There is some blood and guts. Blowing things up. Based on the character you play, you have to learn to kill in a certain way based on the weapons available to that character.

But basically, the game is all kill, kill, kill and it leaves corpses scattered about as you kill and get killed. There is certainly strategy involved, but it’s a “how can I kill them and win” type of strategy. Even if you are playing the version that is basically capture the flag, it’s like capture the flag with guns and bombs and death and blood. Having said that, the violence is pretty cartoonish.

I mean you have a base you defend. With guns and turrets and bombs. You infiltrate the enemy. With guns and turrets and bombs. So if you don’t want to spend your time trying to kill someone else, it’s probably not for you. But there is also strategy and teamwork involved. Since you can talk to other live, there could be cursing—you never know.

Other suggestion: watch the TF2 “trailers”. Go to youtube and look for the DemoMan trailer, Sniper trailer, Soldier trailer, Heavy trailer (worst of the trailers, but also one of the first). They should give you an idea of what you would be getting into. Oh! Also the engineer trailer. If nothing else, they are HIGHLY entertaining, explain the characters a bit, and will let you see the game in a way.

Also: don’t buy TF2 on its own (if it even comes that way). Check out the Orange Box. You’d get Portal (super fun logic game), Half Life 2: Episodes 1 & 2, and TF2.

Last suggestion: try either renting or watching someone play? I watch a friend play ALL THE TIME. I don’t do violence, but it’s still a really fun game to watch. Despite being kill, kill, kill, it’s very cartoonish and the violence isn’t at all realistic looking.

It’s white bread.

I agree with Empress here. Portal may be the best single player game of all time. Get the Orange Box. I did and there were no regrets. There is blood spatter when you shoot someone (in TF2) but it’s not worse then other shooters. The point of the game is to shoot other people.

Unless you’re super-religious or 10, it won’t upset you. I promise.

While bodyhead and EmpressPixie are both correct, I think it’s a matter of that humans are fighting each other. If it was robots, it probably would be T. Dave Pilkey and Captain Underpants nailed it here: “As long as you draw robots fighting each other, your parents won’t care!”

Team Fortress 2 is rated M because of the violence. You’re going to be constantly presented with images of people blowing up into little gibs, seeing people on fire, and blood spatter when they get shot.

HOWEVER! Team Fortress 2 is a very cartoony. The violence is not what you’d call “gory.” You don’t see a lot of innards and stuff. Basically when someone is blown up, there are a lot of reddish-pink blobs and maybe something like a head rolling around. Aside from that it’s just some blood.

As for whether it’s good or not, I can tell you that I’m a big fan of Team Fortress 2 and play regularly. It’s a lot of fun, primarily due to the extensive play-testing that Valve does, which leads to a fairly balanced game. All of the character classes are fairly unique, so there’s really something for everyone. If you like to really get into the battle, there are your Soldiers and Pyros, but if you prefer to be sneaky or fight from afar, you’ve got guys like Spies and Snipers.

Each of the nine classes also has a lot of character. They’re really wonderfully fleshed out with personalities and quirks; the voice acting is great. Characters will yell out things to each other all the time, and it really adds to the fun. I can’t recommend the game enough.

You have all been very helpful, thank you.

I don’t think I will have a problem with “cartoony “ violence.

The trailers are SO funny, my favorite is the scout.

If you like first person shooters, it probably can’t get less offensive than Team Fortress 2. I was really shocked to hear that it was rated M! I don’t even recall seeing blood in it, but maybe that’s because I get fragged a whole lot more than I frag others. Maybe everybody else is seeing a lot more blood than me.

Quick question, is TF2 only online or can you play with computers?

Multiplayer only I believe. I want to say you can play on the computer or the gaming system, but the Internet is vital to play.

And yes, the Wikipeida article is surprisingly helpful on the subject. You can play on your PC, xBox360, or PS3 but it’s all multiplayer. You must have the Internet.

and I realize you can do multiplayer without the internet, but in this case, where seeing your opponent’s screen would make the game much harder, that doesn’t work

I’m guessing it’s also rated M because of the online voice chat and things like that. Voice chat is built into the game and you’ll hear people swearing up a storm on there pretty much all the time. Most online games will say something like “Online experience may vary” or something like that because they can’t control what people say. There’s a lot of swearing in online games both over voice chat and the text chat on screen.

But the gore isn’t bad at all. It’s a cartoony graphical style and the gore is like watching an old cartoon. Great game though. My favorite online shooter.

you could get the german version. it removes the blood and splattering, the guys now explode into gears, screws and other mechanical parts. which fits the overall theme better than the blood.

Games don’t really get rated based on online-interaction. That’s completely separate from the ESRB, hence the warning you usually get about how online content cannot be rated… Only IN GAME content can be rated, and there are Mature situations within the game. Its cartoony blood, hilarious blood, but its still LOTS of blood and gibbing (i.e., the body turning into little meat chunks). And urine, in the case of The Sniper. Oh, excuse me. ‘Jarate’.

“Hehe, cry some more”.

I’d describe the gameplay itself as very cartoon-like. Probably no more violent than Looney Toons.

But the ESRB would warn against the sort of behaviour Counterstrike is unfortunately renowned for.

It is rated on the old team fortress classic and that what’s gave it the rating

Ancient question, but TF2 can be played against bots rather than online. I think you could even set up an offline multiplayer server if you wanted to figure out how, as people do set up their own online servers.