I spent a few years in junior high living in Hong Kong, which were major formative years – in my gaming life. After playing NES, SNES, Famicon, Super Famicon, and Street Fighter in arcades with my cousins, I was a gamer for life. When Mrs. cmfl3x and I decided to take a trip to Asia this summer (Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong), I was curious as to what the gaming scene looks like over there these days – to my more adult eyes. Hit the jump from my impressions.

A Different World
espion4ge has written a bit about the difference between Eastern and Western gaming design, but to be honest, I was still shocked at how different the culture of gaming is on the other side of the world. Here in the States, I think there still is a little bit of a stigma about being a gamer, even though the Wii has made things more mainstream, gaming is still considered nerd territory. But over in Asia, and especially in Japan, gaming seems to live more inside the general cultural landscape.

Case in point – Akihabara. There is an entire DISTRICT in Tokyo dedicated to gaming and electronics in general. Hong Kong has Wan Chai 188 (and a few other places I used to visit as a kid) – a building basically dedicated to games: three stories of stores selling video games, computer equipment, and manga. Oh, and some GIGANTIC Starcraft 2 posters. I can’t think of any equivalents here in the US. Those areas are awesome and any gamer visiting Asia (or any fan of electronics, really) should check them out.

Perhaps the most interesting difference to me was the fact that game pricing isn’t as regulated as it is in the States. Funny story perhaps only to me: I was eating with my cousins after not seeing them for about 6 years. About 5 minutes after pleasantries were exchanged, the next most pertinent question was: “Did you pick up Dragon Quest IX yet?” There was absolutely no context, and the three of us haven’t spoken about games for years. I was actually wondering if I was going to find out that they had outgrown video games, and pondered this with my wife before we met up with them. But I guess some things never change! But I digress…

As I was saying, game pricing isn’t as regulated as my cousins told me. Especially in Hong Kong, games sell for different prices, even at release. I think this is kind of awesome, since there are plenty of games I wait to hit the bargain bin before I buy them. But if they started in the bargain bin, maybe I could pick them up earlier!

The culture is just so different over there: many of the games I saw were completely unfamiliar to me. In Japan, there are a bunch of dating sims on the DS, and even a stripping game (or so Mrs. cmfl3x told me, I wasn’t allowed to look at the box). In Hong Kong, my cousin was telling me about Nier for the Xbox. I had never heard of it, but apparently it’s bigger over there.

I thought that with importing and the like we have a lot more access to Japanese games, and in one sense that’s true. Yet part of having access to games is just having the knowledge about them, and the fact of the matter is there are games we don’t even hear about. It’s tough to import games unless you have some kind of prior knowledge. That got me thinking…

Great games like Captain Tsubasa never made it to the US, or flopped when they did

A Different Culture
Being back in Asia made me think about games that I used to play as a kid that I couldn’t find when I moved back to the States. Aside from the Dragonball RPG I used to play (and love), the games that I loved the most were the Captain Tsubasa series. For the unfamiliar (probably everyone), Captain Tsubasa is a soccer game with RPG elements based on a popular Japanese manga series. The games were all in Japanese, but they were amazing. Your players level up, learn special skills (think Shaolin Soccer, which came after Captain Tsubasa), and you use these awesome skills to win soccer games.

Few people in America have even heard of the soccer RPG genre, but it is pretty big in other parts of the world. The fact of the matter is, Eastern and Western gaming cultures are separated by more than just an ocean. Despite the perception of gamers as loners, there has and always will be an element of community in gaming. That’s what causes “sleeper hits” to happen, word of mouth spreads and a game becomes a legend. Over in Asia, the culture has created an atmosphere where Captain Tsubasa became a huge hit, over here, Tecmo Cup Soccer, the Americanized version flopped.

For some reason I find this fascinating. I guess I kind of thought that with the global economy and that little “internet” thing, things that are popular in Asia could still be popular here. We all eat ramen, don’t we? But obviously that’s not true, because Inazuma 11, the latest soccer RPG in Japan on the DS, is selling like gangbusters and I’d never even heard of it here. I picked up a copy of the original (the third game in the series just came out this July) and will share my impressions later.

So how do the Eastern and Western gaming cultures affect us as end users? Well, last week I wondered where the innovation was. I guess I found a little bit of my answer in Asia. Maybe the games they release out there aren’t innovative, since they’ve been releasing them for ages, but for people in the US, there are still innovative gametypes that we haven’t tried out. So if 3D doesn’t work out, at least I can import!

Same Console Wars
My last, brief thought, is that the console wars exist in Asia as well. In Japan, obviously, PS3 is king of the hardcore stuff, while Wii and DS have a huge following. In Japanese stores, the Xbox sections are like one row, while there are three or more rows dedicated to the other consoles. So in Japan, perhaps the console wars are more like the Seven Hour War from Half Life 2.

Hong Kong is a different story. According to my cousins, the console wars were just as fierce over there as they were here: complete with fanboys and everything. There is also the strange fact that Xbox games generally sell for cheaper, leveling out the playing field a bit. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting – you can fly halfway around the world, but you can’t escape the console war!

I ended Half-Life 2 on such a high note that I decided to jump straight into Episode One (though Episode Two will have to sit on the sidelines for a while since Modern Warfare 2 is out!). Half-Life 2 ended on an incredible cliffhanger, so I can’t imagine having to wait to see what happens next. Luckily, these games came out years ago so I could just move my cursor over one game to the right on the Orange Box and see what Episode One had to offer. Was this groundbreaker in “episodic gaming” (/sarcasm) as good as its predecessor?

The first thing that stood out to me while playing through Episode One was how tight the experience is. The game picks up right where Half-Life 2 left off, and changes the stakes within the first minute. The story concerns the continuing human rebellion, and a mass exodus of humans from City 17 which is in danger of being destroyed by an unstable Citadel reactor. Like Resident Evil 5, you go through the game with a female partner (Alyx), and the game just follows you as the two of you make your escape from City 17.

The game is pretty much Half-Life 2 without the long boring sections. There’s very little fluff here - you go from scene to scene without too much repetition (unlike the original). Puzzles aren’t as annoying and momentum-breaking as Half-Life 2 either. There is a cool achievement which involves beating the game firing only one bullet (which you use to break a lock), and I had a lot of fun figuring out how to fight off hordes of enemies using only grenades and my gravity gun. Also, fighting with Alyx is pretty fun - it’s kind of weird since Gordon Freeman never talks, but you really feel like he and Alyx are forming a strong relationship. Plus, she knows kung fu.

What I loved about Half-Life 2 is the same thing I love about Episode One: Valve has done an amazing job of crafting a world and helping me understand that world without any cutscenes taking me away from the action. It’s marvelous. You are never taken out of Gordon Freeman’s HEV suit - for all intents and purposes you ARE Gordon Freeman. It’s something that very few first person shooters do.

There’s not much more to say here, it’s just more Half-Life 2. There are complaints that the game is too short, which I could understand back then, but now that you can get The Orange Box for $20, it’s a non-issue. So I will reiterate what I’ve said a thousand times before on this site: BUY THE ORANGE BOX.

The month of November, 2004 was quite a month if you were a fan of first person shooters. Two highly anticipated sequels, Halo 2 and Half-Life 2, released within a week of one another and gamers rejoiced. Since I wasn’t into PC gaming anymore (I haven’t really played a FPS on PC since Doom II if you can believe it), Halo 2 owned my time back then, and actually warranted me getting my first Xbox. Five years later, I have finally gotten around to playing Half-Life 2. It was highly praised 5 years ago, but does it still hold up now?

I can answer that question with an emphatic YES. Playing through the game, not even having played the original, I was incredibly impressed by a lot of things in this game. The game does an excellent job of setting things up: at the beginning you are entering a city where there is clearly something amiss - it seems that Earth has been taken over by an alien force known as the Combine and are controlling humans by putting something in the water and through general brutality. Enter Gordan Freeman, the silent physicist protagonist of the Half-Life series, sent on an unknown “mission” by the G-man, someone you know painfully little about. From there, the story takes you on a journey that familiarizes you with the human resistance movement and leads to you attempting to take out the Combine stronghold.

The story may seem a little generic, but what Half-Life 2 does an excellent job of is creating the setting. The voice acting is great, and the lines NPCs say serve to really set the mood and tone of the game. This came out in 2004, but all of that still holds up. Generally I don’t write about the sound work, but Half Life 2 does an amazing job with it: the guns have the right pop, the enemies scream at the right times to make you jump, and the effect of “going deaf” when a loud explosion goes off is used to great effect. All contribute to a story you want to follow to the end, and it’s a story that will clock in at 10 hours or more, so it’s a pretty good chunk of gaming for your investment.

Even though it’s showing a little signs of age, the Half Life 2 physics engine is amazing as well. The gravity gun is still to this day one of the coolest weapons out there - you can use it to grab anything that is light enough and launch it at your enemies. This is used to great effect in Ravenholm, an area overtaken by zombies, where you get an achievement for only using the gravity gun. My only problem with that particular achievement was the fact that cans full of paint do no damage to the zombies, and instead just make them silly looking with white paint. It’s funny, but come on, if I threw a can of paint in your head I would MESS YOU UP.

Gravity gun aside, the combat in general doesn’t stand as tall to the test of time. The aiming is pretty tight, although it’s not as accurate on a console as something like Call of Duty. The AI is a real problem though: the Combine soldiers are kind of stupid and don’t do a very good job of taking cover. Another problem is the lack of a dedicated melee button - something that has become standard these days. If you want to conserve ammo you have to switch over to your crowbar. Choosing guns, which are mapped to your d-pad, can be cumbersome. You’d think these problems would make the game annoying to play, but they really don’t.  It’s just you can see that the FPS genre has made some great strides to streamline controls on consoles in the past 5 years (I’m sure on PCs the gun selection works great).

5 years later, I can’t believe it took me so long to “discover” this game. It’s old school at the core (sometimes you have no idea where you are supposed to go and it takes hours to figure out), and there are some puzzling elements that are hit or miss (the ones that hit are awesome, the ones that miss are annoying). FPS games have definitely gone more of the Halo 2 route, but I’m not sure why. Even in 2009, Half-Life 2 is one of the best shooters I’ve ever played. I keep wanting to go back for more (even forsaking Borderlands for hours at a time). Maybe it’s best not to call Half-Life 2 a shooter: it’s more of an experience. If you missed it the first time like I did, do yourself a favor – grab the Orange Box and play this game (and when you’re done, play Portal too!).

At various times, espion4ge has chronicled various stages of his “leveling down.” Last night I made a leveling down type decision, as I decided not to go for the full 1000 points in Batman: Arkham Asylum. In addition, I decided not to pull the trigger on Borderlands, although I would have loved to play co-op with espion4ge. But I’ve decided that I’m going to devote my current playing time to trying out a new experience instead of the 15+ hours it would take me to get the last 230 GP in Arkham. Ah well…maybe in next year’s doldrums I’ll work on it. But anyway, as an attempt to be more “mature” and not waste any money on new games, I decided to revisit old titles that I never completed. Although I was tempted to try my $5 copy of Ninja Gaiden 2 and even removed it from the shrinkwrap, I ultimately settled on trying to finally finish a “classic”: Half Life 2 (on the Orange Box).

I’ve tried to play through Half Life 2 three times and never completed it. I’ve managed to get 2/3 of the way through, but I decided to start again from the beginning to get the full experience. After the first three chapters, I’m pretty impressed, especially considering the game is 5 years old. The great part about this game is it’s incredibly immersive. I never played Half Life and only know the story via Wikipedia, but even having not played the game, the opening sequence of Half Life 2 makes me feel I am thrust into a world full of oppression and pain. The voice acting is great, and even though Gordon Freeman never talks, everyone around him reacts to him which really makes me feel like I AM Gordon Freeman. Anyway, it’s all pretty neat, especially since the first two chapters start out kind of slowly and then ramp up into all sorts of craziness. Also, even though it’s a bit dated now, the physics and the use of gravity are really impressive.

As soon as I started this game (again) I can see why it’s considered a classic. Hopefully this time I can finally finish Half Life 2 (and Episodes 1 and 2). As of this writing that is my plan, but espion4ge just alerted me to a new deal at Amazon (buy over $80 worth of eligible games and get $40 credit). Curses…

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.