The evolution of gaming part 2: I am Heavy weapons guy, and this is my new weapon.

Don't miss out on Evolution of Gaming: Part 1

Team Fortress 2 had finally arrived and it only took seven years! Leading up to the release, gamers who had pre-ordered The Orange Box, a compilation of games including Portal and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, were treated to beta play of the game. Sadly I had failed to find this out until the night of release so I had to wait until midnight to play! But the servers were so crazy I had to wait even longer! It was grueling, at first Steam, Valve's digital distribution program, would not accept my debit card information because so many people were overloading the servers. Finally at one thirty in the morning Steam accepted my card and my download promptly started.....at 50kb a second. It was downloading slower than good ol' Compuserve. It was torture, I filled my time watching my download percentages slowly raise, scouring the forums and salivating over the Meet the Class videos Valve released to promote the game.


Valve had a great ad campaign for The Orange Box, they released a television ad showcasing what the OB would include and the Meet the Class videos to promote the long awaited Team Fortress 2. They might have done other ads but to tell you the truth I only paid attention to TF2 at the time and I don't read magazines so there were probably many ads I missed. As you can see above the Meet the Class videos started with excellent quality and have only gotten better. The best thing about these videos was showing off the personalities of the mercenaries in the game. They weren't bland, blocky and emotionless models anymore they had character!

The above image shows the new incarnations of the classes, now compare this image to the image in the last part of this series. Without pointing out the difference in technology used to create the games, the biggest difference is the character the new versions display even when "posing for a picture". Yes the ease of adding personality is because of the technology and a model poser, but this was also new for an online shooter back in 2007. So it was steps above the original and every other online shooter at the time in the character department. Now I don't mean all first person shooters, there have been many single player FPS games with great characters, but I specifically mean an online only shooter. Valve made players get involved with their characters. Players began to like the mercenaries not only based on how they looked or what weapons they had, but by what they said and did in the videos and comics Valve used to advance their up coming story lines and updates.

Finally the morning of October 10th 2007, after tossing and turning all night, dreaming about finally playing Team Fortress 2, I sat my ass in front of the computer and fired the game up. From the Valve start up screen, to the music that played and the title page, it was perfect. I hadn't even started the actual game up and it was perfect. I promptly found a server running an old main stay, 2fort. Most Team Fortress players will tell you how sick they are of 2fort now, but back when TF2 was released it was so cool to see an update of a classic map. No longer were the bases bland concrete bunkers that mirrored each other but the bases looked different based on team. A slick modern industrial design was sported for BLU (Builder's League United) team and a more rustic natural look for RED (Reliable Excavation Demolition) team was used. While they still mirrored each other in lay out they were noticeably different in aesthetic design.
Entering the fray on 2fort I picked Spy as my first class, which I will tell you, not the best idea. I had played Spy more than any class in Team Fortress Classic. Many of my personal records were set while playing Spy. But this Spy was the new TF2 Spy and much different than the old classic one I was used to. I ran from my spawn, quickly learning to disguise because my disguise kit was right in my selection of weapons unlike TFC. I then clicked the right mouse button and I turned invisible. I shook my head in disbelief for a moment, and said aloud "I'm invisible!" Back in the TFC days Spy had feign death, which in theory was an awesome idea and at first was a great tool. Then people learned how to find Spies that had faked their own demise. It was to the point where you would be killed on sight, when in fact you were supposed to tricking your enemy in to thinking you were already dead. I fired my new gun and it was....LOUD! The Spies pistol use to be compact and quiet. In TFC your silenced darts would slow your enemy down allowing you to quickly escape. Now the Spy had a large revolver at his side and the sound it made was thunderous. It was evident this wasn't going to stun your enemy but knock them on their asses and it felt good to wield that power. So I took the path I took so many times in TFC, through the enemies sewers. I cloaked trying to sneak in but I was caught and killed and then killed again and again and again. But it was still so much fun to hear the characters yell at each other and to see what the new weapons looked like and how they killed you. Team Fortress 2 was everything I wanted and more. But little did we know, Valve was not done with Team Fortress 2. They announced that the classes were each going to get their own updates and new game modes would be added. In the updates each class would get new weapons, allowing players to choose items based on their play style. Team Fortress 2 which was unlike any shooter at the time, would eventually evolve so much that it would not even be the same game as it was at launch.