Photo by Dan Tab r, from "Faces of Virtual Reality." Click for gallery.

Three days after Oculus announced that it was being purchased by Facebook for $2 billion, the VR company has hired programmer Michael Abrash, who has worked at Valve since 2011. Abrash has been working on Valve's virtual reality technology for the last couple years, and regularly posts deep technical discussions of VR on his blog. Abrash is joining Oculus as Chief Scientist, and in his introductory post on Oculus' website, he cites the Facebook acquisition--and Facebook's deep pockets--as "the final piece of the puzzle" necessary for VR to achieve greatness.

"A lot of what it will take to make VR great is well understood at this point, so it's engineering, not research; hard engineering, to be sure, but clearly within reach," Abrash writes in his introductory post. "However, it's expensive engineering. ... That's why I've written before that VR wouldn't become truly great until some company stepped up and invested the considerable capital to build the right hardware and that it wouldn't be clear that it made sense to spend that capital until VR was truly great. I was afraid that that Catch-22 would cause VR to fail to achieve liftoff.

"That worry is now gone. Facebook's acquisition of Oculus means that VR is going to happen in all its glory. The resources and long-term commitment that Facebook brings gives Oculus the runway it needs to solve the hard problems of VR and some of them are hard indeed. I now fully expect to spend the rest of my career pushing VR as far ahead as I can."

Abrash previously worked with John Carmack at id on Quake. He's also worked on Windows for Microsoft and on software graphics rendering.

Just last year, Abrash gave a talk at the Game Developer's Conference about the challenges of VR and showed off Valve's experiments with adding VR support to Team Fortress 2. At the time, Abrash claimed it would take years, or decades, to help VR overcome the limitations of technology. But when Valve showed off its VR technology at Steam Dev Days in January, attendees claimed it was even better than Oculus' Crystal Cove prototype. With Abrash and Carmack now both working at Oculus, Valve's hardware likely won't maintain that edge for long.

Check out our predictions for the future of Oculus Rift in the wake of its acquisition by Facebook.

Illustration by Marsh Davies

All week long, we're peering ahead to what the future holds for the PC gaming industry. Not just the hardware and software in our rigs, but how and where we use them, and how they impact the games we play. Here's part three of our five-part series; stay tuned all week for more from the future of PC gaming.

Palmer Luckey has dedicated his career to virtual reality and bet millions of investment dollars on the idea, so it s expected that he would call it the most exciting technology of the last century. But it s still a bold statement from the young entrepreneur and founder of Oculus VR, and we told him as much during our chat at CES 2014.

I didn t say it s going to be the most successful, responded Luckey. But I think it is one of the most exciting, especially when you think of the potential.

Luckey has a lot of backup there; science fiction writers and scientists alike have been spinning tales of VR s potential for ages. All the way back in the 80s, Jaron Lanier the computer scientist credited with coining the term very accurately and excitedly predicted the virtual reality trends emerging in PC gaming today: massively multiplayer worlds, motion controls, and head-mounted displays (HMDs) through which we re immersed in stereoscopic visions of unreal places.

A US Navy hospital corpsman demonstrating a virtual reality parachute trainer.

And even before Lanier s predictions, there s been a persisting sense that virtual reality is both feasible and inevitable, which made growing up in the 80s and 90s terribly disappointing. The VR revolution just never came to pass. The technology never really worked in a consumer setting, and VR became a joke a list of novelty failures like the Virtual Boy.

Palmer Luckey and the Oculus Rift VR headset are putting that all behind us. It isn t a proven success yet, but it has proven that it s not a joke. By all indications, including the millions of dollars from enthusiastic Kickstarter backers and major technology investors, the virtual reality dream is finally becoming a reality.
Why VR works now
Consumer head-mounted displays existed before the Oculus Rift, but they weren t nearly the stuff of cyberpunk fiction. Shining stereoscopic images into the eyes is easy a plastic toy can do that but immersing the wearer s head in a world without making their stomach feel like an airborne water balloon is a lot harder.

Virtual reality that feels anything like reality requires an HMD with low-latency head tracking, high-resolution screens, minimal motion blur, and a field-of-view expansive enough to reach the peripheral vision. The first Rift prototype came near to solving these problems, but still made our managing editor, Cory Banks, quit Half-Life 2 with the contents of his stomach.



The latest hi-res prototype, however, strapped Cory and his stomach into a space battle with enough fidelity to keep his lunch secure. By overcoming its biggest critic the finicky human body virtual reality has proven that it s ready to arrive in our homes. It is no longer the stuff of failed Nintendo systems, theme park rides, and arcade installations of the 90s. It s real, and we ll be using it in the next year or two.

Mind you, modern VR technology is nowhere near the dreams of sci-fi writers we still need better motion control, haptic feedback, and face capture solutions but think of the Rift as the PC you would have played Doom on in 1993. We look back at those Pentium-powered antiques and laugh, but we bought them then because Doom was worth it. The VR tech of 2034 will make today s Oculus Rift look silly, but VR is just sophisticated enough now to be worth having, and that s why this is its watershed moment.
Game changer
The most important and exciting thing about this moment is that it isn t just about playing the same games with screens strapped to our faces. Virtual reality isn t a type of display it s a new gaming platform and it needs its own kind of games. In my ideal fantasy of the near future, we're still playing all the games we play now, but we have an expansive set of mutated genres made possible by VR.

As a first step, simulation makes sense. The closer technology gets to simulating reality, the better suited it is for simulations of reality. In the most basic VR scenario, you re sitting in a chair with a headset on, which makes it perfect for games about sitting in a cockpit or driver s seat. Expect VR support to be standard in driving, flight, and space sims Project Cars, for instance, already supports the Rift, and EVE Online developer CCP is making a dogfighting game designed specifically for the headset called EVE Valkyrie. Elite: Dangerous looks very promising as well see Andy talking about it below.



First-person shooters work in VR, too I played through part of Half-Life 2 with a Rift developer kit but slower is better. I doubt Titanfall would make a good VR shooter, for instance. Jetpacking up walls and being flung around by giant mechs might disorient even astronauts.

No matter how good you make a VR headset, it won t necessarily let you do everything you can do on a monitor without feeling disorienting," says Luckey. "And that s because a lot of things that you do in traditional games would make you sick if you did them in real life.

Call of Duty multiplayer, for instance, would probably not benefit from VR. Constant sprinting, 360-degree spinning, and bunny-hopping? No thanks and I doubt you'd get a competitive edge. That doesn't mean VR games will all be mundane strolls through static scenery, but even in a single-player shooter or on a psychedelic trip to Mars, I expect movement will need to be more natural. How often do you actually strafe across a room or walk backward around corners?

So, we ll move more like people move, and we ll also explore more with the Rift, just being in a place is instantly more interesting than it ever was on a flat monitor and more and more, we ll stop being asked to wield a gun at all times. In VR-land, pure shooters will further lose status as the dominant genre for first-person games. In their place, the survival-horror genre will continue its recent ascension Zombie Studios is already developing the Rift-compatible, properly terrifying Daylight and the less masochistic will find a greater number of first-person RPGs like Skyrim and exploration games like Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable, and Gone Home.

Many Oculus Rift demos are simply places to explore and experience, such as RedOfPaw's rendition of The Boiler Room from Spirited Away.

VR will be optimally used for simulation, exploration, and role-playing, and the games won t always fit into traditional definitions of games (as the last three I mentioned are either accused of or praised for, depending on who you ask). We ll visit foreign landmarks by exploring photorealistic 3D-scanned replicas. We ll bounce on the surface of the moon with friends. We ll dive into the Mariana trench in personal submarines.

These ideas call back to the multimedia CD-ROM experiences of the mid- 90s. The era s video encyclopedias and FMV games didn t earn the best reputation, but they ll come back in a much better way with VR. Consider Star Trek s reality-generating holodeck. The crew of the Enterprise didn t jump into the horrors of war as endlessly respawning soldiers. As much fun as that is (don't think I'm going to stop enjoying Rising Storm), I don't see it as the most exciting use of VR technology. No, Picard and crew experienced places, stories, and simulated people. They were role-playing, and even though the holodeck was just a plot device, I foresee real VR technology leading to the same thing. I also expect it to spur on advances in relatively un-advanced segments of game design and programming.
A new reality
For instance, role playing in virtual reality should lead to more convincing characters. Right now, short of hiring actors to populate my personal Sherlock episode in some kind of multiplayer murder theater, there s no way to have a natural interaction with a non-player character in a game. People don t fall in love via dialog wheel or blink idly when they have nothing to say, and as games start to feel more like reality, we ll expect their characters to act more like real people. AI and voice recognition will improve, and communication will become more important.

And when VR hardware is sophisticated enough, the goal of improving graphics and motion controls will be wholly replaced with the task of better simulating reality. That s the ultimate dream of VR from the perspective of many who have written about it a reality substitute, where people play, socialize, shop, and do business, as in Neal Stephenson s Snowcrash and other sci-fi fiction before and after it.

VR Cinema is a novel way to watch movies with extremely high resolution headsets, it could be a great way to share the theater experience with distant friends.

Virtual Reality starts out as a medium just like television or computers or written language, said Lanier in a 1988 interview with now-defunct magazine Whole Earth Review. But once it gets to be used to a certain degree, it ceases to be a medium and simply becomes another reality that we can inhabit.

Today, Luckey is saying much the same thing. When VR is going to be exciting is when it gets as good as real life at everything, he says. And you start to say, well, Why would I travel on a business meeting across the world just to go sit face-to-face with people, if we can just plug in Rifts and get all of the same nuance of communication we could have gotten otherwise?

But that s not to say that gamers aren t important, or that the goal of VR is to leave gaming behind. We re vital, according to Luckey and I agree because that grand cyberspace future will never get off the ground without us.

"Gamers are the ones that I think are most accepting of this kind of new technology," he says. "Gamers are willing to take time out of their day to go do something that s out of the ordinary and fantastical. And VR is one of the best ways we re going to have to do that."

Illustration by Marsh Davies

All week long, we're peering ahead to what the future holds for the PC gaming industry. Not just the hardware and software in our rigs, but how and where we use them, and how they impact the games we play. Here's part three of our five-part series; stay tuned all week for more from the future of PC gaming.

Palmer Luckey has dedicated his career to virtual reality and bet millions of investment dollars on the idea, so it s expected that he would call it the most exciting technology of the last century. It s still a bold statement from the young entrepreneur and founder of Oculus VR, and we told him as much during our chat at CES 2014.

I didn t say it s going to be the most successful, said Luckey. But I think it is one of the most exciting, especially when you think of the potential.

Luckey has a lot of support there; science fiction writers and scientists alike have been spinning tales of VR s potential for ages. All the way back in the 80s, Jaron Lanier the computer scientist credited with coining the term very accurately and excitedly predicted the virtual reality trends emerging in PC gaming today: massively multiplayer worlds, motion controls, and head-mounted displays (HMDs) through which we re immersed in stereoscopic visions of unreal places.

A US Navy hospital corpsman demonstrating a virtual reality parachute trainer.

And even before Lanier s predictions, there s been a persisting sense that virtual reality is both feasible and inevitable, but the VR revolution just never came to pass. The technology didn't work in a consumer setting, and VR became a joke a list of novelty failures like the Virtual Boy.

Palmer Luckey and the Oculus Rift VR headset are putting that behind us. The device isn t a proven success yet, but it has proven that it s not a joke. By all indications, including the millions of dollars from enthusiastic Kickstarter backers and major technology investors, the virtual reality dream is real.

Why VR works now
 
Consumer head-mounted displays existed before the Oculus Rift, but they weren t nearly the stuff of cyberpunk fiction. Shining stereoscopic images into the eyes is easy a plastic toy can do that but immersing the wearer s head in a world without making their stomach feel like an airborne water balloon is a lot harder.

Virtual reality that feels anything like reality requires an HMD with low-latency head tracking, high-resolution screens, minimal motion blur, and a field-of-view expansive enough to reach the peripheral vision. The first Oculus Rift prototype came near to solving these problems, but still made our managing editor, Cory Banks, quit Half-Life 2 with the contents of his stomach.



The latest hi-res prototype, however, strapped Cory and his stomach into a space battle with enough fidelity to keep his lunch secure. By overcoming its biggest critic the finicky human body virtual reality has proven that it s ready to arrive in our homes. It is no longer the stuff of failed Nintendo systems, theme park rides, and arcade installations of the 90s. It s real, and we ll be using it in the next year or two.

Mind you, modern VR technology is nowhere near the dreams of sci-fi writers we still need better motion control, haptic feedback, and face capture solutions but think of the Rift as the PC you would have played Doom on in 1993. We look back at those Pentium-powered antiques and laugh, but Doom was worth it. The VR tech of 2034 will make today s Oculus Rift look silly too, but VR is just sophisticated enough now to be worth having, and that s why this is its watershed moment.

Game changer
 
What this moment will do for games is the most exciting unknown. It isn t just about playing the same games with screens strapped to our faces. Virtual reality isn t a type of display it s a new gaming platform and it needs its own kind of games. In my ideal fantasy of the near future, we're still playing all the games we play now, but we have an expansive set of mutated genres made possible by VR.

As a first step, simulation makes sense. The closer technology gets to simulating reality, the better suited it is for simulations of reality. In the most basic VR scenario, you re sitting in a chair with a headset on, which makes it perfect for games about sitting in a cockpit or driver s seat. Expect VR support to be standard in driving, flight, and space sims Project Cars, for instance, already supports the Rift, and EVE Online developer CCP is making EVE Valkyrie, a dogfighting game designed specifically for the headset. Elite: Dangerous looks very promising as well see Andy talking about it below.



First-person shooters work in VR, too I played through part of Half-Life 2 with a Rift developer kit but slower is better. With a Rift on my head, I spent more time than ever before walking around looking at the details of Half-Life 2's floors and ceilings. I also noticed that, when I took my time observing, I was able to create a better mental map of the levels than I recall making during any previous playthrough.

I doubt, however, that Titanfall would make a good VR shooter. Jetpacking up walls and being flung around by giant mechs might disorient even astronauts.

No matter how good you make a VR headset, it won t necessarily let you do everything you can do on a monitor without feeling disorienting," says Luckey. "And that s because a lot of things that you do in traditional games would make you sick if you did them in real life.

Call of Duty multiplayer, for instance, would also probably not benefit from VR. Constant sprinting, 360-degree spinning, and bunny-hopping? No thanks and I doubt you'd get a competitive edge. That doesn't mean VR games will all be mundane strolls through static scenery, but even in a shooter or on a psychedelic trip to Mars, I expect movement will need to be more natural. How often do you actually strafe across a room or walk backward around corners?

We ll move more like people move, we ll explore more with the Rift, just being in a place is instantly more interesting than it ever was on a flat monitor and more and more, we ll stop being asked to wield a gun at all times. Shooters will exist in VR-land, but they'll further lose status as the dominant genre for first-person games. The survival-horror genre will continue its recent ascension Zombie Studios is already developing the Rift-compatible, properly terrifying Daylight and the less masochistic will find a greater number of first-person RPGs like Skyrim and exploration games like Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable, and Gone Home.

Many Oculus Rift demos are simply places to explore and experience, such as RedOfPaw's rendition of The Boiler Room from Spirited Away.

VR games won t always fit into traditional definitions of games (as the last three I mentioned are either accused of or praised for, depending on who you ask). We ll visit foreign landmarks by exploring photorealistic 3D-scanned replicas. We ll bounce on the surface of the moon with friends. We ll dive into the Mariana trench in personal submarines.

These ideas call back to the multimedia CD-ROM experiences of the mid- 90s. The era s video encyclopedias and FMV games didn t earn the best reputation, but they ll come back in a much better way with VR. Consider Star Trek s reality-generating holodeck. The crew of the Enterprise didn t jump into the horrors of war as endlessly respawning soldiers. As much fun as that is (don't think I'm going to stop enjoying Rising Storm), I don't see it as the most exciting use of VR technology. No, Picard and crew experienced places, stories, and simulated people. They were role-playing, and even though the holodeck was just a plot device, I foresee real VR technology encouraging the same kinds of experiences. And with those experiences, I expect VR will spur on advances in relatively un-advanced segments of game design and programming.

A new reality
 
As one example, virtual reality should lead to more convincing characters. Right now, short of hiring actors to populate my personal Sherlock episode in some kind of multiplayer murder theater, there s no way to have a natural interaction with a non-player character in a game. People don t fall in love via dialog wheel or blink idly when they have nothing to say, and as games start to feel more like reality, we ll expect their characters to act more like real people. AI and voice recognition will improve, and communication will become more important to gameplay.

And when VR hardware is sophisticated enough, the goal of improving graphics and motion controls will be wholly replaced with the task creating more and more complex simulations. That s the ultimate dream of VR from the perspective of many who have written about it a reality substitute, where people play, socialize, shop, and do business, as in Neal Stephenson s Snowcrash and other sci-fi fiction before and after it.

VR Cinema is a novel way to watch movies with extremely high resolution headsets, it could be a great way to share the theater experience with distant friends.

Virtual Reality starts out as a medium just like television or computers or written language, said Lanier in a 1988 interview with now-defunct magazine Whole Earth Review. But once it gets to be used to a certain degree, it ceases to be a medium and simply becomes another reality that we can inhabit.

Today, Luckey is saying much the same thing. When VR is going to be exciting is when it gets as good as real life at everything, he says. And you start to say, well, Why would I travel on a business meeting across the world just to go sit face-to-face with people, if we can just plug in Rifts and get all of the same nuance of communication we could have gotten otherwise?

But that s not to say that gamers aren t important, or that the goal of VR is to leave gaming behind. We re vital, according to Luckey (and I agree), because that grand cyberspace future will never get off the ground without us.

"Gamers are the ones that I think are most accepting of this kind of new technology," he says. "Gamers are willing to take time out of their day to go do something that s out of the ordinary and fantastical. And VR is one of the best ways we re going to have to do that."

Let's face it: learning science is always fun. You can build dioramas of the solar system with friends, study biology with a science teacher, or combine compounds in a lab with a partner. If we're being honest, though, the best way to learn any science is almost always with an evil artificial intelligence, bent on subjugating the world through its malfeasance, for science. That makes GLaDOS the best teacher ever, as demonstrated in a new NASA video.



In a new educational outreach video released by NASA s Spitzer Space Telescope, GLaDOS educates a couple of computer techs about the difference between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Both have to do with Helium and Hydrogen atoms slamming around, and both will eventually lead to GLaDOS taking over the world and exterminating all humanity. The finer distinctions are patiently explained by GLaDOS like it s Take Your Daughter To Work Day. Well, not that Take Your Daughter To Work Day. Some different one.



Check out the NASA Spitzer YouTube channel for more science videos, though this is so far the only one featuring power-hungry computer program.

Image via ICV2.com
Board game publisher Cryptozoic announced that it is making a board game based on Portal. The tentatively titled Portal: Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game is set for a release in the third quarter of 2014. Its suggested retail price is currently set around $50. A portal gun that defies the laws of physics is not included.
Cryptozoic has experience translating different franchises into board games. Earlier this month it announced Assassin s Creed: Arena. At the American International Toy Fair, it revealed it s making a DC Comics card game and a dice game based on The Walking Dead television show.
That s where Cryptozoic also revealed the Portal game, but it s still unclear how the game will play. In addition to the tentative release date and price, all Cryptozoic said is that it s designed by the creators of Portal, that it will deliver a rich, smart, and utterly unique narrative experience, and that it will be for 2-4 players.
Playing pieces will include test subject, sentry turret, weighted companion cube, and delicious cake.

Thanks to the Titanfall beta, my week has been mostly defined by super-stompy death machines. Even though that's over, my appreciation for the colossal metal monsters isn't about to end. For anyone else pining for the powerful crush of hydraulic hands, here's a brief hit in the form of a TF2 Source Filmmaker short. Unlike the game's actual giant robots, this version is a dramatically difficult challenge to bring down.



This is the second video in creator "Fedora Chronicles", although according to the creator, it doesn't have much in common with the first. Instead, it's a fully standalone story, and one of the best made SFM shorts I've seen for a while.

Thanks, Kotaku.

It's always nice to see a mod progress from humble beginnings to its own Steam product page, and Estranged is fully deserving of the achievement. Alan Edwardes' spooky, puzzle-filled FPS plays and looks like a first-person Alan Wake, and it's an excellent deviation from standard run-and-gun zombie-fragging with its supernatural twists and an atmospheric sense of foreboding. The first act is available on Steam as a free download independent of any Source-based game, so you won't need Half-Life 2 to jump in and start exploring.

Washing ashore on a misty, moonlit island coastline, you'll need to both figure out what happened and how to escape from the island's strange and sometimes hostile inhabitants. The story, like most well-crafted horror yarns, shrouds itself with mystery and urges exploration to reveal the truth. It's a particularly effective strategy, as Edwardes and his team poured a wonderful degree of detail into the island's foggy docks, murky woodlands, and eerily empty houses.

And when the monsters glowy-eyed zombie/infected hybrids do jump out from the shadows, the game shines with a less-is-more approach of eschewing musical cues or zombie groans for more silent and sudden attacks. Running away is often just as correct as fighting, since you'll find yourself hoarding the precious bullets and medical supplies you'll scrounge up as long as possible. Trust me, after getting my back clawed to pieces by a zombie who I could've sworn wasn't behind me a second ago, I can assure that rush of adrenaline will be genuine.

Estranged has come a long way since its beta became the Mod of the Week last September, and seeing just the first act appear on Steam suggests more to come from Edwardes to further unravel more pieces of the island's riddle. Grab it for free on Steam, and check out the official website for more screenshots and info.

Has the desire for hats, hats, delicious TF2 hats diminished over the last few years, or is the public's interest in digital head-adornment as strong as ever? I ask because Valve and Irrational are adding BioShock clobber to Team Fortress 2, and- hey, don't all load up the game at once. You'll need to buy BioShock Infinite's season pass on Steam to gain access to it, which I believe comes with a few pieces of downloadable content in addition to a very small selection of hats. Full details here.

The items are only available until the 25th of March - the date that Burial at Sea part 2 is scheduled to release - and comprise a Mister Bubbles doll, a George Washington and a Benjamin Franklin mask. It's not a whole lot of content, but if you still play TF2 and you already own a season pass, then free stuff is always nice, I guess. Here's a pic of that digital clobber, as modelled by the cast of TF2:

For those, like me, who only need the merest reason to play Portal again, keep an eye on Portal: Alive and Kicking. It's "a full remake and re-imagining" of Portal 1 in Portal 2's fancier iteration of Source. The free mod that's been passed through the latest batch of Greenlight approvals, and has the confident endorsement of Jeep Barnett, Valve designer and co-creator of the proto-Portal student project, Narbacular Drop. "Every tile on every panel has been revisited with loving detail," he writes. "Not only have the visuals been updated to match Portal 2, but the weaker puzzle cues have been improved."

The mod also includes a new set of advanced maps based on Portal chambers 13-18, but with "all new puzzles and set in the "Old Aperture" visual theme seen in Portal 2." The adaptive soundtrack has been expanded and Portal's original advanced maps have been recreated in the Portal 2's ruined Aperture aesthetic. It looks a bit like this.



"WEEEEEEEEEEE."

I was a bit skeptical about fan-make remakes of old games until I played Black Mesa: Source. The act of recreation through the lens of intense fandom added dozens of loving touches that enhanced Valve's original vision for Half-Life. See also, The Dark Mod, which did a great job of capturing the magic of Thief. Hopefully Alive and Kicking will do the same for Glados et al.

Looking for evening of multiplayer gaming? Come and play with us. We've recently refreshed our UK server list, providing a space for readers to explore, build and... okay, mostly just kill. Whether you enjoy a friendly round of competitive brutality, or a collaborative place to create and share, our Multiplay hosted servers are waiting for you to join.

DayZ Standalone



Visit our version of Chernarus for pleasant strolls around picturesque towns and memorable encounters with local characters. It's a camping trip you'll never forget. Maybe you'll even run into long-term resident Andy Kelly. Pro-tip: Don't run into Andy Kelly.

Rust



If spawning unarmed in a brutal and hostile environment doesn't sound like your thing, Rust let's you start with a rock. Our 50-player server will give you plenty of chances to use that rock along the difficult road to survival.

Starbound



If you've a hankering for creative co-operation and expansive exploration, our Starbound server is for you. You can build, fight, find and live amongst the game's mushrooms, brains and bird people, all with your fellow readers.

Minecraft



Prefer more depth to your builds? Our Minecraft server is a massive and beautiful testament to our readers' creativity. It's a museum of wonder, and one that you can add to. Presuming, that is, you can find some unclaimed land.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive



We're a classy bunch at PCG, but that doesn't mean we can't also kick back once in a while. That's why our CS:GO server is running Classic - Casual, cycling through some of the best official maps. Yes, that includes Dust.

Team Fortress 2



Team Fortress 2 is still brilliant, and for that reason it's the most enduring game on our server list. Thanks to its age there's a great map pool to pick from, and our 24-player server runs through eighteen of the best. No, that does not include Hydro.