Team Fortress 2

In Team Fortress 2, two teams compete for a combat-based objective.

In the game's storyline, the teams are composed of mercenaries hired by two feuding brothers to protect the company assets belonging to one brother while trying to destroy those of the other; the teams are thus represented by the names of these companies: Reliable Excavation & Demolition and Builders League United.

Players can choose to play as one of nine character classes in these teams, each with his own unique strengths, weaknesses, and weapons. In order to accomplish objectives efficiently, a balance of these classes is required due to how these strengths and weaknesses interact with each other in a team-based environment.

Although the abilities of a number of classes have changed from earlier Team Fortress incarnations, the basic elements of each class have remained, that being one primary weapon, one secondary weapon, and one melee weapon.

The game was released with six official maps, although over 100 maps have since been included in subsequent updates, including competitive remakes of older maps and community-assembled maps.

When players choose a gamemode for the first time, an introductory video shows how to complete its objectives.

During matches, the Administrator, announces various game events over loudspeakers.

The player limit is 16 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. On the PC, in 2008 Valve updated the game to include a server variable that allows up to 32 players.

Team Fortress 2 is the first of Valve's multiplayer games to provide detailed statistics for individual players.

They include: time spent playing as each class, most points obtained, most captures or objectives achieved in a single life, and many other things.

Persistent statistics tell the player how he or she is improving in relation to these statistics, such as if a player comes close to his or her record for the damage inflicted in a round.

Team Fortress 2 also features numerous "achievements" for carrying out certain tasks, such as scoring a certain number of kills or completing a round within a certain time.

New sets of class-specific achievements have been added in updates, which add new abilities and weapons to each class once unlocked by the player.

This unlockable system has since been expanded into a random-chance system, where the player can also obtain the items simply by playing the game.

Team Fortress 2 contains five core game modes.

• Payload is a timed game mode where the BLU team must push a cart containing a large bomb along a track, with the RED team preventing the cart from reaching their base.
  Payload maps have multiple "checkpoints" along the track. Once these checkpoints are captured, they may change a team's spawn room to be closer to that checkpoint.
  Capturing a checkpoint will also increase the time limit.
  To push the cart, the BLU team must stay within the range of the cart, which dispenses health continuously and ammo every few seconds.

• King of the Hill is a timed game mode that contains a single control point that can be captured by both RED and BLU. Upon the capture of the control point, a team-specific counter starts counting down and stops upon being captured by the opposing team. The first team to have their timer count down to 0 wins.

• Control Points is a timed game mode where there are several control points placed around the map, with 3 or 5 control points in total depending on the map.
  These are referred to as 3CP and 5CP, respectively.
  For a team to win, they must capture all the control points within the time limit.
  The time limit is extended on the capture of a control point by either team.
  The game will start off with only the middle control point being available for capture, with the other control points belonging to their respective teams.
  Once this middle control point is captured, a team can begin capturing the other points in order. To capture a control point, a player must stand on it for a certain amount of time without being interrupted by an opposing team member. This process can be sped up by more players on one team capturing a single point.

• Capture the Flag is a mode which revolves around the BLU and RED teams attempting to steal and capture the opposing team's flag, represented in-game as an intelligence briefcase.
  At the same time, both teams must defend their own intelligence. When the intelligence is dropped by the carrier either dying or dropping it manually, it will stay on the ground for 1 minute before returning to its original location if it is not picked up again.
  The intelligence can only be carried by the opposing team. The first team to capture the enemy's intelligence three times wins.

• Attack/Defend is a timed game mode that has the BLU team capturing RED control points.
  This amount of control points varies from map to map, and must be captured by the BLU team in respective order. Once a control point is captured by the BLU team, it cannot be re-captured by the RED team.
  The RED team's job is to prevent the BLU team from capturing all the control points before the time limit ends. Once a point is captured, the time limit will extend.