Travis Vocino Experiments in Art, Science & Technology.

Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer team-based first-person shooter, developed by Valve Corporation as part of the highly acclaimed game compilation The Orange Box.

The lack of information or apparent progress for six years of the game’s development caused it to be labeled as vaporware, and it was regularly featured in Wired News’ annual vaporware list among other ignominies.

The game was officially released on October 10, 2007 and I started playing it last week. I’m late, I know, but it is bad ass — simple, clean, plays very well and is pretty well balanced. It also looks amazing artistically.

History

The game was announced in 1998 as a sequel to the original Team Fortress mod (which I have never played) for Quake, but has since been through various concepts and designs. In 1999 the game appeared to be deviating from the original Team Fortress (and Valve’s own Team Fortress Classic, a mod for Half-Life) by heading toward a more realistic and militaristic style of gameplay, but the design metamorphosed further over the game’s nine-year development.

The final rendition of Team Fortress 2 bears more resemblance to the original Team Fortress and Team Fortress Classic games, and sports a cartoon-like visual style, based on the art of J. C. Leyendecker following a popular trend in recent CGI films (in particular, films recently made by Pixar/Disney, such as The Incredibles).

J. C. Leyendecker

Meet J. C. Leyendecker, the Golden Boy of American Illustration.

In addition to being the artistic inspiration behind Team Fortress 2, he helped codify the modern image of Santa Claus. His Baby New Year covers for the Saturday Evening Post invented a pop culture icon. He was "the most out front closeted gay man of the twentieth century" - a hugely popular artist whose work was often clearly homoerotic. The young Norman Rockwell used to stalk him and once said, "Leyendecker was my god." In 1905, he created advertising’s first male sex symbol, the Arrow Shirt Man, which "defined the ideal American male" for decades, got more fan mail than Valentino and inspired a 1923 Broadway play.

A detailed, opinionated biography and 14 pages of gorgeous Post covers.

Steam

The other nice thing that goes along with TF2, is Steam. When my Goon friends were telling me to pick up the game, it was as easy as downloading it — except it was totally legal.

Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to digitally distribute and manage games ranging from first-person shooters and RPGs to racing games and cross-genre independent titles — granted, a lot of the games offered are dog shit, but there are some gems.

The Steam Community also makes it really easy to play with your friends (feel free to add me).

Pwnage

So yes, I’m just getting used to the classes at this point. I’m really digging Engineer, Medic and Demoman.

However, all the classes are pretty damn fun to play. Scout is super fun as they are extremely fast and if you’re good at FPS action, you can really cause some annoyance. My other pick would probably be Spy — definitely a slower brand of play but still very enjoyable and on many maps they’re invaluable.