What can be said about this game that has not been already said? I am not a fan of FPS in general - I enjoy them casually but I am not competitive at all - and I played thousands of hours on this. The gameplay has not aged at all, the graphics artstyle is really good even in 2025 and allow the player to overlook the technical limitations of the aging Source engine.

However, while this is one of my favorite games, I must list a few caveats:
- Some members of the community are really toxic. I did not play any Call of Duty lobbies so I cannot say if it is worse than them but certain players in European servers are some of the most hateful people you will meet. I am talking about people saying random racial slurs to "trigger" - how mature, I know - other players. This is not about being a "snowflake" or "thin-skinned": sometimes, you just want to relax after a long day and not be bothered by that behavior from the worst caricature of Gamers(TM). However, I also encountered very friendly players and most of the people I added in my friend list the last few years also came from positive interactions I had within TF2. Also, it is possible to mute player which will hide their text chat messages and cut off their voice chat interactions.
- A few exploits. There are very rare but it is very annoying to call out players building unreachable sentries underground on pl_frontier and other players in their teams refuse to kick them. It happens in one of every 50 matches so it is a pretty rare occurence.
- The map pool is really bloated. There are too many Halloween maps and a lot of them are not up to the standard of the previous maps, either in their layout or their performance. It also reduces the chance of having a match in the matchmaking system since players are divided between more maps. Now there also autumn, summer and winter maps which aggravates this issue.
- Occasional technical issues. I know that using and HDD in the year 2025 is not very optimal - and a SMR one at that - there are occasional stutters which sometimes causes your death. It mostly happen during the first match and seems to get better later on.

While these issues make my review sound harsh, this should not detract from the overall very positive outlook I hold towards this game. It is just minor frustrating things that do not ruin the experience. Actually, I am hoping that Valve updates the game less and only do maintenance related to map exploits, performance and bug fixes. There are already a lot of maps and I am still having fun on them after all these years. My playtime is a proof of this.

Verdict: One of the best games of all time, despite a few minor issues.