This game defined 2015 and 2016 for me. I put over 1,000 hours in it between those years, and it was basically the only game I played. The presentational charm makes the world feel like an R Rated Pixar movie from hell. Being Free to Play really helped get the game's audience to expand from the Valve crowd to pretty much anybody with a computer as this 2007 game is very easy to run even on weak hardware.
I've played all the classes extensively and find every one of them fun to play, and all offering playstyles for any FPS player out there. The microtransaction system is something that will turn off some players but I actually find it to be one of the healthiest in the industry. Tbe base game is free, has no ads, and all classes are unlocked with rewards dropping via achievements for classes or through playing the game and getting random drops of weapons or crates. Every weapon is a sidegrade, offering both positive attributes and negative drawbacks for usage. Everything else is 100% cosmetic for player customization and provides ZERO in game player advantages. You could never drop a dime on this game and still have fun and become extremely skilled at it. On top of this, player trading systems and the steam community market ensure that you'll never run out of cool and interesting items to check out and trade around to get something you've got your eye on. The weapon system alone has multiple rarities and properties that can more personalize your experience and ownership through skins, stranges, killstreaks, and more. Hats, jackets, shoes, shirts - there genuinely is something for everyone. Sadly, the positives end here. Valve has done a very poor job at maintaining this incredibly beloved game and community for the past 6 years and only in 2022 did they start really paying attention to player outcries of cheating and bot account abuse by releasing patches that hopefully fix the issue altogether one day, but this is unlikely. There haven't been any actual major content releases (cosmetics and weapons) since 2017 with the Jungle Inferno update and even that was pretty weak in comparison to the ones before. The days of Meet Your Medic, The Engineer Update, and Love & War are far long over, but the game still lives on through official servers and an undying community that I believe will last forever. TF2 holds an eternal place in .y heart that I think few other, if any multiplayer games will ever reach. I strongly recommend trying this game out and maybe you can get just as invested as I was.
I've played all the classes extensively and find every one of them fun to play, and all offering playstyles for any FPS player out there. The microtransaction system is something that will turn off some players but I actually find it to be one of the healthiest in the industry. Tbe base game is free, has no ads, and all classes are unlocked with rewards dropping via achievements for classes or through playing the game and getting random drops of weapons or crates. Every weapon is a sidegrade, offering both positive attributes and negative drawbacks for usage. Everything else is 100% cosmetic for player customization and provides ZERO in game player advantages. You could never drop a dime on this game and still have fun and become extremely skilled at it. On top of this, player trading systems and the steam community market ensure that you'll never run out of cool and interesting items to check out and trade around to get something you've got your eye on. The weapon system alone has multiple rarities and properties that can more personalize your experience and ownership through skins, stranges, killstreaks, and more. Hats, jackets, shoes, shirts - there genuinely is something for everyone. Sadly, the positives end here. Valve has done a very poor job at maintaining this incredibly beloved game and community for the past 6 years and only in 2022 did they start really paying attention to player outcries of cheating and bot account abuse by releasing patches that hopefully fix the issue altogether one day, but this is unlikely. There haven't been any actual major content releases (cosmetics and weapons) since 2017 with the Jungle Inferno update and even that was pretty weak in comparison to the ones before. The days of Meet Your Medic, The Engineer Update, and Love & War are far long over, but the game still lives on through official servers and an undying community that I believe will last forever. TF2 holds an eternal place in .y heart that I think few other, if any multiplayer games will ever reach. I strongly recommend trying this game out and maybe you can get just as invested as I was.