I've been playing the beta for about 2 weeks now, and I'm impressed with the amount of polish, the distinctive art style, and the amount of refinement apparent in the design.

On the other hand, I never played the original TF or TFC, so I can't make any comparisons between this version and prebvious incarnations. 

Team Fortress 2 was announced in 1997 or so. Good that they actually shipped it, although it probably got redone several times. I wonder when this version's design started. 

One thing that is neat about this game is how the different player classes allow different types of players to compete. You can be a twitch gamer and play sniper or scout, which are very reflex-oriented classes. Or you could have lousy reflexes but if you have good tactical thinking abilities, excel at being an engineer. Being a spy is a whole psychological game where you have to act convincingly like whatever your disguise looks like, including being conscious of where in the base the enemy sees you and which direction you are running. 

i remember the old team fortress. looked more "real" and was more war and stuff.

wish that one had been release. looked very cool back then. :-) 

yeah 

There are so many photo-realistic military-themed shooters, I'm glad they didn't do that. But I suppose that's purely a matter of preference; there are a lot of people that didn't like Windwaker's art style but I loved it.