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Nothing like a good bit of cel-shading to really catch people by suprise, in this case while it seems like a cartoon, TF2 is anything but that. The behavior of TF2 is more along the lines of a gore flick with a bit of humor, pretty much anything explosive results in massive gibbing and colorful taunts even if not forced by the player. Although for those in a giddy mood, the G key provides pleanty of entertainment with unique taunts for each weapon. Each character is modeled with unique expressions of the face and body, the outfits are generally dynamic like the demoman who lifts part of his uniform up to reveal a happy face post-it note.

Overall the visuals are really nice, the game isn't flat for textures, the floors will have reflections and shine, the water has it's own effects and the rest of the mechanics reflect their own animations as well. Sabotaged dispensers spark up and flare, upgraded sentry guns fold apart and form into their superpowered masters. For some on lower end cards, these effects are reduced, generally they tend to try and balance it though so players do not just see level 3 sentry guns shooting out of no where at all.

Texturing scales pretty well on the game, I mean players know that if they're running a 9700 they shouldn't expect high textures on a game playing catch up to the latest features around. The testing ranged pretty well though, gaming on the 9700 Pro, X800XL and X1800XT worked well and held solid framerates, the game itself was adjusting for the best performance out of the cards, tweaking yielded some changes but at a sacrifice for some speed. It generally seems at least the model and texture quality can get a bump while leaving shaders and shadowing down as well as any HDR abilities. Overall the modeling is solid and they do a great deal of work to maintain a fluid feel between the environment and the players, everything comes in a uniform package.

The audio of the game is pretty straight forward, some simple menu tracks, victory tracks and noises from weapons. The better part of the experience though is the chanting by the characters when they take someone down or when you start hammering away on the taunts, as a result it makes for a great scene and always a good laugh especially when the soldier starts smacking his helmet with a shovel and screaming while the engineer does a maniac laugh. Overall the sounds are solid, the game maintains the features of the source engine including the surround sound implementation, in a surround environment elements are clearly audible including rockets, scouts and pretty much all else. Given that source has a great starting base already, TF2 was able to harness it and make full use of it.