Team Fortress vs Overwatch

This has been a big debate even before Overwatch came out. While still in beta tons of people were talking about how Overwatch was going to kill Team Fortress. The truth of the matter is that Tf2 (team fortress 2) is still alive and well-especially with its latest competitive mode update. Blizzard could never deny the fact that Overwatch is heavily influenced by Team Fortress 2. Here I'll talk about what makes the games similar and different, as well as my thoughts on which is the better game.

First, the similarities. Both Tf2 and Overwatch are team-based objective shooters. None have team deathmatch or free for all deathmatch modes. Instead, you play objectives as a team. For instance, you could be delivering a payload, capturing points, or defending points. Tf2 does have a bunch of extra game modes that Overwatch doesn't have. Tf2 has a capture the flag mode as well as this great soccer-like game where you pass a ball to your teammates and throw it into a goal.

Both games feature characters with unique class types and different play-styles. Team Fortess 2 features classes that you would expect in an army: Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper, and Spy. They all play like you'd expect them to. The Scout runs fast and shoots a shotgun and uses a bat as a melee weapon. The medic heals. The Sniper snipes.

Overwatch features 22 heroes that are all special snowflakes. Some of them do crazy things that you would never think of on your own. Mercy heals people in the same fashion as the Medic from Tf2. Tracer runs around super fast and shoots fast like the Scout. The tanks which include Zarya, Winston, Reinhardt, and Roadhog are almost like the heavy from Tf2 because of the role they're supposed to fill-take damage and stay alive while the rest of the team takes out the squishes (low health enemies).

Also, both games feature this cartoon-like graphics engine. At first I didn't like the cartoon graphics in either Tf2 or Overwatch. But it's grown on me. I'm now a big fan of that cell-shaded art style. It's a breath of fresh air compared to Call of Duty or Counter Strike. This is where the similarities end.

Now for the differences. Tf2 is a f2p (free to play) game whereas Overwatch has a $40 price tag on pc and a $60 price tag for console. Even though there are more benefits to buying items in Tf2, the thing is you can buy just one 99 cent item and make your account premium just from buying that one item. Then you get all the benefits that come with a premium account which includes a bigger backpack space-really important because you get a lot of items as you continue playing the game. You find items for free just by playing.

Overwatch forces more money on the player and even has a money system where you can buy lootcrates. This gives you random things like skins, voice lines, and sprays for all characters. Not gonna lie, I have bought a couple loot crates but its been worth it. I have some really cool skins that most players don't have. However, you don't have to buy anything because when you level up in the game (a leveling system similar to ranking up in Call of Duty) you get one free loot crate. But as you get higher in levels (I'm level 88) it gets harder to rank up because it takes so many games and xp.

The fact that Tf2 is free definitely made it super popular when it came out. But at the same time last month Blizzard reported that there was more than ten million players on Overwatch. So there's that.

Another major differentiation is the fact that in Overwatch your characters have unlimited ammo. This is almost unheard of in any fps (first person shooter) game. I think this is the first fps I've played that has unlimited ammo. It's amazing but it makes the game a lot less technical than Tf2-which has ammo that you can run out of. Tf2 makes you use your ammo cautiously instead of spamming. You can pick up ammo packs around the map when you run out. This forces the player to learn the ins and outs of every map because you're going to run out of ammo eventually-no matter how good you are. In Overwatch if your healer is doing his job right he can heal the whole team. So you don't need to run to health packs unless your being chased down and need it to survive. 

In addition, Tf2 is more violent. Albeit only a little violent. Sometimes when you take a rocket to the face your body will blow up into little bloody bits. The blood is very mild. This isn't like Doom or GtaV or anything like that. Sometimes the death animations are hilarious. Tf2 is still rated M for mature though. You're going to find a more adult crowd playing this game. Good riddance to all the Cod (Call of Duty) babies. Because the game is so old (2007) the players are all veterans with 7,000 hours of playtime. So nobody's a noob and everybody knows what they're doing. This sometimes isn't the case in Overwatch. 

On the other hand, Overwatch has no blood at all. It's not violent at all other than the idea of shooting guns. It's only rated T for teen. Like that's gonna stop the five year old squeakers though. You're going to find a lot of young kids playing Overwatch-especially during the day.

Now that you know the similarities and differences let me tell you who wins in this death-battle. Despite the fact that I only have 40 hours in Tf2 and 70 hours in Overwatch I think of Tf2 as the better game. It's more technical, has a cooler player-base, and the characters' play-styles are more fun to play-at least for me. Although I jumped on the Overwatch bandwagon hard just like all the other content creators out there in Internetland the main reason I got into competitive fps's is because of Tf2. When Overwatch was still in beta I couldn't play it unless I was at my friends house so I resorted to playing Tf2 because I had heard the games were similar. So I thought if I got really good at Tf2 that I would be able to segue into Overwatch. Which I did. It was a difficult transition at first but I got into the flow of improvement quickly.

You also have to consider the fact that the developers of Overwatch were heavily influenced by Tf2. Some of them were still playing Tf2 during development of Overwatch. In a way you could say that without Tf2 there couldn't be an Overwatch. Or a Battleborn, Paladins, Dirty Bomb, Lead and Gold, etc. It all started with Tf2 back in 2007. At the same time though we have to appreciate what has been given to us by these developers. They've created a great gaming experience that can keep us entertained for years to come. Although Overwatch has taken over the gaming zeitgeist and left Tf2 in the dust they are both excellent games that I will continue to play. You should try them out sometime if you haven't already. These are what great games are made of.