The evolution of gaming part 1: Oooooooh run, run, I'm coming for you!

Twelve years ago I was introduced to, what I considered at the time, the best first person shooter ever. I had no idea what a behemoth the game would become nine years later.


At a time when most people I knew played death match games like Quake and Unreal, Team Fortress Classic was a breath of fresh air. I couldn't get enough of it, nine classes to choose from, different objectives to complete and most importantly team play. The classes had much more variety than random weapons laying on the ground, each class had their own health, armor and speed rating with scout being the fastest but lowest in health and armor and the heavy weapons guy being the slowest and with the highest of the latter ratings. The other seven classes included were the soldier a basic front line trooper who was the best well rounded, pyro a class who excelled in crowd control, the demolition man who perfected traps, medic who's job was to keep his teammates alive and occasionally poisoning the enemy, the sniper who's point and clicking was as dangerous to any high profile player as six rockets, the engineer who created large sentry guns that denied the enemy access to important areas and then the spy the master of subterfuge and backstabs. Before this my only experience in players variety was the weapons they picked up. This usually meant whoever could make it to the biggest gun first got the most kills. But with classes you had your own tactics and you had to learn how to fight other classes.


Team Fortress Classic was originally a mod for Quake name Team Fortress. I find it kind of ironic that a game that I only knew as a frag fest created one of the first if not the first team based shooter. I never did get a chance to play the original Team Fortress, which I have actually heard many TF veterans refer too with fondness. This often shows their age as TF was released in 1996. The comments are usually asinine, trying to one up current members of the TF2 community. So TFC was actually the second game in the TF series. I remember way back in 1999 when the third game Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms was announced. I couldn't get enough of the original trailer. I can't tell you how many times I watched it.



Rather bland and generic by today's standards, but the trailer blew me away the first time I downloaded it. Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms was the only game I wanted to play and I wanted to play it right then. The game used new technology call Parametric animation, which blended seperate animations to create one smooth animation making the game look more realistic and smooth. I remember reading about the changes to the classes the scout became the ranger, the demolitions man became the commando and the heavy weapons guy had to stop and deploy his his gun before he could fire it accurately, the medic could revive teammates there were mortally wounded but not gibbed and the spy took disguises from players he had killed. It was obvious the game was taking on a new life of it's own, I felt like it was a cross between Counter Strike and Team Fortress Classic. It was trying to fill that gap that existed between players of the more realistic Counter Strike and the more extreme Team Fortress. At the time I was fine with the idea because we were getting a new Team Fortress and I wanted to get behind the mouse of the new spy and garrote the hell out of enemy players. Then everything went quiet...

Nothing was heard about TF2: BoA for years. As I went through high school I kind of forgot about TFC and TF2: BOA and I didn't keep track of info for the games. Much to my surprise I didn't miss anything. Around 2005 my friend had gotten me back in to TFC which sparked my interest in the property again. I spent much of my time researching TF2: BoA. Over five years very little was said about the "new" game, no new trailers, no more screen shots no release date. What had happened?! I dreaded the idea that the game was canceled. Alas I had found some info, it was still being worked on, but it was a new game. Wait what? TF2 was no longer Team Fortess 2: Brothers of Arms. It was this new creation, the legend goes that models and concept art were leaked from a stolen disk. The concepts were much more cartoony than before and some of them weren't even human, they were aliens. While this surprised me it grabbed my attention even more. It seems much more unique than the realistic military/TFC hybrid. At one point the game was even said to take place in the Half-Life continuity, which blew my mind. TF2 was coming and I was getting excited once more. Then again there was no more info, not even whispers. What happened? TF2 died again.

But in 2006 TF2's battered and beaten corpse raised it's beautiful head again refusing to be silenced. What was shown by Valve was the most unique first person shooter I had ever seen. It was a cartoon! That's basically what TF2 had become, the characters looked like they were pulled from a Pixar animation and given guns! It was amazing and I was gitty like a school girl. The biggest news, TF2 finally had a projected release date, spring of 2007.....which to no ones surprised didn't happen. But it was coming and it was coming in full force.

(Team Fortress Classic picture from here: http://gameslatest.com/2009/12/31/a-look-back-at-1999/ for those of you who care)