able to see when there are two users on the same network, or let a single account have multiple profiles, or let people share accounts with computers on a network. The digital content should not just be unsharable; it should be sharable with the same constraints as exist in real life.

As it is, this is very annoying...

Anyway, back to the other computer and TF2!

I just tried out the spy. Man, what a fun ^^

I haven't looked at this up until now, since I could never find anyone sensible to play TF1 with back in the day, and I thought this would be more-of-the-same-with-more-pretties.

Just check out the video on gametrailers.com though, and holy frijole it looks nice! Reminds me a great deal of TimeSplitters 2 - one of my favourite FPS's ever.

This looks like the sort of game that warrants upgrading to play.

@Noel: Would you mind letting us know what your "now two years old system" is made up of? It'd be good to know how far off I am... (which I presume is quite a long way)

They'll be giving users the option to purchase all of what the black box was to essentially contain independantly though no?

Would rather pay $19.99 for Ep2/TF2/Portal than have to spend an extra $60 for half a pack I already own.

LineOf7s: AMD64 3000+ 2ghz (biggest bottleneck is there), X800 XT PE 256mb, 1gb RAM (second biggest bottleneck), and onboard audio (actually not that bad).

Cool, thanks for that Noel.

That sucks, their penalising half life fans here. I already own Half life 2 and Episode 1. So I only want Episode 2, TF2 and Portal, why on earth are they not offering that option?

Is this a betatest or do you get access if you've preordered something?

If i remember release dates correctly then it should appear in october, at least here in germany.

You only get access to the beta if you pre-order through Steam.

Darkheart

Andy, Genexi:
Extra $60? Orange box is $45 on steam.

(You save 10% if you prepurchase, so it'll be $50 when it's released.)

Plus, black box was never slated to cost $20 like Episode 1 was: http://pc.ign.com/articles/755/755915p1.html

See? MSRP: $39.99. So at most you would have saved yourself $5 if it were coming out. It's pretty clear that Valve never intended to give away TF2, and bundling it with Episode 2 was a way to allow them to get people who wouldn't have otherwise tried it to get it, and vice versa for people who haven't bought HL2 yet.

When you think about it, it's worth the money. $45 isn't a lot for a game these days, and TF2 is a game all by itself.

Also, you know you can gift your extra copy of HL2 and Episode 1 to someone right?


Taumel:
It's not a free beta. You get access if you buy the Orange Box which comes with Half Life 2, HL2 Episode 1, HL2 Episode 2, TF2, and Portal (A small 3D single player game where you solve puzzles by shooting holes in space at walls and floors and ceilings.)

When the game comes out though they'll probably give you the ability like they do for Counterstrike to let someone else play for free for a week, since they don't have demos.

The bad news is that, at the moment, it's "Orange Box" only ($44.99 pre-release, $49.99 normally) and it includes HL2/EP1/EP2/Portal/TF2. If (like me) you already own HL2/EP1 then the prices for the other games are as follows:

Episode Two - $29.99
Portal - $19.99
Team Fortress 2 - $29.99

A total of just short of $70. The bottom line is, if you want two of the three releases, it makes sense to go for the Orange Box and save money (or at least pay the same price and get the third game thrown in).

If, like me, you only want Episode Two, then hang fire and pay $29.99 when it's out, which I believe is October 10th (on Steam - there is no planned boxed release at the moment).

Oh, and Valve say that if you already own HL2/EP1 and buy the Orange Box, you can give them to someone as a "gift" - either to an existing Steam account holder, or to someone who can then set a Steam account up.

[EDIT] Heh, Swift beat me to some of this information. Ah well!

And Cash coverters say, If you got boxed versions of HF2 or Ep1, they'll buy them off you even if valve had said you couldnt.

I find it amazing that Valve are trying to portry it as a nice thing, that they give you permission to sell their product second hand

@sswift
Okay so it only works if you've bought the orange box, or i suspect TF2 seperately, on steam already? I havn't looked into this yet but is this only valid for a steam only version (no physical product) or can you also preorder a physical orange box (dvd) and getting acess now whilst the product is delivered when it's ready in october?

H&K:
Yes, but I did save $5 on the game and got to play TF2 early, and PC games are now starting to require you to unlock them so the days of reselling PC games at least is coming to a close. And who knows... Maybe they'll do that for console games one day soon as well.

Hehe yup TF2 is pretty awesome, as a long term player of Team Fortress Classic i felt right at home with the engineer again, the cartoon shaded graphics and characters make it a fun game that is unique to look at.

I miss grenades tho :P

Played it for 4 hours straight tonight before quitting because I'm working tomorrow, I haven't felt this good about a game since UT.

Darkheart

Yes, well Cash Convertors will sell boxed versions of HL2 and Ep1 with no CD Key, so you can't actually use it, and then argue when you try to return it. ( I know because it happened to a friend and I was there when he returned it. ) So I'm not surprised they don't care what Valve say or do.

@Swift, Im not saying your wrong,
Its just that with the cansalation of the BlackBox valve giving me "permisstion" to give away the part of the Orange box that I already own, and that I then would have bought twice is annoying.

Lol, well yep that cash converters for you. I acutaly ment to type Game, but their you go.

TF2 is ridiculous.

BioShock is ridiculous.

They both use stupid, cartoony, graphics.

Neither are in my league.

No you are ridiculous, you life-like-graphics-aphile ;). But you love crysis dont you, bet you wish it was your girrrrlllfriend ;)

Well, TF2 is fun. That's why it's a game. But as we all know puki doesn't want to play games, puki wants to look at interactive movies :))

Well, sometimes it gets on my nerves when a brand new computer game is released and there is no useful media for my projects.

Makes me wonder why they bother.

Still, I managed to steal the clouds from the Crysis beta today.

Which is handy as this is a new method in cloud systems.

I opened up Steam and didn't see anything on how to play the beta. How are you guys playing this game and how did you get access to it?

EDIT:
Nm, I see it now. Guess I'm going home to pre-order at lunchtime!!!

I ordered it and it automatically installed TF2, it doesn't call it a beta, it just launches as if it's the real thing.
I'm enjoying it too, although the smak-talking and calling people ret@#ds is still going on.

I suck at it though so it's going to take some time for me to fully appriciate it's greatness.

Can't wait for Episode two and portal though.

And what's happening with left 4 dead, when that coming out?

I must stop playing that game :)
Just finished a 3 hr CTF match. We won 5-0 and I was best player with 188 points playing Engineer and Scout (and a little bit Spy and Demoman as well).

I play most of the classes except demoman and sniper. I play heavy and soldier most of the time, but I'll go medic or engineer if the team needs one. I'll go spy when I can't get through the turret defenses any other way. And one time as a scout I pulled out my bat and got five bat kills in about 30 seconds. :-)

If you ever see someone named The Pen is Mightier on a server, (sans space), that's me.

Yes, TF2 is awesome. This just goes to show you don't have to be ultra-realistic or have a super hi-tech engine to make a great game. It's all about content.

Since when is the source engine not "super hi-tech"?

It's a strange belief people have, that Source is outdated because it is scalable enough to run on old computers and with simple artwork ;)

I didn't say Source is outdated or not hi-tech. It's funny how people constantly put words in other people's mouths on these boards. I was simply implying that this game could have been made in any 3d engine (B3D and BMax included).

The bottom line is, it's not the engine. It's the vision. If you don't have the vision then you'll always be 2-3 years behind the others because you're constantly trying to remake their games. That was my point.

Here's a quote from the games wikipedia article which cites sources, explaining how the graphics came to be:So no. It most certainly couldn't have been done in another engine, because other engines cannot reproduce the stylized graphics, that make it work.

TF2 isn't really that visionary tho'. It doesn't really bring anything new to the table, it just does it really, really well. There's a reason it's called Team Fortress 2 you know.

Whelp, I just caved in and purchased my first digital-download title above $10.......(Wii VC titles & Geometry Wars prior to that), now to wait on it to download the 1.4gb of TF2 glory!

Wasn't aware they gave you Peggle Extreme when you pre-purchased Orange Box, so I thought that was nice, something to play while the dang title downloads!

My S/N will be what I got here in case we ever wanted to get Blitzer match going.

[EDIT] So how was it that you claim the serial key for the HL2 portion of the package we all own (to give to a friend)? Unless that was only for the retail package, meaning all us digital purchasers get screwed over...

I don't know, ask on the steampowered.com forums.

I'm sure we'll see similar style games pop up soon. It never fails, someone makes a cool game and a bunch of people rush to clone it's style.

And it IS the vision. I didn't say visionary. They had a vision for a great game and they executed it perfectly. Which included a graphics style similar to The Incredibles movie. They had a great vision of the end product and they achieved it.

Personally I love the game. I haven't had time to play it as much as I would like to but so far, I've been playing the Demolitions guy. Nothing like spraying bombs on the enemy ramp and blowing em up when they run out!!!

Sure. But not in Blitz3D.

No they didn't. TF2 has changed substantially over the years. The final game is nothing like their original vision. If you want to find a reason why TF2 happens to be a good game, blame luck, coincidence and the developers choice to stray and adapt from their vision, when they stumble upon something that works, but doesn't fit the vision.

>No they didn't. TF2 has changed substantially over the years.

Well, they had at least two visions, and they executed the one perfectly. The other they dropped when everyone else did pretty much the same thing before they did - or so some article said.

I think it's absolutely brilliant too. Seems well balanced and is very addictive.

My favourite aspect is that the hand weapons (fists, saw etc.) are quite powerful.

They executed their vision whether it changed or not. Now if you could just execute yours. :)

I'm getting the orange box when it comes out. Half life rox my sox

I don't care what their vision is, all I can say is, that this game is a $&#*ing riot.

So many paper-rock-scissor moments during capture maps that keeps it fresh for me as I'm always finding myself changing classes when I respawn to best fit the current situation and continue onwards. Great when you're on a team with mics, makes it extremely convenient to organize medics onto asssault-type classes to uber-up and pile through the enemy forces.

[EDIT] One day later, one day more of just loving this game, especially more-so since I found me a local server where I get ping-rates of 10-35. Sniper is so much fun when you can actually hit stuff.......and this really is a game reliant on team-play, just had a round where my entire team had mics, and it was a total blast coordinating strats and assaults.