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The overall structure of the online play is very much classic to steam online shooters, server lists are customized by map, ping and of course VAC status. Overall I would say that the ease of getting into the game is pretty much dependent on your region, getting a good ping in popular areas is easy and the speed of the game reflects that, although if a 200+ pinger steps into a game the mechanics do go off quite a bit with that user generally acting like iceman all over the place due to the network having to compensate for the user. Outside of that setback the game is smooth with few crashes at this stage in the game, prior to which there were some very prominent crash bugs.

Online goes further though, this time around the game maintains active stats about the player, including kills, damage and time played on each class, streaks and more, by clicking a bit further the game also highlights achievements made in the game thus far, including kill count awards, healing awards and many other features which can be unlocked with time, Valve even goes a step in to push players to play nice with an achievement strictly based around having 7 other friends in the same match to play making it so even the lone gunmen need to play in a team to unlock all the possible achievements. I think it's a fair shift and a good one that pushes people to explore the classes instead of just going on a kill frenzy.

Overall I like how Team Fortress 2 has been approached, the game hits many chords of desire from the community including balance, fast paced gameplay, strategy and more. The problem with this game is that like Peggle which released with it, this game is digital crack at times. The game pressures the player so much that even a 30 minute session can easily run over an hour with teams deadlocked in battle. Team Fortress 2 brings gamers back for more, so much so that they give up on work, school and any obligations in general. For what was originally going to be a limited session of gameplay I found myself engrossed at times on my system, on other systems and even on my low-end laptop just to get some action in.

Combined with the Steam Community this game is a taste of complete gaming that usually only those on consoles get to experience, luckily Valve has brought it home for PC owners to try out, and from the expanding lineup of profiles in the community, it seems like people are liking what they see and get to have at their fingertips. For anyone on the fence, the game makes this all the more reason to really consider the Orange Box. While we can not say for sure if the whole package is worth it, Given that HL2, HL2 Episode 1 and Team Fortress are available, I'd say it's a good bet that the rest of the package is going to deliver.