Team Fortress 2 Classified, formerly known as TF2 Classic, is now out on Steam, rebranded, reimagined, and just as fun. It’s a call to the elder days of Team Fortress 2, based on its “original inspirations and tone” that utilizes cancelled content, introduces new features, polishes old ones, and offers a new perspective on the TF2 experience.
And boy, do people seem to love it. During its peak hours on release day, Jan. 30, TF2C (as I will refer to it from now on) saw some 9,395 join in on the fun (thanks SteamDB), experiencing new game modes, weapons, and a new form of Team Fortress 2 gameplay.
One game mode that was reinvented and resurrected for the sake of TF2C is the VIP mode, an old, long-forgotten and quite frankly terrible game mode from the late 90s and early 2000s that first appeared in Counter-Strike and its subsequent versions. The last time we saw this mode in a Valve game was CS 1.6, where it was called “assassination scenario,” or “as” for short.
The sole map made for it was as_oilrig, something you probably played the crap out of as a kid (I sure did), even if it sucked through and through.
The gist of the mode was that one player was the VIP, a lightly armed and not-so-well-armored character that basically had a USP and little else to protect themselves, while others on the CT team were their bodyguards. The CTs had to bring the VIP to an extraction zone to win the round, or eliminate all the Ts in the process. On the other hand, the Ts had to either kill the VIP or prevent his extraction by the time the round timer struck zero.
A fun concept, but not pulled off well. The bomb defusal scenario was much, much more popular already by the time 1.6 came out, with the game’s map pool comprised primarily of “de” maps and some “cs” (hostage scenario) maps as well.
But TF2C looked at that mode and thought: “Well, this seems fun, why don’t we try to make it better?” And they sure did. They made an entirely new character, The Civilian, who fits perfectly in tone, behavior, and style into the TF2 environment.
They equipped him with an umbrella that he can bash others over the head with, made killing him more of a challenge, and turned the bodyguard-assassin dichotomy into an actual battle that wasn’t as one-sided as the Terrorists were in 1.6.
So much time and care were put into refining the mode and retrofitting it into the TF2 gameplay loop, where it’s quite similar to how the Payload mode works, only that the Payload is a living, thinking human being.
I like how they didn’t just make a game mode, they put out videos and trailers with The Civilian as the main character, giving him as much lore and background and identity as the other characters in the game have (themselves given depth through the Meet the Team videos from back in the day). It’s so incredible how a community-made mod can be so true-to-nature with its additions.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to hop into TF2C, please do so. The team had to jump through many hoops to get to where it is, and given how some other major Valve-game mods fared, it’s a miracle it’s gotten to this point.
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