Team Fortress 2

Sorry its been a few days since my last post but now I will continue with my 3rd of 4 posts on "Free FPS's" which stands for "Free First-Person-Shooters". Today I will talk about Team Fortress 2 (TF2).

Download
First like always you have to download the game and you can do so through Steam. Steam is an application which you register for and can buy/download all of your computer games on and interact with your gaming buddies. Once you have registered and downloaded Steam, you then search for Team Fortress 2 in search and click download.

Beginning
After it is finished downloading you can start it up and there are several guides for you as a beginner. I recommend doing the tutorial and a bit of offline practice before you start joining any servers. When you think you've gotten a handle on the interface go back to the main menu and click "start playing". As a beginner definitely play in the servers they recommend for you and do game modes that are designated for beginner's, NOT advanced players. I can tell you I have played for about a week and a half now and I'm still not that great with all my prior FPS experience because the interface is one that is quite harder to adapt to.

Game Modes
Moving on to game modes, I can not remember exactly but in general idea there are 7 different ones and about 4 for beginners or where beginner servers play and 3 for more advanced players. Basically for beginners there are 2 modes where you need to defend or take control of points on the map, and there are 2 where you push carts to the other side of the map or prevent it from getting there. For advanced players I know there is a "capture the flag" and i'm not exactly certain but I believe there is a mode where you must collect 3 sets of data located at the opposing teams spawning ground and something else.

Characters
Now we get the fun part, the in game characters. There are 9 different characters you can play with, and this is the reason why this game requires more teamwork than most/all games out there.
1. The first is a Scout who is the fastest which makes him convenient to get somewhere fast if you need to make a quick save at your base, though he only has a shotgun , pistol, and for melee a bat.
2. Second is a Soldier who has a rocket launcher, a shotgun, and a shovel and is very good for far distance damage when you get good using his rocket launcher.
3. Third is the Pyro with his awesome flamethrower, a shotgun, and fire axe; he is very good for close up combat because if his flamethrower sets someone on fire they receive residual damage and very frequently soon die if there isn't a medic nearby to heal them.
4. Fourth we have Demoman who is good for setting unforeseen mines with his secondary sticky-bomb launcher, a frag type grenade launcher for his primary weapon, and a bottle to bash on your head if he decides to melee you; very useful if you learn how to use him.
5. Fifth now is Heavy who's name derives from his body and humongous mini-gun which has 200 rounds and will demolish you if you come anywhere close; his secondary gun is a shotgun, and trust me on this one he's strong enough to melee you with just his fists :).
6. Sixth is a special character, the Engineer who has a shotgun, a pistol, a wrench, a build device, and a destroy device. With the build device you can build either a sentry gun a.k.a. automatic machine gun, a teleport entrance and exit, and a engineering points dispenser. In order to build these things the engineer must have enough points which the dispenser can provide for you. You upgrade them by beating the object which you placed with your wrench, which i'm not sure with if it is also a melee weapon or not. You can replace the objects once upgraded but if they are destroyed by the opposing team you must rebuild and upgrade the whole thing again. Something really good to do is build a sentry gun while being an Engineer and then quickly change your class to Heavy and stand by the sentry to create the ultimate opponent for the opposing team. The destroy device can destroy any object you built as an engineer, though I haven't quite caught on to why someone would want to do that.
7. Moving on we have seventh, the Medic, who's primary gun is a syringe gun which shoots needles at other people but do not mistake that for his main purpose which lies with his secondary gun, the medi-gun which heals anyone when used near them and can also "uber-charge" someone when held long enough on them. I'm not sure exactly yet but I think uber-charge makes you invulnerable and makes your power stronger for about 10 seconds; and last and least his melee is a bonesaw.
8. Eighth is the Sniper, which I for some reason find easier to snipe with in this game than any other; he has a ghetto SMG for secondary, his sniper rifle for primary, and a Kukri knife for melee. His name is self-explanatory and I would say that Soldier and Sniper are the best for very distant combat.
9. Ninth and lastly we have Spy with a revolver, an electrosapper which you can place on the enemies sentry gun to destroy when in disguise, a butterfly knife to melee (when in disguise), the spy-tron 3000 disguise kit to disguise yourself as any character you please on the other team, and an invisibility watch to cloak yourself for a few seconds and get in a good melee or two.

Extras
As you play online you will unlock achievements viewable on your steam profile and you will also pick up items like weapons and shields which you can replace with your worse original weapons. For example I replaced my sniper's SMG for a backstabbing shield which protects my sniper from a single melee in the back which is protects me from the back when I concentrate on sniping.  That's about it for this FPS and if there's anything I didn't post above, then comment below and i'll edit it in.


Inspired by: Andrew Zhang