Recently i've been trying to get into Team Fortress 2. It came as part of The Orange Box (a compilation of some fantastic games (some old, most new) from Valve) which I bought last year.

I had played through everything in that except for just briefly touching Team Fortress 2 (TF2). Other than Portal, TF2 was probably the most critically acclaimed title in the set, and also one of the most heralded multiplayer games of last year.

It's quite strange that I haven't really played it till now, but I guess i've been more focused on Unreal Tournament 3, which is a similar type of game, and plus the buginess of actually launching the Valve games through Steam is so damn infuriating.

Firstly, I love the visual theme and graphics of TF2: almost cartoony, but still stunning, and I get the whole gameplay and team-based orientation of the game.

Even with all the critical acclaim, I'm still finding myself struggling to get myself into playing this game. I guess one big part of it is that there is no single-player portion of the game at all. It is either multiplayer against real people or nothing (there isn't even any option to play bots).

This is difficult for me to take, because usually with multiplayer games i'm used to playing through a single-player set of missions or tutorials just to get used to the gameplay, weapons, maps, and good strategies before playing online. With TF2 you're thrown in totally raw on a server with experts and expected to be part of a functioning team and compete.

Of course as a result you get totally owned, and it makes you look like a total n00b as part of your team, which for me takes the initial enjoyment out of the game.

I'm still going to give it more time, but comparing my enjoyment at playing on full servers of UT3 8 months ago, to TF2 now, there is little comparison. Too bad the participation on local UT3 servers seems to have waned significantly lately...