The Orange Box Review

"PC Gaming is dying," the analysts tell us. "The Massive genre is the only viable business model left," websites report. That they're off the mark is obvious to anyone that's actually played a PC game in the last few years; games like Sam and Max , Battlefield 2 , or any of the numerous puzzle titles available online prove the flexibility and strength of the PC platform. Then, every once in a while, you get an offering like the Orange Box. A value-packed storm of content from Valve, this single sku offers five complete games at an amazing price. That would be great, even if the games weren't any good ... but they are. They're very, very, very good. Read on for my impressions of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and (the cake is a lie) Portal.

• Title: The Orange Box
• Developer/Publisher: Valve
• System: PC (360, PS3)
• Genre: Story Based Shooter/Team Multiplayer Shooter/Shooter Puzzler
• Score: 5/5 - These games are all classic titles. They transcend genre, and are worth playing by almost any gamer. Certain to be a part of many serious gamers' collections, definitely worth purchasing, and a great value for your dollar.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2

Given the amount of time it has taken Valve to release this, the next chapter in the Half-Life saga, it's not surprising that their thinking about episodic content has changed significantly. At this point, rather than being a continuation of Half-Life 2, Valve now effectively sees these episodes combined as Half-Life 3. That new focus is evident in Episode Two, in terms of storytelling and pacing. It picks up just a few moments after Episode One left off, with Gordon and Alyx picking their way out the wreckage of a train in the forest outside of City 17. The story almost immediately kicks into gear, hooking you up with members of the resistance, pitting you against an antlion hive, and forcing you to drive through trackless wastes on the way to your ultimate destination. Though there is plenty of action, the storyline of the Half-Life tale is greatly advanced over the course of the game. There are a few answers handed out but, as with any middle child in a trilogy, there are many more maddening questions raised by the events of the game.

More than a year has passed since the release of Episode One, and as a result numerous promises about Episode Two's gameplay have been muddied as a result. Many of the most-discussed new gameplay elements (Strider-busters, open environments) only come into play at the game's climax. Primarily, you'll be following the same sort of well-crafted (but very much walled-in) path seen in previous entries in the series. For some, this may be a disappointment - a more open environment was a much-discussed element of this title during its development. Personally, I was pleased by the game's focus. A Valve hallmark has always been tightly crafted progress, measurable movement through the gamespace. That focus is sharpened to a knife's point in Episode Two, with the intermingling of action, story-based downtime, and quick puzzles being better than ever before. And that climax ... it's essentially a race against time, putting every skill you've learned over the course of three games to the test. It's fantastic.

From an audio/visual standpoint, Episode Two more than meets expectations set by the previous chapters in the series. The new Hunter designs are deadly works of art, and carry a sound design to match their menacing appearance. The imagery of the portal storm left in the wake of Episode One dominates the skyline for much of the game, providing not only a visual landmark but a very concrete reminder of what has come before. The voice acting, as always, hits a high water mark for emotional resonance; and there's quite a bit of emotion to convey in this title. Once again, you're left with a very high opinion of Alyx Vance and the other members of the resistance against the combine.

For me, that emotional connection was the takeaway from this chapter in the series. The gameplay is just as solid as it has been in the past (essentially flawless). Other than hunting the Hunters (they don't like tires in the face much), there weren't a lot of stand out combat or puzzle elements. Which was fine, because I very much focused on the storyline as it unfolded around me. Much like Empire Strikes Back Episode Two ends on a down note, making you question what the future will bring in a hard and sometimes confusing world. Unlike that trilogy, though, the end of Gordon Freeman's tale has yet to be told. Just one more game to go before we find out the ultimate fate of the Freeman.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is a substantial redressing of a venerable entry into multiplayer gaming. Built on the original Half-Life engine, the first Team Fortress game was one of the first examples of role-based team play on the PC. The older game, with its own quirks and peculiarities, is still beloved by thousands of FPS gamers; indeed, some of them feel somewhat put off by Valve's re-envisioning of the game. Grenades are no longer a weapon available to every class, each of the classes has undergone significant retooling, and the unique visual aesthetic more resembles a Pixar film than a hardcore multiplayer shooter. What those changes add up to, though, is one of the most approachable online shooters ever released for console or PC.

Valve has chosen to apply the same kind of design directives to online combat that it applies to the single-player experience of games like Half-Life 2. Playing the game online (there is no single-player component) is like a moment-to-moment tutorial. Nuances of play become obvious as you progress through a match in your chosen class. The Medic profession is the best example of this philosophy. The character's healing gun links him to a particular character, creating a bond between two players who (in all probability) don't know each other. Learning to play the Medic is an interplay between your positioning vs. your partner, your positioning vs. opponents, and deciding when to use the 'invincibility charge' that slowly builds up as you apply healing. As a member of another class you learn the nuances of keeping your healer protected or (if you're on the opposing team) that shooting the medic first is often the best approach.

This 'tutorial-as-you-go' experience applies to every one of the nine classes. The complete team roster is a balanced array of strengths and weaknesses. Assuming that your team can agree to not all play the same class, they should allow either effective offense or defense as the scenario allows. The other Valve hallmark shows up in these classes: they're all fun. Each offers a substantially different play experience, but you can have an amazingly good time with each of them. Whether you're dropping turrets into play or wielding a fast-firing heavy machine gun, you'll have the opportunity to participate and make a dent. And if you're not having fun, it's a matter of a few moment to switch to a different class.

TF2 has some weighty competition in the online FPS space this year, but from what I've seen none can compete with it in terms of approachability. Halo 3 played online is fun, to be sure, but the preternatural skills of your opponents gets really old after a while. Team Fortress 2 rewards skill, to be sure, but the shallowness of the learning curve and self-teaching mechanisms means that expertise in TF2 is a much lower piece of fruit. Ultimately, isn't that the sign of a great online game? One that lots of people can participate in?

Portal

Words are ill-suited tools to describe the sheer amusement value of Portal. At about three hours long, it's one of the shortest games you'll play this year. You have absolutely no offensive weaponry, no special powers, and for most of the game your only real opponent is yourself. It's still, bar none, one of the best games I've ever played. You likely already know the basic premise of the game: you have a gun that makes holes in space. The Portals connect two points in reality and allow movement through them. You'll be using the device to solve puzzles, move through levels, and generally keep yourself alive in the face of the game's environment.

These puzzles are an absolute distillation of the Valve philosophy. Every challenge provides you with all the instruction you need to escape ... though their solutions are not always immediately obvious. Each one is only slightly more difficult than the last, and builds incrementally on every lesson you've previously learned. Portal is not only an excellent game, it's also a microcosmic example of the human learning process. This results, near the end of the game, in astonishing feats you would never have thought possible at the start of your journey. This plottable line of advancement from the simple to the sublime is the core of the game.

That said, more than just fun gameplay makes this title stand out. Aside from the Portal gun, you have but two companions on your journey. The voice from the ceiling, telling you what to do while lying out of one side of her face, is an artificial personality. The other companion is a lifeless cube. If that sounds sort of grimly funny, you're already getting the joke, and the point. Portal is hilarious in an Edward Gorey-meets-Douglas Adams sort of fashion, dark humor mixing with futurism for the sake of futurism.

Portal, then, is funny and intelligent in equal measure. It's wholly unlike anything else released this year, and on its own validates the entry price for Orange Box purchasers. It is, in point of fact, well worth buying all on its lonesome if you are interested by the rest of the offerings Valve has here. It also has the benefit of having the one of the best game songs ever made as its finale track.

Conclusion

Valve's Orange Box is easily one of the best offerings available for any platform this year. It's an amazing value and variety, offering story, online play, and intellectual challenge in equal measure. Every component of the piece is so strong that it could stand on its own - together it's an unstoppable force of gaming goodness. It's worth noting that reality intrudes on every element of perfection - lag has been a problem for Xbox 360 Team Fortress 2 players, but a patch is on the way. Otherwise ... there's really very little to complain about here. It's boring and unfunny to say "the whole thing is terrific" and leave it at that.

But then, I'm a nerd. The whole thing is terrific. In the face of dozens of high-price AAA titles this Christmas season Valve's offering stands out from the crowd with a clusterbomb of content that won't be easily put down. People will be playing TF2 for literally years to come, if you're done with Episode Two you can go back through it gnome-style, and I fully expect Portal to be supported by fan-created rooms for a long, long time. It's well worth buying for anyone that enjoys the first-person perspective on gaming, regardless of what kind of gamer you are. Now if I could only get that song out of my head ...

WHY?

[Southpaw018]

I must admit that I didn't entirely understand the significance of Portal while I was playing it the first time through. I thoroughly enjoyed it and had honest fun (a rarity it seems, including my long gone 6-8 hours per day of World of Warcraft 7 days a week, which didn't remotely resemble anything like fun), but I often get so involved the mechanics of gameplay I miss some stuff. After beating it the first time through, I read some reviews and checked out some forums. With the perspective gained from hearing others talk about the emotional brilliance of the game, I played through it again, start to finish. The end result?

Oh, Weighted Companion Cube, WHYYYYY? :(

David the Gnome!

[PrescriptionWarning]

the link [f2s.com] about the Gnome achievement was pretty awesome and definitely a clever addition. This is the reason why games have indeed progressed since Pong [slashdot.org].

Portal is an instant classic.

[Naelok]

I think Portal could have done with some human enemies, rather than just those wacky little bots. The idea of opening a portal over a spiky bit and then opening another portal beneath some guard's feet has strong appeal.

That said, it was a great game with some of the most memorable lines I've ever heard in a video game.

"Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I was all 'goodbye' and you were like 'NO WAY!' and then I was all 'we pretended we were going to murder you'. That was great."

Orange Box just confirms PC gaming demise

[SuperKendall]

I'm not saying the Orange Box is not quality product - it is.

But note that the orange box is in simultaneous console/PC release*. How does a major release like this coming out at the same time for consoles as the PC not confirm the trend for game makers to support consoles at least as well as, and in the future to a greater degree than, PC games?

* Well, 360 anyway - the PS3 version was delayed a bit.

Bioshock 2 was a great new PC gaming hit - that also came out for a console at the same time.

When you don't need a PC anymore for PC gaming... PC gaming is on the decline.

Low System Spec a big plus too

[fuo]

Another big plus for OB imo is that all the games are basically using 3+ year old engine so you don't really need to worry about whether you have the greatest hardware.

About a year ago, after playing nothing but PC games for 10+ years I got tired of upgrading hardware and all the other "work" that goes into PC gaming and said F-it and bought a Wii. I wasn't planning to buy any new PC games for awhile, but then I heard about OB and figured I'd give it a shot since my current PC ran HL2 just fine. Glad I bought it, Portal alone has kept be busy for two weeks.

Re:Orange Box just confirms PC gaming demise

[Stripe7]

PC gaming is not dead, and won't die. There are currently 2 types of gamers, those willing to spend $300-$500 on a console $60-$90 a game and those who plunk down $500-$10,000 on a PC system. Consoles are also getting keyboards and turning into PC's. What most of the business and political world seems to misunderstand but Nintendo figured out is that the gamers that spend the most money on games and game systems are Adults. Adults are willing to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a game system if they think the entertainment value is there. PC gaming won't die off as PC's are becoming ubiquitous in a home environment, throwing in a game on a system you already own is cheaper than buying a new console.

Stop the Jargon.

[alan_dershowitz]

this single sku offers five complete games at an amazing price.

What is an SKU? Is anyone else getting sick of the integration of marketing and sales jargon into regular language? I'm tired of game series being called "franchises." I'm not licensing anything, I'm buying it. It's a franchise to a licensor. To me it's a game.

Re:Portal is an instant classic.

[nine-times]

I agree. There's something to having the place utterly deserted. Like, you can even see into the little observation rooms and they're all empty. Even before you find out what happened to everyone (and who says it's true? GLaDOS lies!) you get the sense that this whole thing is being run by an unsupervised AI who is carrying out procedures her human creators have already abandoned. It makes all the puzzles and everything seem that much more pointless and strange.

Having human enemies would have ruined that.

Re:five or three?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because in an obvious attempt at a cash grab, Valve make you buy Episode 1 and Half-Life 2 AGAIN. So effectively they sell two copies of HL2 to everyone who buys Episode 2. Oh sure, you COULD just buy Portal by itself, but it's freakin $20 JUST for Portal. $20 for 2.4 hours of gameplay? No thank you, Valve.

Re:TF2

[businessnerd]

You make an interesting point with TF2. A lot of the things that they have tried to eliminate in TF2, were really skills that had to be mastered over time in TF1.x. Things like rocket jumping and conc. grenade jumping take a lot of skill and are certainly not the obvious maneuver for the n00b. However, I have two counterpoints to argue.

First, let me put up my own disclaimer: I have not yet tried TF2, but have been re-obsessed with TFC after I realized that even though my install CD went missing years ago at a friends house, the box with CD Key on it that I still have can be used to download through steam (and run it in Linux under WINE!).

That being said, all of the physics exploiting moves were not in wide use when these games were first released. These skills were discovered, developed, demonstrated and passed on to others until it became common practice. So while those old skill may now be bannished, who knows what new 1337 5ki11z will be discovered and then perfected until we all use them. Don't forget, there is a collective learning curve with most online multi-player games. In the beginning, the relatively new player can do pretty well for himself, but then those putting in the overtime quickly start pwning and those who don't keep up, are all of a sudden not doing so well.

My second counterpoint, is that the game developers have tried to bring each role back to basics. In the original concept, you have your offensive players (actively attacking) and defensive/supporting players (passively attacking/supporting others). The medic and the engineer were intended originally, not to be used for offense. While relatively quick, their health/armor was relatively low, and their supershotgun takes a lot of skill to be affective on offense. However, grenades seem to be the great equalizer. When grenades are available, those two classes, as well as others, have a lot of offensive firepower. Rather than having medics healing teamates (a rarity), you have medics conc. jumping across maps and grenade spamming the defense. On maps like 2fort, engineers are possibly the most powerful player offensively thanks to the EMP grenades (I should know, I'm a devout TFC engineer). After a while, the teams stop working together, and start working for themselves. Everyone wants to have the high ranking (which means lots of kills), and forgetting about your other duties, like healing and building support devices like dispensers and teleporters. There's no "i" in Team Fortress (except Team Fortress Classic, but I guess that supports my argument of what the game had turned into).

Those who have played TF2 can certainly comment better than I on whether any of these things are happening, but I see a more authentic team experience, and don't worry, the moves people will be pulling off in two years, the developers would have never imagined.

One Word: Extensibility

[kaellinn18]

Owners of the PC version of the Orange Box will be enjoying their games long after the owners of the console version. The reason is the modders. These games are going to have the crap modded out of them, and once these mods are available, what once was old is brand new again. Levels, game variations, all of these will be available on the PC and available for FREE. If you're lucky, maybe Valve will be nice and package some of them for download on the 360/PS3. You'll most likely be paying for it, though.

No DRM whining?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as Steam uses a DRM system that basically comes down to "if we disable your account, say bye-bye to all the games you bought", im surprised everyone praises the orange box like this.

Oh right, i guess DRM is only bad when it comes from Microsoft, how silly of me....

Skills aren't Skill.

[webrunner]

Skills like conc jumping don't reward skill, they reward A skill, and there's a significant difference that people who are clamoring for these things (and bunny hopping, etc) back.

A skill like Conc jumping basically splits the entire scout community into people who conc jump and people who don't. If you're a good conc jumper, and suck at EVERY other part of being a scout, you're still a better scout then the best player who can't conc jump. This basically means if you don't want to conc jump you're SOL. Your skill as a player ceases to matter in any meaningful way, until you master conc jumping.

This is horrible gameplay design and balance, and I say Kudos to valve for having the guts to get rid of it.

It's like Wavedashing in Smash and Snaking in Mario Kart. They draw a hard line right down the middle, across which there is no skill comparison. They're all ultimately shallower games for having them.

Re:TF2

[ahoehn]

After a while, the teams stop working together, and start working for themselves. Everyone wants to have the high ranking (which means lots of kills), and forgetting about your other duties, like healing and building support devices like dispensers and teleporters.

One of the niftiest revamps in TF2 is that your points are no longer based exclusively on kills. Pretty much everything you do that helps your team will move you up the leader board. If you're a medic and you effectively heal your teammates, you move up the board. If you're an engineer and you build a useful dispenser or transporters, you move up the board. If you're a spy and you sap a sentry gun, you move up the board.

The upshot is that the game encourages cooperation far more than any other FPS I've played. For players like me who are simply awful at moving their mouse quickly and shooting people in the head, TF2's combination of unique classes and thoughtful point crediting makes the game incredibly appealing.

Re:TF2

[PaulMorel]

(disclaimer: I am a similar bhopping, rocket jumping TF vet)

You haven't spent enough time with TF2. For all the reasons that TF & TFC were great, TF2 is better.

The biggest difference isn't grenades, as you would know if you had spent more time with it. The biggest difference is that one player can't affect a match as much as teamwork can. In other words, one uber-1337 player on a team of nubs will never win a match in TF2. Only teams that can work together can truly dominate in TF2.

It is the only game I have ever played where this is the case (some other games come close).

Re:No DRM whining?

[fyrie]

This is my only complaint with the orange box so far. I bought a physical copy, yet I need steam to run it. What happens 10 years from now when steam is dead? I love playing my old games from time to time.

Re:Not backwards at all

[actor_au]

I disagree, I've had the same system since 2003(might be 2004 its been a while) and other than two new hard drives because I've filled the old ones with movies and games I've not upgraded anything since about six months before HL2 came out, RAM, Video Card and Processor are the same.
I've been able to play, BioShock, Quake 4, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Peggle, C&C 3 and Jericho, not always at the highest graphic settings but always been able to play them, you've replied to almost every post in this section about constant hardware updating being the downside of PC gaming, I only update when something breaks, I do buy the best replacement parts possible to future proof my system but when I do I'm usually set for almost four years before I have to replace things(which is rather close to the time between the X-Box and 360 coming out). And I leave my system on 24/7 before you ask. Its never turned off because I'm using it all freaking day and night because I've no social life outside of Slashdot.
I don't know where the myth of constantly updating hardware comes from buy the reality is that unless you're a wanker very few people bother going to their local computer store on a monthly basis to squeeze an extra pixel out of Bioshock. I play games because they're fun, I play them on my PC because I've got a decent rig and don't own a TV but my monitor is a good size and I like using a mouse to aim.
You sound a little like you want to get the ultimate graphic levels out of games, my suggestion is play a game, enjoy it, in four years time when you've updated your system get that game out, play it at full spec again and enjoy the masterpiece in all its graphical super-shaded glory.

Re:A note on Orange Box value

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know what would have been even better value? Only charging you for the games you wanted. Most people who wanted HL2 and Episode 1 have already bought them, so the ability to 'give away' those games was just misdirection on Valve's part. If I could have bought Episode 2 and Portal for 25-30USD (being charitable; Portal was worth 5USD) I'd have done so but this whole all-or-buggerall deal leaves me cold.
I'll wait a while.

Re:Stop the Jargon.

[brkello]

I used to agree with you. Now I am just tired of people like you complaining about the word. It has been showing up for months. People have been whining about it for months. The term is not going away any time soon so just learn to accept it like I have.

Actually, I'm fine with SKU as long as I don't have to read the word meme. That one seems to have gone away thankfully.

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