Team Fortress 2

I was never a fan of the original Team Fortress, I had a look at it once and thought (probably incorrectly) that it was a gaudy, "l4me" version of Counterstrike trying to be a military style shooter and failing. How glad I am that I've grown up considerably since then, because Team Fortress 2 is about the most fun I've had online since discovering pornography.

Well, perhaps not that mature (and I'm not referring to the pornography joke), in that I was still a little perturbed to begin with when I realised that this is what players look like:
Yes, it's a bit The Incredibles, but the practical advantage of having these outrageous skins is you can instantly identify what class everyone is as soon as they enter your line of sight. No more of those "Wow, that terrorist looked suspiciously similar to the CTs" moments in this game.

So, I'm going to run through each of these classes in turn and give you my impressions. From left to right:

Pyro: My least played class, mainly because you have to get right up close in order to hurt people and I'm pretty shy in that way in online games, especially shooters. However, on the plus side, if you do hit someone with your flamethrower, they will be half-blinded and on fire. His gas mask makes him the Kenny of the game: everything he says is muffled, including cursing out the other team.

Engineer: These guys are the unsung heroes. A well placed turret kept alive long enough for full upgrades usually takes out a dozen or so enemies before succumbing. If these guys manage to set up a teleporter in a choke point, you're fucked.

Spy: My FUCKING word, I hate these guys. Can't tell who they are, right up until they knife you in the back of the head. They can disguise themselves as any other class, and they don't bleed when shot by enemies, so you can't tell them apart from your teammates. They're also armed with scrambler devices that depower base defences and eventually destroy them if left unchecked. They can even cloak for ten seconds. Oh, and when they disguise themselves, the other team sees the name of one of their teammates floating above the enemy spy. This can sometimes lead to existential crises, usually going something like:

Me: You're Oirish_Martin? But I'M Oirish_Ma....
*slice*
-Oirish_Martin has been killed by 1337Spynewb-

Heavy: Ah, my favourite. Mainly because I suck. These guys have a large target area, but tons of hit points. Fire at an area far away, and anyone nearby will be forced to look for cover. Fire at an area close by, and everyone nearby will be forced to look for a new head. For this reason, they tend to attract a lot of enemy flak, not to mention being outrun by every spy and scout in a 500 metre radius. However, when teamed up with a smart medic, they're very hard to stop.

Sniper: Well, someone's gotta do it...these guys are fairly unremarkable, except the longer they look through their scope the more powerful their shot becomes; however, everyone can see where you're looking due to your very large and unsubtle laser sight. I still can't snipe, so I don't really bother, unless it's to piss off a better sniper.

Scout: These guys are very good fun. Their special ability, apart from being fucking fast, is double jumping. It's a lot of fun parcouring your way around a level and then running circles around a heavy beating the shit out of him with a baseball bat. They also capture control points twice as quickly.

Soldier: Doesn't do much except fire rockets from a rocket launcher. Surprising fun to do every now and again though, and the splash damage can make for an uncomfortable surprise to your target.

Demoman: A whisky swilling Scot, who has, rather unhelpfully, two very similar looking guns. One drops grenades, the other drops....remote controlled sticky grenades. Incredibly good at laying waste to a confined area, and the class most likely to beat the Heavy given enough cover.

Medic: A generally thankless job, or so you'd think, however, I'd like to say that as a fulltime heavy, I appreciate these guys so much when they could be playing as a different class. They have a couple of average-power weapons, but their main use is firing a healing beam, that can also boost you to 150% health. After they've healed 1000 hp, they can use an "ubercharge" that renders them and their target (usually a heavy) invulnerable for ten seconds.

I strongly recommend giving this a go. There aren't many maps, but this is a beta, and it's a lot more fun than Counterstrike....