Leveling Down

The Orange Box looks to be a great value – provided you don’t mind the dated feel of the three Half-Life 2 games.

I haven’t written up a review in a while, and that’s most likely because I’ve been spending a good chunk of game time playing both Call of Duty 4 and Rock Band multiplayer. And now with my attention slowly switching over to Devil May Cry 4 and Bladestorm (not to mention going to go pick up Lost Odyssey after work tonight), I don’t know when I’ll actually be able to go back and finish all of the single player Achievements of The Orange Box. I will someday though – I’ve gone through a pretty sizeable chunk of the game already: completed Half-Life 2, Episode 1, and I beat the regular “campaign” of Portal. All I plan to do next is complete Episode 2 (should I just suck it up and try to complete all the annoying Achievements), spend a bit more time messing around with Team Fortress 2, and finish off the rest of the Portal Achievements before calling it quits on The Orange Box.

Intro
The Orange Box is considered by many to be the best “deal” in gaming. It contains five seperate games: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. The original Half-Life 2 game was released to critical acclaim in November of 2004, and was ported to the original Xbox one year later. From the release of Half-Life 2 in 2004 until now, Valve has been at work developing smaller subsequent “episodic” sequels of Half-Life 2 as well as Team Fortress 2 and a “secret” little project named Portal. Episode One was completed and released on the PC in June of 2006, while Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 were released with The Orange Box . Realizing that it would be tough to sell each of these three new games on their own (especially on consoles), Valve decided to release The Orange Box, a compilation of all three games as well as Half-Life 2 and Episode One.

When Valve originally made the announcement about The Orange Box, Valve also announced that it would release The Black Box as well for the PC, a compilation containing only the three new games at a price $10 cheaper. There was no Black Box for the consoles, as Half-Life 2 and Episode One were never released for the PS3 or Xbox 360. Eventually, Valve decided to not release The Black Box, opting for The Orange Box only on all systems while the PC versions of the various games could be bought individually off Steam, Valve’s game distribution service.

Even though some people went so far as to claim The Orange Box was the best game of 2007, the numbers spoke differently, as the 360 version of The Orange Box sold a measly half million. With new games like BioShock, Assassin’s Creed, and Call of Duty 4 selling from 2 to 3 million copies each, The Orange Box’s numbers show that it seems to be more of a niche title, pulling in US sales equal to about Viva Pinata. If you’re pulling similar numbers on a hardcore gamer system equal to a kid’s game, that’s quite startling. America tends to love FPS games on the 360: both Tom Clancy games, BioShock, all of the Call of Duty games, and Halo 3 all sold millions. Something about The Orange Box didn’t pull people the same way on the 360.

Throughout Half-Life 2, Gordon will be working with Dr. Kleiner, Eli, and his daughter Alyx.

Half-Life 2, Episode One, Episode Two
The Half-Life 2 series continues on from Half-Life 1, but like most FPS games, the storyline isn’t too important. For those wondering what was in Half-Life 1, the player controls Gordon Freeman, a scientist at the Black Mesa research facility. The scientists accidently open a rift to another world where aliens come through and attack them and Half-Life 1 revolves around Freeman trying to combat the aliens while trying to escape the facility.

Half-Life 2 begins with Gordon on a train to City 17, a city controlled by Combine soldiers that ruin peoples’ lives and enforce their authority. Gordon goes through the game fighting against the Combine, as well as aliens that have returned from Half-Life 1, all in order to take out the leader. Episode One details how Gordon escapes from the facility that he infiltrates at the end of Half-Life 2, and Episode Two has Gordon going through more expansive environments to get back to base. While the first game is supposed to take place in a city, the world itself seems lifeless and deserted. I guess maybe technology back in 2004 wasn’t as good as it is now, but Half-Life 2 definitely looks a little antiquated. The game’s age is also clearly evident in the fact that it has to pause for several seconds in the middle of a level to load the next area throughout the game, which can be very annoying.

While the original Half-Life 2 game was about 8-10 hours long, Episode One (and presumably Two) are about 3 hours each. Considering a FPS game that is about 10 hours or more to be of decent length, so the three Half-Life 2 games/episodes included in The Orange Box are certainly not short. The game has the very traditional (and arguably antiquated) non-regenerating health bar (along with health and armor packs to fill up), but makes innovative use of a “use button” for opening doors, switches, picking up objects to either stack or throw, etc. There are also some minor FPS puzzles in the game here and there, introduced often with the use of a gravity gun.

Besides the general FPS fare of managing weapons, ammo, and life while combating enemies, Gordon also spends a lot of Half-Life 2 driving a buggy. I personally disliked that a lot, as I did not buy a FPS game to spend most of the time driving a car. It also doesn’t help that the dang thing is difficult to control. Fortunately, Valve has reduced the amount of driving in Episode One and Two as a result of many people complaining, but it’s unfortunate that you will still have to drive a good amount in Half-Life 2. Compile that with the fact that the controls and response of the vehicle are quite poor, and that was almost enough to make me not even play through Half-Life 2.

The weapons are pretty typical, although both the rocket launcher and the gravity gun are by far the most enjoyable weapons to use in the game. The rocket from the launcher homes in on where you target the laser, so you can fire it near an enemy ship but as long as you move the laser reticule to the ship, the rocket will fly and hit the ship. The gravity gun is a unique “weapon” in the Half-Life 2 games that allow Gordon to pick up heavy objects and throw them with ease. You can pick up items that are out of reach (they fly to you almost like you’re using a “Force pull” from Star Wars) and you can throw items like saws, boxes, and toilets with great strength at any enemies to kill them. The gravity gun can also be used to push cars along, so it’s possible to even kill enemies with cars. The gravity gun is probably the most innovative weapon to come out of Half-Life 2, and demonstrates the strength of Half-Life 2′s physics engine.

The companion cube, a popular item in Portal

Portal
Unlike Half-Life 2, Portal is a puzzle game with a FPS camera. In Portal, the main character sort of wakes up in a lab and hears a robotic voice encouraging her to continue through each level in the facility. Each level contains puzzles of various types that must be solved in order to move on. The unique and fun aspect of Portal is that the game’s puzzles are generally solved through the use of portals.

Controlling the main character, you are able to create an entrance and exit portal pretty much anywhere in a room in order to solve it. Creating such portals allow one to push a box into an entrance portal on a floor and for it to come out of an exit portal laid on the ceiling. The player herself can also go through the portals, and in later levels more ingenious puzzles are created such that the player has to use the law of gravity by falling through several portals to achieve free-fall speed in order to cross a giant horizontal chasm or to get on top of a much steeper vertical ledge. The game does a good job of slowly introducing more puzzle elements to you, and the last level in the game is also perhaps my favorite since it feels like a full FPS level rather than just a lab room. It is on the short side however – clearing Portal will probably take about 3-4 hours.

Many Portal fans will often talk about a “Companion Cube” or a lying cake – both references to this game. The Companion Cube is utilized in the puzzles on some of the levels of the game, and due to its usefulness in pushing buttons, blocking turrets, etc. it has amassed quite a fan following. To me it felt like I was some hamster in a lab with a toy that I enjoyed. Maybe that’s why people like it so much – they also felt a bond with it not unlike Tom Hanks and Wilson from Cast Away. “The Cake is a lie” is a line that fans of Portal quote as well, the quote often being found scribbled in hidden areas in the levels that are littered with dead bodies. (Throughout the game, the computer voice promises cake if you continue to go through the lab’s puzzles.)

The unique classes in Team Fortress 2 are what make the game most interesting.

Team Fortress 2
The main multiplayer component of The Orange Box is Team Fortress 2. For those that aren’t aware, Team Fortress 2 is the sequel to the original Team Fortress game, a popular Quake mod back on the PC. The gameplay mechanics haven’t really changed much from the original game to the sequel (except for the notable comic-like art direction): each player is able to choose from one several classes: the pyro, the engineer, the spy, the heavy, the scout, the soldier, the sniper, the demoman, and the medic. The player is able to change to any class between deaths, and each class has unique aspects such that all nine classes play differently. However, certain classes, such as the engineer, lend themselves better towards playing defensively while other classes, like the soldier, are more suited for offense.

There are several gameplay modes in Team Fortress 2, split up over the six multiplayer maps. The most prominent mode is capture the flag, where both teams compete to try to steal the opposing team’s briefcase and bring it back to their own in the base. The other modes revolve around both teams trying to secure nodes on the map, with some gameplay types set up so one team is only defending, or others where both are trying to secure the opposing team’s node.

While the gameplay can be pretty enjoyable for Team Fortress 2, it is not without its problems. First of all, there’s no matchmaking, stat-tracking, or any sort of online innovations that we’ve grown used to as console multiplayer gamers. This means if you want to play with two of your friends on the same team, you can pretty much forget it since Team Fortress 2 rooms autobalance so it becomes quite difficult for you and your friends to join a game already in progress and play together. Second of all, with room hosting comes its own set of problems – notably hosts that set a max limit on players for their games at a much higher number than their bandwidth can handle. What happens is maybe four people join and everything is ok, but once a fifth person joins and the host can’t handle it, the lag kills the game for everyone until people just leave. And finally, there are a lot of exploits that people have figured out but Valve has not released any patches to fix them on the 360. It’s like Team Fortress 2 on the Xbox 360 was simply released and forgotten about by the developers and players alike.

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