Team Fortress 2 Beta Impressions

I Spy, with my little eye...

Spies in Team Fortress 2 have undergone some important changes to their arsenal. Probably the most significant change is the inclusion of a cloaking device. While the cloak doesn't render the Spy totally invisible, it does make him almost impossible to spot unless you’re specifically looking for him.

Additionally, the Spy can disguise himself as any class on the opposite team and, if you manage to get behind an enemy, you’ll be able to kill any class with one swipe of your knife. This comes at the expense of losing your disguise, but that’s a fair trade off with all things considered.

Obviously though, this is a problem in an area with turrets and, in order to combat this, the Spy also gets a new weapon called the sapper – this disables Engineer constructs before destroying them. Placing a sapper won’t remove your cloak, but if an Engineer hits the sapper with his wrench it will be removed.

The biggest problem with the Spy class only becomes apparent on servers where friendly fire is disabled. Most players will run around indiscriminately shooting anyone in their own colour on the off chance it is a disguised Spy. While this won’t remove the disguise, it is dead give-away to see blood spurting from a teammate who shouldn't be damaged by your gun.


For those of you that are old school TFC players, you’ll be glad to hear that the Heavy Weapons Guy isn’t the only class that hasn’t been changed a great deal, as both the Engineer and Soldier classes are pretty much as they were in Team Fortress Classic. The only real change to both classes is that they no longer have grenades. However, as we’ve already detailed, that’s a global change.

As a result of the lack of changes, you’ll still be able to build Teleporters, Dispensers and Turrets with your Engineer, and the animations for each of these actions is rather awesome. He also still carries a wrench, which he uses for upgrading and repairing deployable objects.

To protect himself against enemies once he’s built a turret, the Engineer carries a pistol and a shotgun. Speaking of the turret, one welcome addition to this is that when you’re deploying your turret, the weapon’s range is displayed as a dome around your character until you chose a location to set it up.

The Soldier has exchanged the crowbar for a collapsible spade for melee attacks, though he still carries a shotgun for mid-range attacks and a four-shot rocket launcher for long-range attacks. While very powerful, the rockets travel relatively slowly and are therefore easy to avoid. Generally, the best technique is to aim at surfaces near the target and kill using splash damage rather than a direct hit. At close range, though, direct hits are much easier to accomplish as long as you don't mind the risk of blowing yourself up as well.

And yes, rocket-jumping is still very possible.


On the subject of long range damage, the Sniper class is still as formidable as it ever was. The main change is the removal of the hold-to-power-up rifle, which now simply charges to maximum power as soon as you zoom in. Those of you who remember how annoying close range, powered up sniper shots could be are probably breathing a sigh of relief. In order to compensate for the loss of close range firepower, the Sniper class now gets a secondary SMG which, while underpowered compared to many of the secondary weapons, is still far better than no weapon at all.

Last but not least is of course the Scout. As the name suggests, the class is designed to advance ahead of the rest of the team, perhaps taking out the odd lone-wolf Sniper and capturing, well, capture points. In fact, the Scout counts as two of any other class when doing so, and the Scout rush has already become a personal favourite tactic, despite usually ending in tears at the hands of an enemy Pyro.

As well as being incredibly quick, the Scout can also use a handy double jump technique, allowing him to change direction mid air, or access otherwise unreachable areas on some maps. Better still, his melee weapon, a baseball bat, makes a satisfying 'thonk' sound when you connect with a suitable skull.