Team Fortress 2 on the 360

Idx86

I have the opportunity to pick up the Orange Box on the cheap on the 360. Primarily for Portal and TF2. My current PC is 10+ years old and does not have the horsepower to run these titles. That being said, I do hope to build a new PC in the next 12 months or so.

My quick questions are:

- Does anyone still play TF2 on the 360?
- I've read that the PC and 360 versions are vastly different, content wise. Many of the articles I found were 3 years old, and I could not definitively confirm if there was any DLC or patch that closed the gap between the versions. What is the current status?

- Do I wait another year and save my TF2 experience for the PC? Or, am I just over thinking this and should just pull the trigger on the Orange Box 360?

RMS Oceanic

To the best of my knowledge, about 98% of the stuff added to PC TF2 is absent from the 360.

Undead Scottsman

The PC and 360 versions are very, VERY different.

Basically, Valve hit an issue where releasing even minor patches costed them lots of money from Microsoft, and Microsoft wanted them to charge for new content. On top of the fact that TF2 already pushes the 360's 512mb of ram to the limit and basically the version of TF2 on the 360 is extremely close to the launch version, with all the classes relatively unchanged and only six maps.

It's missed nearly 4 years worth of class tweaks, class updates, dozens of new maps, tons of news in-game weapons and a hundred or more decorative hats.

I dunno if anyone still plays it on the 360, but it is wildly out of date. Though there's so much random shit in TF2 now, I'm not sure it's a bad thing to have it be the "vanilla" version.

illig

You're making waaaaay too much out of this decision. Even new, the orange box is ~$20 and that gives you HL1, HL2, Portal, and TF2. If you're getting it on the cheap - then why even consider? even if TF2 sucks (which it won't - it'll just not be as polished as the PC version now) it's still worth the $5 or whatever you'll pay for it....

DevoutlyApathetic

No, it will suck because it's an online game where the only people still playing it (on the 360) are the hard core dead enders. It's a scary place there.

That said, the rest of the Orange Box is worth it if you never touch the TF2 portion.

Willeth

I recently went back and played TF2 on the Orange Box 360.

For one, you will easily find a game. It's astonishing, but there are easily enough servers running at one time to fill your server browser on a search. While you'll be at a disadvantage because these guys have (in some cases) been playing for years, you'll find just as many average people and the familiarisation period won't be any longer than any other shooter you could grab. I'm sure you'll find people willing to jump back in at least for a few games on here, too (I'm one of them).

TF2 didn't receive any of the significant updates that the PC did - only bugfixes and minor balance issues at the start of its life. Playing it is as if TF2 PC had a 'classic' mode - you're missing a ton of content that could be on the PC, but that doesn't make it bad. It's still the fantastic game it was at launch. It's just not as good as the PC version.

Getting it is really a no-brainer. Portal is still great, especially if you haven't yet played it, and the sequel is also available on 360 so you can swing right into that if you like. And you haven't even mentioned Half-Life 2 and the episodes - I'll admit I wasn't super interested either when I picked it up at launch, but it's an absolutely brilliant set of games.

Don't feel like you'd be losing value by buying the 360 version if you are later going to get the PC one, either. At this point not only are they basically entirely different games, TF2 is regularly on sale for stupidly low prices so you can grab it at a later point without guilt.

Sheep

TF2 on the 360 is still vanilla and it's hopeless hacked. Netcode still really sucked last I played.

Quid

If you're getting it cheap I'd do it for Portal alone anyway.