Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is an interesting game to me because it pulls of the teamwork aspect amongst strangers better than any first person shooter games I have played to date. While many FPS's have attempted to add elements of team play and such to their games, few succeed, as public online matches inevitably devolve into individual point-whoring and stat-watching rather than any sort of teamwork. TF2 is different to me because it actually delivers on its promise of promoting teamwork. The game does this by carefully crafting the classes so that each one relies on the other, and by adding elements to the game which cause players to interact with their own team much more than normal.
As mentioned, the class design is the most important contributing factor to teamwork, so I'll discuss that first. TF2 is a class-based team shooter. That means that each player in the server belongs to one of two teams and that each player can choose from one of nine classes when they enter battle. TF2 is uniquely successful in making every class distict from the rest. Though I haven't played a ton of FPS's, judging by the reviews it is more successful than almost any other shooter preceding it in its attempt to create varied play styles. Here are a few examples of ways that the class design promotes teamwork
-The medic class. Probably the class design that impresses me most. Though most class based shooters have a "medic" class, that class is universally underpowered and underplayed, and almost never fun to play as. This is because while it may feel good to distribute health for a little while, you bought the game to shoot people, and that's what you'll end up doing most of the time you play. In TF2 the medic is fun to play, because he is as much a part of the action and killing as his teammates are. One of the ways Valve encourages comraderie between the medic and his patients is through the "healing beam" concept. The medic wields a medi-gun (Like a ghostbusters vacuum thing), which fires out a beam that latches onto nearby teammembers, pumping health into them. This is way cooler than dropping health packs and waiting for someone to pick em up. It also fosters a sort of special relationship between medic and patient because of the visual representation. It literally connect two players. It also helps that both the patient and medic are given info about each other's names and health, which further heightens their awareness of their team mate. It can be a truly satisfying experience to go on a big killing spree with a medic by your side the whole time, and after you die and respawn, you'll often go out and try to find that medic buddy again. This is a major way I get added to people's friends list.
-Kill cam. This is another concept that helps to connect players to one another, only this one makes you more aware of the opposing team rather than your own. In most games when you die the camera sits near your point of death just idle while you respawn. In TF2 though, there is a kill-cam. When you die the camera snaps to where the enemy is and holds on them for just one moment, letting you see who killed you, with what weapon, what their name was and so on. This is terrific because you are reminded each and every death that you are playing with real people, not just glorified bots, which the other human players may as well be in other games. These are just two examples of ways that TF2 encourages player interaction in an FPS, and there are many more. It is the most superior "social" FPS I know of in this regard, and these are the qualities that keep me coming back to play over and over. I may post some more about this topic if I can't think of new ideas for the next post. I will say that I am as conscious of this as I am only because of the excellent developer comentary contained in the game, where the devs discuss their game design decisions. This commentary reveals all the thought they put into each decision. If I ever made a game of this type I would definetly consult these vids to help understand how to successfuly link players to each other. Below is one of the videos containing some dev commentary. The whole thing is on youtube somewhere I'm sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0j1qELrrvI