The Fortress Question

It's the battle of the Source Fortresses - Team Fortress 2 and Fortress Forever. What are the differences? Are they the same? Why bother with one when we got the other? Well, read the article and find out!
By John Phillips | September 21, 2007

These are questions that have been raging in many a forum since Team Fortress 2 was announced, and especially more in this last month with the flurry of activity and beta releases on both parties parts. What’s the difference between Team Fortress 2 and Fortress Forever? Isn’t Fortress Forever just a knock off of TF2/TFC? Why should I pay for Team Fortress 2 when Fortress Forever is free? Aren’t they competing? Which should I play?

Well, I’m posting this to clarify those questions. At first glance (at least first audible glance), yeah, there could be obvious links made between the two. After all, they’re both based off of Team Fortress Classic, so you would think they’re very similar. Well, I’ll tell you here and now, the only similarities are the fact that there are 9 classes with the same name, a few maps with the same names, and the word Fortress appears in both titles. The similarities end there.

We’ll start off with the most obvious difference, and that’s graphical. Team Fortress 2 has a more "barnyard” feel, the models aren’t just unrealistic, but they’re completely exaggerated and blown completely out of proportion. Team Fortress is a game that is far from realistic, so why not have some fun with that? Fortress Forever on the other hand stays closer to the classic appearance of anatomically correct bodies, (somewhat) believable weapons, and more sensible level designs. Neither of these styles detracts from the sense of the games, but the visuals help set both apart from each other – not only with the obvious visual difference, but it also adds a whole new atmosphere to both games.

A comparison of the Engineer models in game and in action.

Classes in Team Fortress 2 and Fortress Forever are like apples and orange. Both are fruits, but in a taste test, even the most primitive animals could distinguish between the two. As with the graphics, Fortress Forever sticks closer to what Team Fortress Classic represented with in regards to the class structures. The same weapons are available in TFC as in FF, and with very few differences. That’s not to say that they’re exact copies, there are in fact differences, but for a veteran TFC player, the FF classes are less alien than those of Team Fortress 2, which have all undergone extensive redesigns to ensure a perfect balance and to distinguish all classes from one another (such as the Pyro from the Soldier) and to make other classes more pertinent to gameplay (like the Medic and the Scout).

Both Team Fortress 2 and Fortress Forever bring in new maps, but both also contain some of the more popular classics. Again, most of what’s different with the maps is visual – going from the cartoonish feel of Team Fortress 2 to the closer-to-reality feeling of Fortress Forever, but the layouts have changed as well in your favourite classics. Team Fortress 2 is most evident of this with all of the included classic maps, apart from looking almost unrecognizable, have added new paths, edited others, and played with the overall sizes of the maps. This is especially evident in (my favourite map) Dustbowl. When I first played this map, I had a general idea where I was in some sections, but after a few seconds of scratching my head. Fortress Forever, for the most part, keeps the maps closer to what we all know and love from TFC, although some maps (such as Crossover) do include new paths and layout differences. So even if you play the same map in both games, you’re still not actually playing the same map.

One of the biggest and easily the most controversial differences is the lack of grenades in Team Fortress 2. Yes, that’s right – grenadeless. Fortress Forever, on the other hand, still has all of the grenades you remember from TFC, and thus is theoretically more appealing to TFC veterans in that aspect. Both having and not having grenades in each game respectively has both benefits and disadvantages, so it all depends on how much you love to make things go boom.

Okay, so I lied, there is another similarity between the two games. Both Team Fortress 2 and Fortress Forever set a very high level of quality for their respective arenas. I’ve played a lot of video games in my day, and just as many modifications of such, and I can sit here and in all honesty state that TF2 is one of the, if not the most polished multiplayer-specific game I’ve seen to date. Fortress Forever is again within the top 5 mods for any game that I’ve played that has such a polished look and feel that you can’t help but compare the others to it.

So can you really go wrong playing either or? No, it all depends on what you’re looking for in the game. Do you want to play what you know best as Team Fortress Classic? Then give Fortress Forever a download. If you want a sequel to TFC that has similar elements, but is a completely new game, then Team Fortress 2 is for you. You could even play both of them and you would get all of the benefits that both have to offer without getting bored of both, as, and I can’t stress this enough, they are two completely different products.

Don’t believe me? Well, you can always read the corresponding reviews that are published with this article. If you want to take it a step further (and have the money), then buy Team Fortress 2 and download Fortress Forever. Either way, whether you’ve been playing team Fortress since the Quake days or you just heard about it today, you’re going to have a fun time, and who knows, maybe you just found your new favourite!