Team Fortress 2: Biggest. Disappointment. Evar.

Man I was excited about that one... Team Fortress 1 was the first online game I'd ever played back in 1999/2000. It was right before I moved to Japan and I had about 2 months of free time while I was waiting to get my visa so I played it all day. I bought The Orange Box last night and immediately logged in to Team Fortress.

They used a campy animated style that makes the game look more suitable for the Wii. The heavy gunner is a large bloke with a stupid, comic book persona to him. The scenery is decent, but it looks like a recreation of the Road Runner cartoons. Everything about it makes you think you're playing a game for kids where they wanted to ham up the characters and remove the violence. With some slight changes you could actually make a "Super Mario's Team Fortress" title out of it.

It's not that I need violence in a game to get my attention, but when you change the overall mood/feel of a game then you're basically creating a different game entirely. It's like they decided to go for an entirely different target audience than those who played the original. I know Valve didn't create the original but I'm sure they had an idea of the type of gamer who was playing it. I don't remember too many people in 2000 saying, "Great game, but I wish it were more like a cartoon."

There are some good points such as using some of the original maps. It's pretty cool to walk down memory lane and know which direction you have to go because you played it so much 8 years ago. But if I were playing the game for the first time I don't think it would be something I'd play for more than an hour.

 

I like the Loony Tunes kind of style they went with.

Every other FPS is so damn serious, this one's partly funny, especially when you do the laugh taunt as an engineer while your fully tricked out turret just killed 3 or 4 guys.



I think you need to be a little more open minded, at first I thought this thread would be a legitamate balance oriented thread, not one going "Wah wah, they changed the graphics, I hate the change and I'm gonna belittle a system as well all in the same post based on sweeping generalizations"

Right?

EDIT: Oh and have you seen the Meet the Soldiers video? Thats pretty "Un" kiddy because the maniacal Soldier is talking to heads on a fence like they are alive. Theres plent of dismemberment and guts in the game as well.

 

TF2 is a way of life, if only everything in life could be that good.

 

Dude who cares? the game is fun (albeit it lacks bots for offline play) and the graphics while cartooney are very elaborated, so much you can barely see the polygons!

And I dont want to start a fight here, but do you need the game to be dark and ugly? you cant play a game thats more of a parody of itself rather than yet another generic FPS with overdone militaristic themes?

But if you want that then get Unreal 3...

 

You have to the first person I know who had negative things to say about it.

 

Yeah, if you want a team based FPS with MATURE GAMER SERIOUSNESS, get Quake Wars.

 

Or Shadowrun.

 

Well... I can see where he is coming from, so I wouldnt instantly bash him for his sincere opinion. Team fortress (1) was never a game I spent tons of time playing. Sure, I played it and liked it, but it wasnt something I loved and cherrished. One source game I absolutely love though, is Half-life 2.
What if they just decided to do the cartoony style there aswell? It would change the game into a more comical action adventure. Would it have been fun? Probably. But not something that would make me super happy as Half-life 2 delivered.
Now you might be thinking, "Half-life 2 and Team Fortress are two entirely different things. How could you even compare them?" Just take a look at Team Fortress and Half-life. Team fortress was built off of Half-life's Goldsource engine. Team Fortress used the same grungy (sp?) textures and style presented in the original Half-life. Many absolutely loved Team Fortress (Such as our topic creator here) and the game was heavily played.
But now where has it gone? Team Fortress 2 is cartoony and comical. hence the reason I see why Japan-Games doesnt love it and doesnt think it lived up to its name.

(Oh, and btw. I love Team Fortress 2. So dont bash me. :110: )

 

My beef with the game was how much is was a departure from the original. I'm not here to give the game a full review of positive and negatives, and I'm not here to say that all FPS games need to be gritty. I'm saying that for this one game they made a radical departure from the theme and overall tone of the original. For me, that was a major disappointment. If you weren't a player of the original then all of my comments are probably meaningless to you.

I played the game last night again for a couple of hours. I do enjoy playing it and there are a lot of positives. I've always enjoyed team based games and this is still one of the best ones on the market. But changing Team Fortress into a campy animated game is no different then doing the same with Doom or Quake or any other FPS. If you're a first time player it's probably hard for you to understand the point of view that I'm speaking from.

 

well the truth, for me, is : TF2 is an excellent game! , a great mix of violence (a lot of blood and limbs everywhere) and extremely funny gameplay. Maybe Japan-Games is comparing it to Team Fortress Classic (the one CrAzY is talking about), but this TF2 is a follow up for the original "Team Fortress" mod for Quake 1, a so very successful mod, that Valve hired the team behind the modification and created the TF Classic using the GldSrc engine. Valve tried to do an exciting, innovative and fresh new game with TF2, I am a very old fps player, and for me they did a great job :nod:

 

this is the first time i've ever heard of anyone speaking negativly about this game. I thought he was dissappointed with the recent patch when I read the title...

 

Exactly what I was thinking.

No offense, but Japan-Games' post sounds like it came from Gamefaqs, except with no leet speak and butchering of the English language.

In most other places a post like his would be considered a troll post.

I can somewhat see where he is coming from, but the fact that he also belittled a console based on sweeping generalizations and made accusations like "This game looks more suited to Wii" without knowing the technology behind it just screams "Troll" to me.

I'd say TF2's current engine is more like Pixar's animated films, but in game form. I believe this game made Toy story graphics a reality, to be honest. Everything else is gritty in this gen, and when someone dares to be different, someone gets their panties in a twist.

If its not what you wanted, keep on playing TFC or whatever. Who's stopping you? I bet the servers will still be up for like 20 years or more. People still play Quake online. Or if you MUST have futuristic gritty graphics, get Quake Wars or UT4. Simple as that.

As a side note for the drastic graphical change, that was their decision. Part of it was Aesthetics and another was for Gameplay. Some of the maps and characters make it easier to spot players. Also, their graphical change made it also easy to identify certain characters. The larger hitboxes on some of the other characters also makes the game balanced, believe it or not. For example, the Scout is fast, skinny, and hard to hit. However, he has very small health. The Heavy, on the other end, is large, slow, and a Damage sponge, but it still takes 1 headshot to kill him with the sniper. In TFC they all are the same size, right?

Even if you don't like the graphical change, you have to admit they made a pretty balanced game. Although Spy is broken if you have idiots on your team who don't spy-check, but thats not the spies fault. I just shoot anyone who gets within ten feet of my sentries so those damn spys won't start "SAPPIN' MAH SENTRAH!"

 

Seriously, the game is a great game and I think it looks awesome. I would imagine someone who specializes in old video game hard ware that graphics would be secondary to game play...

 

I'm going to side with him just because, but in reality I never cared about it or it's predeseccor, so I guess I'm not that dissapointed. I like the graphics though, but I can see why someone who liked the first is irked at the new stuff.

 

I just like that the game has a sense of humor. It's a really fun game when I can get a good connection....

 

"Or if you MUST have futuristic gritty graphics, get Quake Wars or UT4. Simple as that."

Well my point was that it was a radical change from the original that I played. That was the disappointment. I'm seeing quite a few people who have taken my words to mean that animated characters have no place in FPS games, or that the game can't be fun with such a look. That's not what I was trying to say.

 

I think the change from TF to TF2 can be compared to OOT/Majora's Mask to Wind Waker. A lot of people didn't like WW because of the artistic style. They probably didn't even play the game. It just looked completely different than past Link games so they didn't like it.

 

Some of the replies in this topic are starting to really put me off and not even desire to read anything outside of the development forums.

Japan-Games is a respected poster here who is merely venting his frustration and sharing his opinions and just because it goes against the grain he is catching major flack. This is pure bull shit. Let the guy voice his opinions and if all you are going to do is bash him over and over then just stop posting.

I think graciano has it right. The major departure from the originals artistic direction has a tendency to put some people off. Doesn't mean that the game is bad, but the over all style of a game goes a long way in the lines of failure/success. Try thinking about it in reverse. Try imagining Jet Set Radio with gritty film noire realism and real life scenarios. I still think it would be a good game, but it would feel like an overall different title that may have drawn upon a different demographic.

 

The problem is that JSR is the graphics, since it was one of the first celshaded AAA games.

Meanwhile TFC only had those graphics becos every game based on HL1 looked pretty much the same.

I get his point, but I didnt agree back in the day with all the zelda fanboys that were ranting about "how kiddie WW looks" since in my opinion that was the best Zelda ever.

Anyway, I'm sure theres going to be a TFC mod for Source, just like theres a HL1 mod that runs on said engine.

 

http://www.fortress-forever.com/ <-- It seems to be a clone of TFC for the Source engine.