New Team Fortress 2 gameplay video summarised as a list

I never thought I’d be so excited about what is essentially a spruced up seven-year-old mod, but whoa. Whoa. Team Fortress 2 looks seriously bloody good! And now there’s a gameplay video up for grabs that fills over three minutes, we can all see exactly why this game is going to rock the free world.

It’s embedded on the right, but you’ll need to click it to view the full-size version; if anyone has a higher definition version then please leave it in a comment! This small version with poor sound quality really doesn’t do the visuals or audio justice. I’ll summarise the video as a series of bullet points for easy reading, highlighting what’s revealed/confirmed about Team Fortess 2 in the video (spoiler: it’s a lot like Team Fortress Classic in pretty much every single way):

• A short piece of gameplay footage is shown for each class with the exception of the Medic and the Pyro
• The animation seen in the original teaser trailer was and is ingame
• Everything in the trailer is actual gameplay, although a lot of it is shot from a separate camera rather than through the eyes of a player
• The Spy can make himself completely invisible, although whether or not you remain invisible while moving isn’t clear
• The Team Fortress Classic formula seems to be intact; everything from rocket jumps to one-hit knife kills are seen, and the Heavy Weapon guy is as gloriously overpowered as ever
• The map shown in the original teaser trailer and this video is in fact 2fort; the layout is a carbon copy of the original; however, it has been ingeniously designed to look much more like a real, living environment rather than a pair of forts in the middle of nowhere
• You get to watch the sentry guns set by the Engineer deploy themselves, with each part developing from the last in a fluid manner
• The sniper can kill people in one shot by shooting them in the head; charging of the weapon is not seen, but could be required for instant kills
• It looks seriously slick and stylish; however, it’s not cell shaded as some are claiming with the exception of special effects
• The scout now has a baseball bat that is apparently capable of killing people with one swing to the back of the head
• Although capture the flag gameplay is presumably still the primary mode of play, flags appear to now be replaced with more appropriate/realistic objectives; in the case of 2fort, you have to steal an electrical box labelled “Top Secret” from where the flag used to be
• The Demoman can now throw his dynamite over a long distance, making him an extremely effective sentry gun destroyer
• When the Demoman’s dynamite initially explodes, only one of the five sticks detonates; the remaining four are dispersed a short distance around the blast site and then explode simultaneously; this could be a replacement for the MIRV grenades that both the Heavy Weapon Guy and the Demoman had in Team Fortress Classic as they exploded in a similar manner

Of course, the best way to examine the upcoming cracker for yourself is to simply watch it! I must say, having been away from Team Fortress for a few years I’m more than ready to return to its gameplay in a new form, even if it hasn’t evolved too much. It looks like Valve has the right idea though; take a classic formula and then tweak it. It’s basically what Team Fortress Classic was to Team Fortress.

Update: Added the Pyro to bullet one. Thanks a lot for pointing that out, Jason!

Update #2: The small video not enough for you? The chaps on the Steam forums have managed to find a higher resolution version, even though it’s still taken through a video camera. Head over to the download page and use the links beneath the set of thumbnails to grab a 960×540 copy!