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.

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.