Xera Britt, staff writer 

Hey you. You’re finally awake. Looks like you were looking for articles about gaming too. Well, you’re in luck because this article can scratch that itch. 

Welcome to Good Games and Me. My name’s Xera, and my job here is to take a look at video games and give my two cents about how good they really are. Our debut review this week is a personal favorite of mine.

Our game today is Team Fortress 2 (TF2), a cartoony, first-person shooter multiplayer game released in 2007, alongside the games Half-Life 2 and Portal by Valve on the Orange Box set. In it, you play as one of nine charismatic and quirky classes as you and the enemy team fight over various objectives to win a match. Add that to the fact that you’ll be able to dress up each of your classes to your heart’s content in an array of wacky hats, cosmetics, and weapon skins that the game provides and you’ve got yourself a game with a ton of content and entertainment value to offer. While it was pretty barebones on release, over time the development team released patches and updates that expanded the game’s item inventory and features. Nowadays, you have a whole assortment of different play-styles that range from competitively badass soldiers and snipers with one million kills on their golden weapons to a player cosplaying as Santa Claus punching enemies to death with mittens. And, honestly, I think that is where a lot of the charm comes from for TF2. It rarely sets itself up as a serious, gritty, or realistic game like Call of Duty. Rather, it lends itself to a more animated world with room for competitive gameplay, like Capture the Flag as well as weirder games like Mann Vs Machine. 

Coupled with these features is the game’s soundtrack. While it doesn’t compliment gameplay as much as I would like, it compliments the world and characters excellently and is just an overall bop to listen to. Most of the music comes from a series of shorts called “Meet the Team,” available on Youtube, which all use a small window of time to introduce a character. The early shorts were around one to two minutes and still managed to capture the essence of each character’s personality and a vague idea of their play style. Later shorts were extended to up to three to four minutes and allowed for more artistic and cinematic inclusions, “Meet the Medic” being the longest and most visually impressive. 

The game itself is a blast to play, and the community surrounding it, while small, is passionate and involved on levels close to Minecraft’s community. The game has great visuals, great characters, great gameplay and a solid soundtrack, with lots of variability to boot. If you are interested in this game, you can find it on store.steampowered.com- a video game nexus made by Valve- as well as the TF website at http://www.teamfortress.com. Additionally, I implore you to watch the Meet the Team videos as well as videos from Team Fortress content creators like Uncle Dane and Lazypurple (and old Jerma985 videos). And finally, remember to always have a good game.