Do you play Video games? Do you like video games? Do you not have enough money because you spent it all on video games? Then Team Fortress 2 is perfect for you.

Game play

Team Fortress 2 is a free to play game available only on the steam software by Valve. The game itself has been out since 2006, but was made free to play (or F2P) on June 23rd 2011. If you didn’t already know, free to play is a genre of game that allows users to play a game for free, but sometimes with pay walled content or pay to win aspects. But that’s not how Team Fortress 2 works. First of all, TF2 has 9 different classes: The scout, the Soldier, the Pyro, the Demoman, the Heavy, the Engineer, the Medic, the Sniper, and the Spy. Each class has 3-4 weapon slots (The spy and the engineer have 4) and the TF2 also has weapons that randomly drop in-game, hats, cosmetics, and extra taunts. Weapons have different effects, which do different things depending on the weapon, but all weapons are equally balanced. Weapons have different stats, of course, for example, a weapon with +50% attack speed might have -60% damage, or a weapon that might protect you from one back stab from the spy might take up a secondary slot, etc. There are tons of weapons to choose from, with even more play styles (for example, the Demoman can equip Ali Baba’s wee booties/the bootlegger, and a Chargin’ Targe/Splendid Screen to become a Demoknight, or a Sniper can equip a huntsman and Jarate to become a huntsman sniper, etc.). There is no way to buy better weapons to get an advantage over other players, nor is there any for of “experience” which forces you to grind in order to play with the best weapons. In fact, the stock weapons, the weapons you’re started out with, are generally considered the best weapons, so you basically, have everything you need from the start. You have access to all official maps from the beginning, as well as all the game modes, and most public servers (some servers don’t allow free to play players). The game is very balanced, with no classes having any real advantage over the other, and most importantly, it’s always fun to play, no matter what you’re doing. The game also has a co-op mode called Mann vs. Machine, wherein you team up with other players to fight wave, after wave of mechanical versions of your favorite 9 classes, only you have tons of power ups to help out.

Community

Seeing as Tf2 is a multiplayer online Fps, there’s a community that you will have to interact with. The TF2 community is not the best of communities… in fact, all Valve communities are terrible, and never good to new players, or even good to themselves. There will always be a player on your team complaining about what classes you play, what things you’re wearing, and even whether or not you’re Free to play (F2P). The main thing to remember about TF2 is to never feel bad when someone calls you out for being a free to play, being bad at the game, and not being the best credit to your team. What is important, is to make friends, and be nice to everyone you meet, so to not be a jerk while playing, which is certainly not something the community needs more of.  Make sure to make, and keep, the right friends, as well as to make sure that you don’t let yourself get annoyed by someone else playing this game on their computer saying you are below average, as the majority of players are. It will take time to get better at the game, but in the meantime, try not to mind the few who try to dictate what is “good.”

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, Tf2 is one of the best free to play games you will find, with good balance of classes, a large range of items to use, plenty of maps to play on, and tons of hours of fun and silliness to play around with. It suffers from a less than desirable community, and you will run in to the odd naysayer, however, the pros more than outweigh the cons