Well, I played this game as part of the Orange Box, but it's not really fair to any of the games to review the Orange Box as a whole, so I guess I'll break it down.

Graphics. Yea, the graphics are great. Very stylistic, funny, easy to tell what's what. So why did you give graphics only a 9 out of 10? Well, I found Team Fortress 2 to have some glitches every now and then. Things get stuck, people get stuck, objects don't appear as they should. Given what the game is and the odd parameters of the graphics and physics, it appears they had several issues getting everything to play nicely. Still, the graphical style is brilliant, and few people can refute that.

Sound. Sound is much more important now than it ever was before. The sound of a gun firing, if it's a different gun from another, must sound different from one another. Each weapon gets its own sound, even different actions it undergoes makes a new sound. My brother would point out (and laugh at it as well) that the bat the Scout uses for a melee weapon makes some hilarious sound effects when striking objects. They gave everyone several taglines, and the voices even echo in places. The creators of Team Fortress 2 went to lengths to get the sound scheme just right.

Controls. I have little to comment on about the controls. As said in a previous review, there's really little reason to even notice controls. In fact, if you notice them, it's probably because they're not good. If you don't, they're probably done well.

Story. Well, Team Fortress 2 has no story. But why should the overall rating be punished for a category that has no applicable meaning?

Fun. This game is very fun for those that like the stylized, zany gameplay and humor that persist throughout the online-only multiplayer experience. Strategy is key in this game, and the team must work together to achieve victory. Oftentimes a losing team doesn't coordinate and gets steamrolled time and time again. Why isn't this score a 10? Well, there are very few maps and the variety in general is somewhat lacking. They've explained this with the perfectly logical explanation that having too much in a game clutters it and gets in the way. While that may be so, people get bored of 2Fort over and over.

Replay. If this game didn't have an extremely high replay value, I wouldn't be bothering to review it at all, because I would have to give it a terribly low score. This game depends on its replayability, because it has no single player campaign. If people don't replay an online-only multiplayer game, the game is dead. Team Fortress 2 will continue to be a popular game for people that have been playing it since launch because of its fun factor, mostly. It has one of the highest replay value of any game because it's fun, quick, and can be played with little knowledge beforehand.

Team Fortress 2 was certainly a landmark for multiplayer combat, being the first major successful cartoony game to smack gamers in the face. Many cite Battlefield Heroes as being a knockoff of this success, but I would say it's just a natural evolution of a new branch of games. The stylized games are increasing in value, and you can bet you'll see more of this in the future.