[PSYCHOSIS, who, on his shirt, has a picture of a fried brain, enters the center of the stage. He begins to speak]
Psychosis: Again, we see what damage is done by consoles to great PC games. After 9 long years of waiting for the sequel to the timeless Quake mod Team Fortress, and the subsequent Team Fortress Classic, which, while it made a few additions, was still faithful, we get Team Fortress 2. I loved Team Fortress Classic. All the hours I spent, learning how to grenade-jump, are gone now. Frustrating, perhaps, but rewarding. In Team Fortress Classic, there were infinite possibilities. You could drop ammo, hiding it in places so that engineers could blow them up with their EMP grenades, or you might ride the knockback on a sentry gun. Every class had a complete set of weapons and two grenades, all with their own uses. One thing I was fond of doing was shooting an enemy with the Spy's tranquilizer gun. For those of you who haven't played it, what it basically does is it slows down the enemy, as well as obscures their vision by making a black tunnel, narrowing their field of few. This black border also has the effect of covering up the kill notifications, so that, while they're shooting at you, you can feign dead. They'll think they've killed you, and walk past. Then you get up and backstab. Now, this doesn't fool everyone, but it was another thing that separated the good players from the bad players. Or, as a Spy again, you could sneak into the flag, guarded by the engineer's sentry guns. You'd grab the flag, but then there were scant seconds you had before the sentry killed you. Your only chance to score for your team was to throw the flag to a teammate who would be well out of the gun's range. That is the essence of the "Team" in this game.
And all that is gone in this cheesy, stupid sequel. Gone are the grenades, which takes away unique features of the classes. Can't drop ammo, can't throw the flag, can't do a goddamn thing. They tried to make it all noob-friendly, so not only have they removed all the things that took effort to master, but they've added in this delightful little dice roll mechanic called critical hits. Doesn't matter if you're dominating out there, your opponent, no matter how absolutely terrible, can get off one lucky shot and ruin your killstreak. I say this to everyone: this isn't fun. Losing because of shitty luck isn't fun. Neither is getting spawn-camped, because look at another mechanic they've put in - respawn timers! You have to wait, like, 12 seconds after you die to come back. So not only can you die because of a dice-roll, you're barred from coming back into the game until the arbitrary time limit is up, by which point the opposing Demoman will have laid a bunch of sticky bombs outside the spawn door.
It's no wonder why this happened. It was all an effort to appeal to the X Box fans. It's happened countless times in games - Thief, Deus Ex, The Elder Scrolls, and this. Because you see, a controller doesn't have enough [i]buttons[/i] for all the features - primary and secondary grenades, throwing the flag, throwing ammo, switching between eight different weapons - can't pull off any trick jumps with a controller, either. They even dumbed-down some things that didn't need to be for that kind of conversion - single universal ammo type, so picking up a bottle somehow refills your rocket launcher.
And melee weapons all do ridiculous amounts of damage - melee weapons should never do more damage than any standard weapon - they are instruments used to show off skill and humiliate bad players, nothing more. But no, you can't aim with a controller, and each class only has three weapon slots (which is a complete gutting from the amount you could carry in TFC), so they make melee weapons do more damage so that players can just abandon their weapons and go around punching and bottling things.
Balance is also shit. Any serious team without class limits is going to be playing with nothing but Medic’s and Demomen, because the latter is ridiculously overpowered and the former is the only other useful class.
This should have never come out. Now they’re making it even more cartoonish, throwing in these “hats” that make no sense with the already questionable aesthetic design, and more and more weapons that make the game even less balanced.
Sometimes it’s better for a game to have a small but dedicated following, and thrive on that, than to sell out and have a herd of idiots who don’t appreciate anything as your playerbase.
[Lights come up, showing the other forum-goers.]
RF: Good. We can put this up under the review section of the website.
Ubermensch [on his shirt is a picture of Nietzsche in a superhero outfit]: Whole psuedo-PIXAR thing reeks of artfaggotry.
Psychosis: Good point.
A voice offstage: That is retarded.
Hat: Oh, no...
[The source of the voice walks onstage, a person with no markings on his shirt, but carrying a RAPIER on his side]
Rapier: Did you read a single thing about the game? They've given the reason, and it wasn't because of consoles - it was because the playtesters didn't like it. People would spam grenades all over the place, hoping to get a cheap kill before they died, and it proved to be annoying. It wasn't a meaningful part of the gameplay, it was a wall to enjoying it.
Hat [aside]: Rapier, what are you doing?
RF: The more such "walls" the better.
Rapier: Why? It's better if the game is intentionally harder to play for no real reason? You talk about how removal of the precious grenades has blurred the class roles, when in TFC the Medic was more likely to be flag-running than healing his teammates. Y'know, its main role.
RF: I can't comment on the game, as I haven't played either of them, however I find that games like Quake, which take practice and skill, are vastly more rewarding than games like Halo, which do not. Also, 'y'know' is not a real word, and you look like a retard for using it. In fact, I think you are a retard.
Rapier: Fuck you.
RF: Fuck you. Banned, dipshit.
[All except HAT and RAPIER leave.]
Hat: That was foolhardy.
Rapier: Come on, that review was too stupid to leave alone.
Hat: Perhaps, but not like that.
Rapier: Why are you here? And why did you delete our thread on this guy?
Hat: If he found the thread and the forum, and saw I was the moderator, he would have started to target me, which is something I do not wish to do.
Rapier: What are you going to do here, though?
Hat: I don't know. I've always been one to value alternative points of view. I thought I'd spend some time here and take it in.
Rapier: Until they ban you.
Hat: Perhaps.
Rapier: But... did you have to give me a moderation warning?
[HAT chuckles.]
