Has anyone had the chance to jump into the Team Fortress 2 Beta (available by pre-ordering The Orange Box through Steam)?

At first, the lack of grenades had me discouraged, but because they aren't there, the game seems to work a lot more smoothly.  Team work has really been emphasized, and every class is fun to play as and balanced in terms of weaponry and abilities.  I'm an Engineer fan, and am quite pleased with the way they went about designing him (much easier to build things).  And of course, the graphics are mesmerizing and really add to the atmosphere.  Basically, I see The Incredibles if it were rated R insted of PG.  Very fun to run around in. 

Each class has his own personality (as seen in the Meet the [Class] videos), and can shout out a variety of phrases (usually things like "go left!" or "sentry ahead!", plus the classic "Medic!")  Every class has their own take on belting out these phrases.  The Scout speaks like a young New York baseball fan/player, while the Engineer has a rough, Texas accent (my kinda dude).  The Medic is German, the Demoman scottish, the Heavy Austrian, etc.  Very funny when these quirky personalities are running around with each other. 

You can also perform taunts, which zooms out of the First Person View to show you the taunt.  Each taunt is based off of the weapon your holding, so different taunts appear when you hold different things.  When you taunt as a Heavy holding the Chaingun, he kisses it passionately and says things such as "You did well!".  When you taunt holding the Sniper Rifle as a Sniper, he cheerfully waves and says "Thanks for standing still, wanka!" (he's Austrailan).  Very funny stuff.  Even more so when the various classes are taunting and shouting around each other.  It brings to mind some sort of twisted violent cartoon sitcom.

Anyone else have any comments on this?  I'm pretty obsessed with it at the moment.  Its looking to be a big hit once the final version is released.

The graphics are pretty resource-gobblely, for sure, but not too much more than any other Source Engine game I have on my laptop.  Framerate only gets nasty when I join a server for the first time (after running the app).  After it gets used to everything its processing, its nice and smooth for the most part (save Server Lag).

I'm speaking for a rather dated laptop at this point (got it in 2005), so some of you out there probably have better setups than I do.  Nevertheless, you don't need much to play it.  If you can run Half Life 2 at a satisfying level, I'd say you'll have little trouble running this.  Update your drivers, at the least.  Valve is very efficient at making games work for a variety of systems.

I've been playing the beta quite a bit (which I hinted at on the thread about my map in progress).

I'm one of the biggest fans of the original TF (for Quake), and an avid hater of TFC. That being said, I enjoy TF2 and the way it's been done. The removal of grenades intrigued me from when I first read about it.. I've always hated wuss scouts and medics conc jumping across maps. Also hated gren jumping, bunnyhopping wusses as well.. but, at least those I was able to get used to over time.

I could go on and on about TF2 and what I think about it, and how it compares to TF.. but I won't. Just go here instead (my LJ, talking about TF2). One thing to note, if you do read it, is that the pyro class has been fixed with a patch.. and is quite fun to play now. Successfully making the class my secondary one (behind HWGuy).. as it should be. And I also think melee fighting is way too powerful.. but I always keep forgetting to mention it.

Yeah, I don't think i've ever preordered a game, but I did buy The Orange Box a couple days ago.
TeamFortress2 is pretty fun IF you can find a match without lag, which is not too hard, but sometimes you just don't get any luck. When you can play smoothly its a very fun game, and the classes seem pretty balanced, but I think I'd like to play just a regular team deathmatch sometimes instead of attack and defend or capture the flag. I also like the art and design of the whole game, that and the taunts really give the characters character.
Portals fun too and Half-Life2 and the episode 1 and 2 expansions, well you know, still good.
(My favorite game is still Doom)
 

I like Steam because I can get the game without having to go to a store.  Plus, pre-ordering it pre-loads all the material for the game so that, once released, its already installed and ready to go at midnight.  No picking up the CD from the store.

Pre-ordering a CD package that you must go and pick up is useless, agreed.  But I didn't even have to leave my house when I pre-ordered The Orange Box.  It came to me, immediately, via the Internet.