Team Fortress 2

[Vitoc]

I went to my first lan party with my coworkers on Friday night.  Our focus was TF2 and wow is that game fun.  The class balance is almost perfect; every class has an important role and playing each you really feel like you're contributing.  Each class has their own personality as well, with a great set of one liners and animations.

The one class I'm not really a fan of is the Spy.  Don't get me wrong, they're powerful... in fact maybe too powerful.  As a result it's now common practice to greet every teammate with a shotgun blast to the face in the event they might be a spy.  Friendly fire is almost never turned on as a result, and I think that kind of hurts the game a bit.  Other than that, the game is honestly perfect.

I'm not a professional game critic, but if I had to rate the game in the following categories, here's how it would rate:
Graphics: 9.5 (couple minor glitches)
Sound: 10 (the voices are perfectly matched for the classes, the other sounds are awesome)
Gameplay: 9.0 (there needs to be some way of identifying a spy without shooting teammates, other than that it's perfect)
Fun factor: 10 (I can't imagine any fps fan not having fun playing this game)

You can pick it up with the Orange box which contains HL2, HL2: Episode 1, HL2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal (really looking forward to this game), all for like $45-50; a great deal IMO.

[The Crazy Animal]

I can't say I've played it but I'm still kind of stuck on fucking with the sims in sims2.

[Vitoc]

I've wanted to check this game out, been watching it for a while.  It's not "Officially" released yet though.  A-hole.

EARLY REVIEWS SHOULD BE BANNED! :)  Cheater.

I'm usually not a fan of playing betas, but I made an exception in this case.

If you preorder the Orange Box, you get a discount and you can download/play TF2 right away (it's a fairly large download); at least that's how it was when I bought it last week.  I'm not sure if the discount is still in effect.

[Vitoc]

So the Orange Box has been out for a while now, and it has lived up to the hype.

TF2  is teh awesomeness

Hands down the best team-based FPS I've ever played.

Portal was fun and unique, but way too short (still working on advanced maps and challenges tho)

Still trying to find some time to start Episode 1 and 2.

Don't ask me why I'm putting everything on a separate line.