I’ve been meaning to blog about Team Fortress 2 for a while now, but I keep on playing it instead. For those who haven’t played it, let me sum up: it’s really, really good. A brief primer: TF2 is a mulitplayer, team-based first-person shooter with objective-based gameplay and nine classes to choose from, each of which brings something different to the table and each of which plays very differently from the others. The classes are all really well balanced, too. The spy, for example, could be seen as extremely powerful with his ability to become invisible, disguise himself as the enemy, and kill people instantaneously with a knife in the back. However, if you’ve got pyros who know what they’re doing, they’ll be flaming their teammates frequently and, since there is no friendly fire, only enemy spies will catch aflame, and they’re pretty weak when caught out in the open.

It’s rare for me to find a multiplayer game that holds my attention for more than a month, but TF2 has really managed to do it. I’ve been playing since about Christmas time, and I have no plans of stopping any time soon. I love the variety in the classes, and in the fact that a single level never really plays out the same twice. My favorite class in TF2 is the heavy, and it’s the class I’m best with. The heavy is big, tough, slow, and packs a minigun. He can deal a lot of damage pretty quickly if left unchecked, but he winds up being a preferred target for spies and snipers, which leads to a high mortality rate, and heavies don’t tend to last all that long without a medic, either. Second on my list (a very close second, at that) is the pyro. I love the pyro’s mobility, as well as his ability to jump amidst the enemy and sow pure chaos. He’s not the antithesis of the heavy, but he’s very, very different in play. I also like playing the demoman from time to time, lobbing grenades and sticky bombs with wild abandon.

The genius of what Valve is doing with this game, though, is the fact that they’re still supporting it after release. They release new maps, they tweak the gameplay and, best of all, they release class-based achievement packs with unlockables. It works like this: they release a bunch of achievements–little goals for you to work toward, for those who aren’t familiar with this concept–and as you get achievements, you unlock alternate weapons for your class. These weapons aren’t patently better than the ones you start with, but they do offer slightly different strategies and styles of play, which is nice, and they allow for some customization of your chosen class. They’ve released three so far: the medic, the pyro, and the heavy. I’m not much for playing the medic, but I’ve managed to get all of the unlockables for the pyro and the heavy, and they all have merit.

The pyro can replace his shotgun with a flare gun. The flare gun does less damage, but sets enemies alight from a distance, which can be very useful for the aforementioned chaos-sowing. Then there’s the backburner, a replacement for the flamethrower that is functionally similar except that it can’t fire the standard flamer’s compressed air blast (used for pushing people around or reflecting projectiles) and deals automatic critical hits from behind. Finally, there’s the axtinguisher, a replacement for the axe that deals less damage but does critical damage to foes on fire.

The heavy has probably my favorite alternate “weapon”, the sandvich, which replaces the shotgun. It’s not really a weapon; it doesn’t deal damage. It does, however, heal you when you eat it, though it makes you extremely vulnerable for the four seconds that it takes to eat it. Then there’s Natascha, the minigun replacement, which deals less damage but slows enemies under fire. Finally there are the KGB, the Killing Gloves of Boxing, which replace the heavy’s normal fist attack. They’re slower, but if you kill someone with them you get five seconds of gauranteed crits.

I am continually surprised with how much I love this game. I rave about it to my friends and play whenever I get the chance. If you haven’t tried it yet, and you like multiplayer FPSs at all, you need to try it. You owe it to yourself.

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