The latter's flamethrower is great over short distances, but won't finish enemies off quickly, so you mousewheel to the shotgun for a killing blow, while the Demo Man is a mixture of high-impact projectiles and remote-detonation mine-launching, giving it offensive and defensive flexibility. Slightly more skilled players, or those with TF experience, will happily slot into less glamorous or obvious roles like the Engineer, Demo Man or Pyro. Some classes, like the Soldier and the minigun-toting Heavy Weapons Guy, are easy to pick up and easy to integrate into a team with which you're not familiar. Individually each has a trio of weapons and various specific attributes, like an amount of health and movement characteristics that are relative to the character's stature, as well as the occasional special ability. By remaining zoomed in for a few seconds, the power of the sniper's shot increases.ДЄgain though, TF is accessible without feeling slight, and the key to that isn't the six maps, or the game-types, but those nine classes. Your team's objective, depending on the map, may be to run the enemy off control-points or defend them, to capture and hold them in a tug of war, or simply to race into the enemy base and nick a briefcase of intelligence (so, CTF). And while his flick-knife kills with one hit, it only does so from behind, and using it gives up his position.ДЄlong with the Medic, Heavy Weapons Guy, Scout, Pyro, Sniper, Demo Man, Engineer and rocket-jumping Soldier, that makes nine classes, which you can pick from before each respawn. But he's fragile, and you can uncloak him by shooting or brushing against him. Armed with a flick-knife and the ability to disguise himself as the enemy, the Spy can infiltrate enemy bases and even make himself invisible. The Spy, for example, perfectly captures the sense of the name. There are nine classes, and, while several are easy to pick up, getting the most out of each will take hours of experimentation and intuition. Thankfully that doesn't mean TF has been dumbed down. TF2's are like a sort of splattery ketchup, rather than syrup. One of the most important things about any FPS is its gibs. Each map comes with a short video that tells you about the game-type and goals all the level architecture is distinct when you move between sections, with big sign-posts telling you which capture-point or area you're heading to and all the weapons and abilities are really intuitive, like the Medic's healing gun, which fires health into your target and illustrates this by pumping little red crosses along the stream. Making a complicated team-based online FPS like Team Fortress into an accessible experience was obviously one of Valve's objectives.

Other FPS developers: copy this immediately. So it's important to start this review by jumping up and down waving excitedly about Team Fortress 2's brilliant graphics: not only is everything extremely clear and intuitive, with character classes that you can easily distinguish at distance, but when you get killed the game crash-zooms to and freeze-frames your killer, so you can immediately identify who, why, how and where. Even in Counter-Strike, which is clearer than most, I often get popped in the head by a distant Colt and then have to cycle the chase-cameras to work out who killed me and from where. Half the time I can't pick people out from the environment until it's too late. Thanks to failing eyesight (thanks, Suicide Girls) and this newfangled obsession with making everything look gritty, online FPS games are harder for me than ever.

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