Home Games The Orange Box

The Orange Box

First Person Shooter
Released: 10.10.07
Valve Software
EA Games
ESRB: Mature

The Orange Box

Cut the cake.

by Sarah Schutz

At launch we posted the review of Portal alone, since it was the first tasty morsel I picked out of the box. We now return to explore the box as a whole, still rubbing our eyes in disbelief that there is this much gaming goodness in one package. Overall, The Orange Box is (duh) a helluva lotta bang for your buck. The game includes 5 games: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal.

After initially poking around the game, I decide to first explore Portal since I assumed it would be a quaint, mildly amusing puzzle game that I could get out of the way. I was shocked how quickly this game became one of my all-time favorites. Portal is pure bliss. And I am not one to use the word bliss lightly. While the game itself is fairly simple in notion it is wrapped up in cuddly cynicism and happiness. I know that I sound like I am on drugs, but just trust me and play it. You play an older woman android who is stuck within the confines of Aperture Science labs. Only armed with a gun that shoots portals at the walls and at times a friendly companion cube, you must find ways to proceed through varied obstacle courses, traveling through portal to portal. While it seems like this is your basic puzzle game, it is smacked with so much personality that it oozes out your controller. I really can’t tell you much else without ruining the surprise. But there is cake involved.

The best thing about Portal is that it reminds us that there is more to great games than smashing graphics. While Portal does look pretty damn good, that’s not what keeps your focus. It is driven by character, great writing and well thought out gameplay. It’s short enough to leave you wanting more, but not so long to leave you with the sense that it is being obligatorily drawn out. It left me in one afternoon with a smile, which is a great treasure in the days of complex epic games. It is a refreshing break from the norm.

Returning to the central focus of the Orange Box – Half-Life 2 – replaying the game and Episode One on the 360 reminded me what a phenomenon the Half-Life games really are. The story telling in the games takes place around you; you play as Gordon Freeman, but also become Gordon Freeman. There are no cut scenes that tell you how Freeman reacts to a situation or that extend the storyline beyond your own perspective. In order to hear surrounding conversations, you must walk closer. Looking around, you catch snippets of the action around you, but your focus is freely yours to control. You are a free man. Pardon my ridiculous pun, but come on, I had to. The sheer expanse of the game, the intuitive gameplay and the experimentation with physics that really began with Half-Life 2 remind you why you’re a gamer. You are immersed in another world, in another person’s story.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 literally made my jaw drop. I must admit that the first time I played through the original Half-Life 2, the extreme frame of reference and the (then) disturbingly smooth FPS controls and the horrendously long hovercraft level quite literally made me nauseous. After playing Episode 2, I can now see Half-Life 2 as a stepping-stone, as a game revolutionary in its own right. Episode 2 made me a fangirl of the entire series. I wanted to go back to the beginning and again trace the path that leads you to the White Forest. I wanted to relive the first moment Freeman is given the gravity gun. I realized how epic nature of the game and suddenly felt so sheepish for resisting. Episode 2, aside from its eerily beautiful HD forested world, introduces us to the depth of the alien worlds, the characteristics of the race and enemies that you love to hate. The final battle of the game may be my favorite battle in any FPS, taking strategic skill along with technical firepower to succeed. Throughout the game you will fall even more in love with Alyx Vance and not for her skimpy armor (she’s a sweatshirt and jeans girl), but for the role her life plays in this epic story. Episode 3 can’t come fast enough, but until then, I’m going to keep checking off my HL2 achievements just for another reason to play again.

Team Fortress suffers from the same problem that Halo multiplayer faces: if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re very nearly screwed. Competitors are tough and there really isn’t a training ground for you to properly obtain your sea legs. While the game is a lot like other multiplayer competitions, this one has a cheeky twist that makes you smile. You play one of many games (Capture the Flag is my personal fave) as one of many characters. Soldiers, engineers, medics and pyromaniacs are just a few of the classes that can release havoc on the opposing team. In enjoy the Thief, who can sneak to the opposite team’s spy as any class member of their team and non-ceremoniously stab them in the back. Unfortunately most kids on the server know to watch out for this now, so my sneak attacks are now brutally rebuffed by huge firepower. Matches are played on colorful, charming fields and the character design and animation is more amusing to watch than a bunch of red and blue guys running around some rocks (no bias here . . . right). If I have one complaint, it’s that while the game begs for strategic planning by your teammates, if you don’t go in with people you already know it can be tough to create a plan of attack and even tougher for new kids to learn. So go get some Xbox Live friends.

There is really no reason at all for you to not go out and buy your own Orange Box.

The best of the best in one neat little package.

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