Recent reviews by Jetroid

Still holds up in 2023. Highly recommend.

Summary: Not as good as The New Order or The Old Blood, but still worth playing.

Some of the good things:

- Some great unique "gimmick" gameplay moments, like the wheelchair and panzerhund gameplay widely shown in the trailers. I knew they were coming but enjoyed them all the same.
- Contraptions - a mechanic unlocked for the latter half of the game - can add a variety of spice and replay-ability to the game.
- Cutscenes are very good and cinematic; I sometimes felt like I was watching an animated film because it was done so well.
- Most of the guns are useful and feel powerful, especially as you unlock some of the upgrades. But not as interesting as TNO - see in "some of the bad things" below...
- You can dual wield with any weapon in either hand, rather than just the same weapon in both hands like the previous game. This can create some great combos; like silenced pistol with (louder) silenced sub machinegun for stealth levels (pistol for general usage, sub machinegun if you need to spray), or assault rifle with a heavy hitter like the LaserKraftWerk or Kampfpistol (rocket launcher). It's quite fun to play around with the combinations. This system has it's downsides though... - see in "some of the bad things" below...
- The game is much prettier than TNO.
- There are bonus missions where you go back into previous levels to complete optional objectives. They are quite fun but also fairly bland as there is none of the tight scripting that exists in the core levels.

Some of the bad things:

- The game does not always communicate it's mechanics well - for example, when you select the Contraptions, it explains them in terms of offering different ways to manoeuvre around the environment; and you choose based on that. What is doesn't tell you is that you also get a few bonus perks. Some of these are extremely useful and I ended up regretting my decision for a while. It wasn't until later when I discovered that two of the "bonus missions" can give you the two contraptions that you didn't select - again, this is not explained (or if it is, I totally missed it!)
- The story has a moment which throws all stakes out of the window and which ruined my suspension of disbelief more than some of the moments from the previous game. I don't care that they put some lore in the explain it, it had me raising my eyebrows.
- The hub world feels much more dull and dead than Kreisau Circle did in TNO
- The unlocks for weapons are just numbers upgrades for the most part. In TNO, upgrades gave the weapon different abilities, like an underslung rocket-launcher, or turning your sniper rifle into a plasma rifle. There's nothing like that in this game, and I think you're expected to meet those needs with the new any-weapon-in-any-hand-dual-wielding system.
- The new dual wielding system - and weapon selection in general - is incredibly fiddly to use, at least on mouse and keyboard. In TNO, I dynamically switched between weapons on-the-fly to respond to the needs of the battle. In TNC, I found the UI too cumbersome, and generally picked the weapons I would be using before starting the engagement. Sometimes this meant I had a heavy hitter weapon in my offhand going unused "just in case".... which is a shame considering in TNO I could have had increased firepower until I needed the heavy hitter. I have to imagine this system was designed for consoles because it does not control well at all on PC.
- My biggest complaint about this game is that you die too quickly. I have played and completed TNO, TOB, and TNC on the hardest difficulty for each game. In TNO and TOB, I found it generally quite fair to play and I usually knew what was hurting me and had time to react and put them down. In TNC, it was incredibly common for something to kill me but I have no idea what it was. To put it in context, I can start a fight with the maximum possible health and armour and still be dead in less than a second. This makes some sections of the game - particularly the stealth ones - quite frustrating, as "going loud" accidentally can become a death sentence, whereas in TNO and TOB, you adapt and have a great fight. In TNC, this lead to me playing in more of a "campy" style rather than engaging in "push-forward" gameplay.
- The enemy variety felt much smaller in this game than TNO, which is a real shame. TNO's roster was diverse and fairly challenging. TNC's roster is quite pathetic; even the ultra-heavy robot Zitadelle can go down with one well-placed fully-charged shot from the LaserKraftWerk to it's very obvious weak spot. I missed the Guard Robots and Heavy Robots from TNO.
- There is a lack of unique boss fights in this game. TNO had some really memorable ones. I would say that there is only one true boss fight in this game, and that it's not very cinematic...
- The plot jumps all over the place. I always understood why I was where I was, but it took a few leaps and felt like it skipped a few steps along the way. There is one part of the story in particular where essentially a whole mission happens "off camera", and I would have liked to play it.

Team Fortress 2 is, has been, and will always be, one of my favourite games.

Sadly, you can barely play it any more. You'll encounter dozens of cheaters or bots over the course of just a few hours.

That's why I can't in good conscience recommend it to anybody any more.

If the bots and cheaters get fixed, I would recommend it to anybody and everybody. But it doesn't look like that is ever going to happen.

I really like this game! Community is really toxic, though, and the Devs are a little clueless. Nonetheless, I like it!

I like hurting other people.

I mean, whilst it's a fun game, with great gameplay and music, it's just going downhill from here. DLC every few weeks and microtransactions. It has become an arms race.