Once wrote an essay that I meant to turn into a video called "The Importance of good writing in non story focused games" and TF2 was a big part of the good examples I gave.

Its definitely been talked about to death but it doesnt make it any less true that the TF2 mercs achieve with essentially the purest of pure character design brilliance and a few odd voice lines what many AAA faux cinematic mocapped hollywood actors games can't i.e be memorable.

There is actually some plot to TF2 and there's the comics as well, but lets be real, nobody gives a shit and it isnt used as a crutch for bad characterisation (supplementary material being supplementary? NO!). Even the few direct traditional bits of characterisation like the Meet the... series are incredibly brief and are so great that it only makes this aspect stronger. Meet the medic is an all timer and even works as tutorialisation.

So what about the game? Well, it came out in 2007 so obviously I was mostly getting blown up by 10k hour demomen and soldiers hitting the most surgical ass rockets/bomb shots ever at my dumb ass, but somehow I was still regularly getting top of my team simply because I actually tried fulfilling the objectives and being a medic is pretty damn easy : heal people and try not to get killed by snipers. Also ubercharge the nearest heavy when appropriate.

I think TF2 is to multiplayer games what Half Life 1 is to First Person shooters. Old enough to have sensibilities that have since gone out of fashion whilst basically being the pioneer that marked the end of the traditional genre it upended. So you can rocket jump like its quake deathmatch but there are also F2P cosmetics. Lest we forget these mfers invented lootboxes! At least crafting and achievements and all that make it so youre not too disadvantaged by not spending a single penny, but thats only cause we've been worn down by the bullshit thats come since, which is partly TF2's fault! Its like how Max Landis being a shithead sex pest almost makes you forget his dad got 3 people killed.

I will say though, being able to use paywalled taunts by walking up to someone currently doing the taunt is great and learning of it retroactively makes Fortnite super lame for not having the same feature

In summary, cool game. Would be even cooler is casual wasnt mostly filled by people spamming slurs in chat, but nobody's perfect (just in case someone comments, yes this is a sarcastic joke, stop typing)