Orange Box is the best value for money game you can buy this Christmas. and A fantastic set of games as well!
"Wow" will be the first words out of your mouth, when you pick up The Orange Box, and realise that it's not a collaboration of Tetris and arcade games. But it contains 5 full blockbuster games, all developed by the legendary Valve company. The games are: Halflife 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, Portal and the long awaited Team Fortress 2. This package is possibly the best value game ever released.
Halflife 2 continues Gordon Freeman's story from past events, as he attempts to bring down the Combine Empire. While meeting old and new faces along the way!
Halflife 2 and its episodes cross a production gap of 4 years, while each game is close to a masterpiece; you have to be forgiving for their graphics. The earliest game; Halflife 2, contains pretty average graphics. It's clearly the port from the Xbox version that graced the original Xbox. That being said, the graphics do improve a lot of over the original Xbox version. The main issue is just low resolution textures, close up views of anything are generally blurry or pixeley. Animations holds up very well still, facial animations are still much better than recent games. The graphics gain a huge difference in quality as you reach Episodes 1 and 2. By the end, you'll be very happy about the graphics quality. The game utilises probably the best physics engine around, but besides being pretty this is, one of the core aspects of Halflife 2's gameplay.
Fear not, gameplay over graphics right? Gameplay in Halflife 2 is fantastic, besides being a great shooter with most things perfectly balanced. Physics takes as much of a part as shootouts, all thanks to a wonderful weapon you acquire early on; The Gravity gun. Basically this gun is used to pick up heavy or light objects and throw them around. This weapon can be very powerful, but it's also the main source for the games puzzles. While the puzzles aren't entirely revolutionary, it's fun to move things around as the physics are just so pleasing. Because of the reliance on Physics puzzles, they can become a little bit repetitive by the end of Episode 2.
Guns and shooting still takes the major role in the Halflife 2 games, you still have access to many weapons such as your handguns, machine guns, and rocket launchers. These are all evenly balanced and is pleasing to have alternative firing methods. For many weapons that adds a lot more strategy into planning when to use them. Having different areas with different enemies helps prevent repetition occuring. Just when something almost becomes boring, a new enemy will take the old ones place and make it all new and fun.
Portal, a game made by 4 university students, has a new take on puzzles games, first it's a FPS. Secondly, it's fun for people who don't like your basic puzzle games like Tetris. Using Halflife 2's most modern graphics engine, the game looks beautiful but simple, which is not a bad thing. Portal is about finding a way to get from point A to point B. Alas; there are many obstacles in your way. You have the portal gun to help you. Basically you need to make portals to move around. Such as create a portal on the floor next to you, and create one across the room up near a high ledge you cannot reach. Now you can simply jump through the portal and you'll be right where you need to go. Later on in the game, you will have besides neutral obstacles, machine gun turrets that attack you on sight, you will have to either flip them over, or avoid them. And there even may be a few other surprises in there! To make it even better, this game even ties in with Halflife 2 universe story!
Team Fortress 2, has been maybe one of the most long awaited games. And boy is it fun! I believe this will be competing with Halo 3's multiplayer ratings. It's comical inspiration just makes things more fun. With 9 classes to chose from, things becoming boring is not going to happen quickly. Each class is totally unique ranging from snipers to stealth obsessive Spy's! Its graphics style is completely different Halflife 2 and is very pleasing to the eye. Its 6 maps and 15 second respawn times are its only downfall.
With 20+ hours of Single Player content! And countless Multiplayer hours, how can you lose!
9.7/10