Getting Back Into Team Fortress 2, and the Power of Competent Team Mates

The other day, I found myself playing Team Fortress 2. We had planned to play Sea of Thieves, but we ran into a bunch of hackers, which spoiled our mood. So we played TF2 instead, because why not? Now, I haven’t played Team Fortress 2 in a looooong time, so I expected to be a bit rusty. And I was. But that’s fine, because I had players I could actually rely on.

The previous times I’d played Team Fortress 2, at least in recent memory, I had mostly been solo. I played a little Mann VS Machine a while back with my friends, but MvM is pretty easy and laid back most of the time. After all, robots are dumb. However, we didn’t play any proper TF2 until recently. So after our failed Sea of Thieves session, we decide to jump into TF2 and have some fun.

I won’t lie though, I had a couple of hiccups. An initial long loading time into our first match meant I didn’t manage to build any Uber before the start of the round. I also had a brief connection issue, but that sorted itself out, despite kicking me from the match. However, I also… uh… forgot how to crouch-jump. I figured it out quickly enough, but it was still annoying. One round also was a bit meh because I wanted to use the Vaccinator (which is called Geoff) and my key to change resistances wasn’t working. Oh well.

After some server shenanigans, we got into an actual proper battle on good old Badwater Basin. A classic map, some old fashioned Payload. Our first round was a bit shitty mostly because BLU had a cheating Soldier who always shot crits. But to their credit, they did actually vote-kick him. Our second round went like a dream at first, and we raced through. We did kinda get a bit stuck on that last downward slope directly into RED’s base, but an Ubercharge helped crack through their defenses.

We then played on Frontier, which I swear I haven’t played in over 10 years. We played as RED, and went off to a bumpy start. Partially because, again, I didn’t load in on time and didn’t have an Uber ready. But we actually managed to hold them back for a good long time. It was a great team we had, Engineers with working teleporters, plenty of heavy damage classes and a will to win. We managed to hold them back before the last two checkpoints, and we eventually won, even with a wobbly start. I also got a domination, which was nice.

The entire time though, we had a strong team. With Bacxaber as Heavy and Fox and Yoshi supporting us as Engineers and an extra Heavy when needed, we managed to do really well. We also had Metz join us as Demoman briefly, giving me another awesome heal target. And it was so nice having a Heavy who actually looks at the little panel that tells you who’s healing you. Perfect sandviches were thrown at just the right moments. The rest of our team was also pretty okay as well, and they responded to our voice chat. Because we were using TF2’s in-game voice chat to communicate, rather than something like Discord.

Having people you can rely on makes TF2, heck, any game, a lot more fun. But being able to play as my favourite class and have a decent pocket is fucking amazing. Even if I’m a panicky popper when it comes to Ubers, I’d rather pop it than drop it. But having someone who knows what to do when Ubered? That just makes things even better. And playing with friends makes things so much more fun. Really, it’s the communication that ties everything together, and playing with friends means you can communicate better. In a team-based game, it’s amazing how much we forget this.

In the mean time though, I need to play more TF2. It’s so much fun.