Team Fortress 2

This is a painful game to review because I've put 650 hours into this game and I actually agree with a lot of the points made by the positive reviewers.  The music and atmosphere is very well done, the game has a rich history and a lively community, the core classes are well-balanced, and much of the gameplay has been polished into a bright sheen.  How can I give this game a negative review given my personal history and these positive elements?

Well, the reality is that the core matchmaking and gameplay has gotten steadily worse through the years to the point where, today, I wouldn't recommend the game to anyone unless they are interested in the history or just curious about trying the game.  The basic challenge is that Valve clearly no longer wants to put any time or energy into managing the game, resulting in:
* No updates for an absurd length of time to the gameplay or lore (either in the not-so-recent past or in the forseeable future).  While the core characters are pretty well-balanced at this point, the game gets boring when months pass without any new maps, guns, or features being added.  
* A growing spambot/cheating problem.  Gone are the days when aimbots and spammers were culled due to improvements to either the Valve Anti-Cheat system or better moderation.  Instead, these problems are endemic, to the point where a large portion of games are ruined by these items and a good proportion of even satisfactory games are spent trying to get the other team to kick their aimbot so they don't walk away with an easy victory.
* To deal with the spambot problem, you now have to pay to use the core text/voice chat functionality, which is pretty necessary to perform basic gameplay coordination and is a pretty basic F2P feature.  Okay, you can go Premium for $5 to fix this, but given the issues above this is another strike against the game.  (Also, yeah, I was F2P for that entire time, but this wasn't an issue until recent updates).
* Matchmaking is completely broken.  While joining a game originally lead you to a decently full server about to start and a lively game, half the time you now join a game that is being plagued with auto-aim bots, that's half empty, or that's about to end.  Again, this is something that even Valve's other major F2P property (Dota 2) can figure out even matching players by skill level, so the lack of care here is further indicative of Valve's lack of investment.  

Given all of these issues, I don't think the game is very interesting or fun to play any more.  While existing fans of the game may want to continue playing for their own reasons, my rating reflects my judgement that this game just isn't worth the time anymore.  Not recommended. 

Edited:  I’m bumping this up because they’ve fixed the aim bot and cheating problem to the point where queueing into a causal match is no longer fundamentally broken.  I’m playing this again and enjoying it even though the way they broke communication is annoying, it’s still not being updated, and there are still cheaters every match or two.