So, everything I said about Team Fortress 2 not being up to snuff?

I take it back.

Since a) I’ve been sick as a dog for the past two days

and

b) I can’t concentrate on anything longer than five minutes at a time

and

c) I can’t do crap except sit on the couch

and

d) I’ve beaten all the Half-Life 2 games and gotten “Vanilla Crazy Cake” on all the advanced Portal challenges,

I’ve probably played TF2 around 20 hours in the past 36.

And holy crap is it fun as hell.

I hit the Lag From Hell every now and then but not as often as I was earlier. But then, most of my matches are always with the same crew: I find a good game, and we just play for a couple hours. So if the connection is good, it will likely remain good through the entire game.

Fully comparing the online offerings of Halo 3 with TF2, Halo 3 has more “game types” and a few more maps. But (and this is, seriously, the most important thing), everyone in a Halo 3 game is the same. There are no differences between players (unless it’s a “VIP” map, and then one guy is totally gimped).

The strength of TF2 comes from the differences between the classes (and there are nine). So, based on your mission and your position within it (and personal preference), you choose a different class.

On the offense? Pick a soldier (medium speed, medium health, with a rocket launcher), or maybe a scout (really fast, low health, low gun, but can double jump and escape everyone), or maybe a pyro (medium speed, medium health, short range but super-high damage flame thrower).

Which isn’t to say that the three “defensive” and three “support” classes couldn’t also be used in offense as well (just that those three are particularly geared towards it).

While the game only has “six” maps, that’s really kind of a strange way of describing it, as two of the maps are “multi-stage”, and consist of three and four “minimaps” respectively.

My only complaint is probably the lack of varied game styles. I would have liked to have a VIP map, for instance. Unlike Halo 3, there is only one play style per map. I think this is a wise choice; one of the problems (in my opinion) with Halo 3’s online offering is that each map seems mediocre overall: the maps are built to serve all game styles “okay” but thus serve none “well”; whereas in TF2 each map is finely crafted for the specific style of play that it has.

So, all of this adds up to an experience that is infinitely more strategic and (dare I say it) cerebral that the twitch-fest that Halo 3 is (there really, truly is no real strategy involved in that game: just kill everyone). In TF2, though, you analyze everything about the map: This is where we put a sniper. This is where we put a gun turret, and here’s where we ambush people with soldiers. In this round, we’ll use a lightning offense, and in this one a heavier, but slower one.

Anyways. I’m totally addicted to it.