Can i get an Übercharge?

Alternative title: How Team Fortress 2 taught me to love again.

Ever since is saw the first previews for Portal, I have been waiting patiently, chomping at bits and with all kinds of baited breath.

I expected it to be a retail product by itself, but finding it squooshed into the Orange Box made me excited to get back into Half Life 2, a franchise I loved when it first came out, but was burned by a combination of a 56k connection, Steam's amazingly regular updates and a whole tonne of Uni work due.

So that never got done, I never played through Half Life 2. Sad but true.

Team Fortress 2 seemed cool, but my adventures into the great unwashed online have left me baffled, frustrated and cursed at. So it was definitely at the back of the line.

Portal was the first thing I touched, mauled really. After swallowing it in one python-like sitting, I went back for another slice (HA! Of cake! Get it?!) in the form of the Advanced levels. It really is brilliant. But does the internet need another person gushing about it?

In between all the double flinging and physics I dabbled in Team Fortress 2. I really expected another Halo, only cool looking. Not in a gameplay sense, but in that i would be immediately squashed by assholes that would then call me a fucking noob followed by a thorough teabagging.

But that didn't happen. It was amazing. The system that Valve has created is so balanced and so varied that it's the most accessible online first person shooter in existence. There is a class for every player type.

It doesn't encourage teamwork, it flat out requires it.

I haven't had this much fun with a multiplayer FPS since Quake. Yes I am old.

I'll be there tonight

-Brother N-

PS. FYI, I am a Spy.