Team Fortress 2 beta now available

by Justin McElroy on Sep 18th 2007 11:05AM

After what appears to have been a few hiccups, the Team Fortress 2 beta is now available to play through Steam. Or rather, it's available if you pre-ordered the Orange Box through the PC download service. Otherwise, you're out of luck. "No dice," in the parlance of Damon Runyon-esque gangster culture.

We mainly wanted to make this post to open up a conduit for your impressions. As we'll be playing the box on the 360 (should it ever return to our loving bosom), we have to rely on you for impressions. Is it fun? Better than TFC? Worse? C'mon guys, Johnny 5 needs input!

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Tags: Microsoft, PC, Team-Fortress, Team-Fortress-2, Valve, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (51)

TF2! I been waiting almost 10 years for this!

No joke - TF was the multiplayer game for all nighters and laughing your ass off. Its great that they finally got the new version ready.

Sadly, I have to wait for the 360 version - I hung up my mouse for the time being.

Its awesome.

My first impressions, THIS GAME IS HELLA FUN! I like it better then TF1 or TFC then again I was never a fan. The graphics are sweet and the new artistic style rocks. The voice overs are great. The action is fast and fun! I don't have much of a gaming rig:
2.5 Gigs RAM PC 3200
ATI Radeon X800 Pro 256 MB
AMD 3600 San Diego Core.

Graphics ran smooth at 1024 by 768.

"Otherwise, you're out of like." I'm not familiar with this term, perhaps you mean "luck"? :-)

Hmm, I don't see it.

if I preorder now can I get in on the beta?

Yes, I've just prepurchased it now on Steam, and I'm currently waiting as it downloads. (49 minutes and 21 seconds remaining)

Was that a Short Circuit reference? Well played, McElroy; well played!

I just checked the review in PC gamer,it got 94% out of 100% same as Bioshock.

Sir did your system Red Ring? Or was that a toss up to the wicked cool shirt? One of my coworkers 2 month old system just crapped out over the weekend. I feel for him because he hardly played anything but Live Arcade titles.

I can't wait to play this, it just looks great. Makes me wish I had a PC system at home to play on.

why would you play these on a console? most comps made in the last few years can run hl2...

and I'm not in the beta, I only played about 5 minutes of the original TF and thought it sucked. Maybe I'll pick this one up when it gets cheap

Yeah, this kind game is meant to be played with KB/M. I saw a video of TF2 played with a pad once, and the player's sad attempts at trying to make a rocket jump with the soldier were just embarrassing to watch.

The game is awesome. To name it Team Fortress is like an insult to TF2. It's so much more fun than TFC ever was. Really kick ass.

I never used to play TFC. I do however LOVE this beta. I'm playing either spy and scout and love both ones. Nothing decimates a sniper nest as a spy disguised as a sniper kekeke.

I waited up to play it last night and I can confirm - this game rocks!

so if i pre-orderd this game like.... now.... would i still b able to play the beta???

Good question... I was planning on getting Episode II but if I can drop the cash now and play TF2 now, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

iv done it already hoping i could O.o, but i had to ask as its downloading hoping for the answer to be yes!!

yes i think so, go quick into steam NOW

Yes you can, its currently downloading for me

Check steampowered.com, it says if you pre-order now, you save 10% and you can play the beta.

Playing as the heavy is really fun. there's a lot of nice little touches, like how you slow down when you're firing. I was only able to play one round this morning, but I can't wait to play some of the other classes.

The game is GORGEOUS and runs silky smooth. i'm able to run it on high settings on my x1800xt/Athlon x2 4400+ rig. hope episode 2 and portal are as forgiving.

I downloaded it a few days back waiting for the unlock bit to come along. So it works just 5 minutes before I'm off. Start up a local game to see how well it runs on my computer (like a dreaaaam).

I can't wait to get into this! It's a bit fookin brilliant. The past 2 days of Quake Wars have been but filler.

I love it. Only played it for a little while this morning, but it is much improved, well balanced, and a blast. The artistic style is great, and the voiceovers are fun too. I love the spy's "weapon" for masquerading as someone else.

Anyone running this beta on a fairly old system? (eg Athlon 2200+, Radeon 9800 pro, etc.) Any experience with a system of that (rather poor) calibur?

I got a similar system wunderbred, 2.4 GHz, 9800 Pro, 512 ram. Been meaning to get a new pc, but haven't gotten around to it. Anyway, I was running it at 1280x768 at around medium or a little below medium settings with a great frame rate. Haven't had the opportunity yet to really play with the settings to see how much higher I can go, but the source engine has always been very good at handling older computers.

I rarely play FPS games online. I've never been much of a twitch gamer. So I only got TF2 because I wanted Portal and Episode 2. Turns out that TF2 is a real delight to play. The class choices are a heap of fun. If I find I am getting frustrated with one I switch to another. I have spent the last three hours or so since I got home playing it, and it's the most fun I've had online gaming in years, perhaps ever.

Visuals are slick and smooth. I find I can easily push my two-year-old rig up to 1680x1050 with virtually all the settings maxed out and still keep a consistent framerate. And I think it will be a long time before I get sick of the stylised graphics.

Kudos to Valve. I can see why it took them a better part of a decade to get this all put together. It was well worth the wait.

It's not very far from TFC. TFC had a lot more maps (more to come for TF2?). They removed the grenades... shame! They salvaged 3-4 maps from TFC (I still love Dustbowl). They added critical hits LOLOLOL :)
The spy is now invisible (bastards!).
I still think the engineer is the best class of all. Some of the mechanics are still the same, but the removal of grenades is a little bit of a loss IMO.
Anyway, Its very hard to stop playing.

Oh yeah and a big bug: you can't ALT TAB or you are good for a ugly slow down of windows (near crash) when you try to come back in the game that will ultimately crash. That's unfortunate.

will be playing later this afternoon, as well as WiC...Great week on the PC side for sure

the game is horrible. fortress forever is better and even quake wars with it's below average netcode is better.

I played TFC, FF and TF2. I can definitely say this instalment is the best one. It's simply the most fun! Grenades being gone is excellent. I thought I'd miss them, but less is more, I guess!
It's the best multiplayer game I've in years.

so much TFC hating...

i have a lot of fond memories from my childhood playing that game for hours and hours. i remember reading "previews" (with screenshots even!!) in PC Gamer 8 or so years ago for TF2, glad its finally almost here. I thought for awhile there it went the way of Duke Nukem Forever.

The beta plays awesomely, no issues yet, and is a lot of fun, lots of chaos and options, the classes are very well done, the spies piss me off, but that's ok, and in short it's the best FPS I've played in a while.

I pre-purchased a few days ago, started preloading it before I left for work this morning, and can't wait to play it when I get off work!

I just played a couple of maps and I gotta say it's pretty damn fun! Only problem is when I press tab for the score board, it crashes. Other than that, no other errors. Is it better than TFC? Yes! Why? The grenade spam is gone and the pyro and medic are actually useful!

I'm not sure what TFC is... but I wasted night after night playing TF (based on Quake) with QuakeSpy... I've never played an online game I've enjoyed as much...

For those of you who played the original TF based on Quake... is this worth a pick-up? I miss the old Quake based TF and wish it was still around in force. :P

As an old player of QuakeWorld TF (never liked TFC very much), I can heartily recommend TF2. I'm loving it so far.

Messed around with it at my buddy's place yesterday. The spy class is a bitch. Really fun game though.

This game is like sending that letter to Santa without telling your parents about it, then when you wake up on Christmas morning, everything that was in that letter is under the tree!

Damn Valve. It didnt start working until 12:30am Tuesday and I subsequently spent the next 7 hours playing it. Totally ruined my day today after getting about 3 hours sleep.

But, wow. Just wow. The game looks fantastic, and has some great burnout revenge style features in it (Nemesis / Revenge). I love how every time you get killed, it flashes your killer with a stupid grin on his face. The whole thing has a great sense of humor, and plays just right.

Which is to say thats the only "flaw". The game plays almost EXACTLY like team fortress classic. Which I have no problem with, as I didn't need to worry about a learning curve. But anyone who played that old game to death and isnt ready to jump back in (its been around 3 years since I overdosed on tfc so I was ready to jump back up).

Anyways, well done. This game rocks. Well worth the 10 yr wait

Fun! Fun! Fun! Played for about 2 hours and had to logout for RL stuff. This squarely quells any attempt by the console world to say they have better multiplayer than the PC. It's been worth the wait.

Now I will sit back and wait for the Halo3 zealots to throw their grenades. ;)

You DO know that TF2 is coming to the 360 as well, right?

TF2 is ridiculously fun. Definitely the best multiplayer game of the year so far. It even tops Supreme Commander.

Runs like a champ on my MBP, full settings, 1440x900 It looks great. I think there should be more "stylized" shooters. With the race to gain the most realism in video games; it is refreshing to play a game that is just fun.

Ok, any comments about the revamped medic and the pyro?

TF2 is actually a bit of a disappointment to me. They seem to have taken out all aspects of the game that made TFC a somewhat "skill based" game and just made it into another good graphic, mash the buttons til your arms fall off game. They seemed to have dumb down all of the classes to make the concepts stupidly simple to grasp. Granted, yes, it looks nice and yes you can blow the shit out of someone. But we could do this in the old game with more ways. So basically people are giving a game a 10 out of 10 rating that has sucked the strategy, innovation, and creativity out of the game and instead it got new graphics? Doesn't seem right to me.

this game really requires a team to work together and use new skills in order to succeed. while these game play aspects might escape the wanna-be-one-man-armies *cough*hippo*cough* it has really added to the fun of playing with friends and I am sure clan play will be completely different going forward. WHY ARE YOU READING THIS? GO FIND A WAY TO PLAY THIS GAME!!!

It is funny that you say it is all about a one-man-army concept. I am talking about things they took away from EVERYBODY, you still had to be a team back in the TFC days as well. Moreover, the half-life 2 engine doesn't support the movements of jumping and strafing at the same time, so the enemies movements are VERY predictable. I went soldier and just obliterated people, now this may be because I have played TFC, but if people cannot move as they use to, hitting them becomes VERY easy. And playing with friends is what YOU make of it. I still have tons of fun playing with friends on TFC.

pyro and medic? medic is probably one of the most overhauled and now most important characters. a skilled medic working with a heavy can be hella dangerous. the ability to get 'ubercharged' can make the duo invincible in a pinch. not too familiar with the pyro yet but he seems to be lacking some power or something. flame-thrower is strong but speed and lack of that good ol gernade is unfortunate.

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Team Fortress 2 beta now available

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