I love multiplayer shooters. I've played nearly every type of them, from large-scale conflict shooters (Battlefield 2, Star Wars Battlefront 2) to semi-realistic real-world games (Counter-Strike, Call of Duty) to arena style deathmatch (UT2k4, the entire Quake series). I've enjoyed them all. However, none has captured me in the way Team Fortress 2 has recently.

I bought the Orange Box with the full intention of playing Episode 2 and Portal, and while I love both of those games, I haven'tcomeclose to beatingeither because I've been sinking so much time into the Box's multiplayer component. Every chance I get, I'll sneak off to play a couple of rounds of 2Fort or Turbine. And I never even was a CTF fan! The combination of tactics and full frontal fragging is just pitch perfect. However, I do think that a couple of the classes need to be rebalanced *coughscoutcough*.

But I'm finding that what I love most about the game is the atmosphere and the cel-shaded graphics. It reminds me of a Pixar movie, but ultra-violent. And the personalization of the characters? Absolutely hilarious. You can tell that they really put their heart into these characters (even if they're just hilarious stereotypes). And this is supposed to be a multiplayer shooter.

Well, I'm off to play more TF2!

(By the way, isn't the news about the free Daggerfall crazy? I'm going to download it soon. )