Probably the best compliment to the devs is the fact that so much of the commentary is superfluous. You just see it all when you’re playing. The announcer’s voice, the paper masks for the spies, the way the teams pile up at the gates ready to burst out when the match starts, the way you can be in the middle of a firefight and still get taken aback at the sight of all these painterly characters moving around; it’s just brilliant.

Doug: yeah, it runs great even in Vista. What gets me is how the characters in game actually look better than the versions in the “character introduction” trailers.

DRP: Just call it “research.” And look for me online, as “solgrundy.” I’m impressed with how easy they made it to join a friend on a remote server; it’s even better than Xbox Live. Which is doubly impressive because I’ve been cursing Steam pretty much constantly since Half-Life 2 came out, and now I actually kind of like it.

Glad to heat you are loving the game, but you need to save some of your love for episode 2 and portal!