The Orange Box (Valve)

It's a box. It's orange. It's delicious.

Valve, makers of the immensely popular Half-Life and Half-Life 2 have decided to put together a package ever so sweet. One bite and you're hooked! This one little DVD holds five games! Use you're fingers! FIVE!

Yes, that's right. The Box holds Half-Life 2, it's expansion games - Episodes One and Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal! Wow! How can things get any better! I'll tell you how (>~<)!!! They could've added The first Half-Life Game! That would have been nice of them, but I know there's a space issue, so I'll forgive, though, never forget. Let's begin, shall we?

Half-Life 2

In the first Half-Life, you play happy-go-lucky scientist Gordon Freeman. He has little to do with his secret half-brother Morgan, spending most of his time trying to create some sort of inter-dimensional portal. And success! He succeeds in bringing a deadly invading army into our universe, which he ultimately destroys with his trusty crowbar, Gerty. However, Freeman's whisked away by a suited gentleman for later purposes.

Half-Life 2 opens with Gordon being needed again. This time, it's the future, one that has been overrun by the other-worlders. This time, however, some of the baddies are now goodies and help Freeman as he attempts to put things back the way they are. You meet some old friends, and new ones, too. Like Dog - a giant and lovable killing machine and his owner, Alyx. AAAAlyx. She's the kind of virtual vixen that every basement dweller dreams of - and will never, EVER meet! AHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!

The graphics, which were already REALLY good get refined a bit further as it's now on a Next-Gen console. That means Alyx is even prettier than before... The consoles control schemes are pretty on the mark, but for a FPS, you really DO need a mouse and keyboard (in my opinion) for greater control. However, I've played this game on the PC as well, and have had no problems reintroducing myself to it. The physics in the game are great and are very relevant to gameplay. Half-Life 2 even sports the scariest moments I've ever had the pleasure of playing. The only problem I have with this game is the lack of hands. Gordon Freeman has no hands. You'll see what I'm talking about.

Episode One

At the end of HL2, Gordon is once again whisked away at an important junction of time. However, he's rescued and immediately placed back into danger. Hooray! That explosion you cause moments earlier, yeah, that screwed things up pretty badly, and you're (literally) thrown back into the thick of it. You're job now is to get as many people out of the city as possible before all things go boom! BOOM!

In terms of the updated graphics and controls, everything remains the same. However, the encounters just aren't there for me. Don't get me wrong. It's all action-packed and so on and so forth. It just seems like the actions was just piled on, after being rehashed from the HL2. Not bad. Just not great.

Episode Two

No, here's where everything picks up. Apparently, you've caused a bigger mess. A giant inter-dimensional portal is ripping apart the world, and it's your job, accompanied as always by Alyx McSexyJeans, to stop it. This time, you have to get to Alyx's father and help launch a missle carrying a solution into space. It won't be easy, though. New, and very BAD baddersons are about and will easily stop you. VERY easily.

My god. Every scene you play is riddled with heart-wrenching explosiveness. You hardly ever get a rest. It's a good thing that this is a short game. When fighting off wave after wave of not-so-friendlies, you're heart squeezes! Near-literally squeezes into some kind of prune. It even ties in nicely, if ever-so slightly with their new game Portal. "Cool," I squeal.

Portal

Imagine being a test subject for a giant building of puzzles. Figure out one puzzle to get onto the next. Sounds easy? No. Nononono. With Glados, the slightly deranged - and always hilarious - computer running the show, things get very dangerous, very quickly.

Things work pretty much as they do in the Half-Life games. This time, however, you're outfitted with a portal gun. Shoot one place, you get a blue portal. Shoot somewhere else, get an orange one. Go in one, come out the other. And now you can go places you've never imagined. The engine is really quite impressive, and as I understand it, very complex. This game really makes you think, as most puzzlers do - only this time, in a First-Person Shooter format. It's VERY short, and leaves you craving for more. Despite that, all the little hidden gems, makes this game worth playing over and over and over again. There is even a new map-pack you can download, though not for the Xbox 360, apparently. Or not yet, anyway.

Team Fortress 2

This is Valve's Class-based Multiplayer game that comes with the Orange Box. Being either red or blue, you can spawn as one of many types of characters that can perform many different kinds of actions, from building, to healing to spying.

The stylizing of the characters is very interesting. No game out there really looks like this game, and it's a plus. However, I do wish that within each class, there were several different models to choose from. Right now, there's only one per class and it's kind of boring. For me, the controls of the game weren't so hot. Everything was a bit too fast for me. Also, on the Xbox 360, the Matchmaking system is CRAP! Utter CRAP! It took me almost thirty-minutes to find anyone to play with, and for the first five minutes, it was ONLY ONE person. Team Multiplayer? Not really... Valve has their own 'LIVE'. It's called Steam, so I guess to bother hosting on both different systems would be a bit much for them.

In The End...

This mix of plastics and carbon make for one environmentally-unfriendly value that's well worth the price. The only downfall (in my mind) is Team Fortress 2, but that has more to do with politics than anything else.

Go to The Orange Box homepage.