The Orange Box

Oct 10, 2007

While the PC audience has been frothing at the mouth for the next chapter in the Half-Life 2 saga, it's safe to say that many console gamers are wondering what they're on about. The Xbox port of Half-Life 2 won GameSpy's Xbox Game of the Year in 2005, but the poor emulation on Xbox 360 has kept many next-gen console owners waiting for The Orange Box to experience the Half-Life 2 saga, let alone the new additions of Portal and Team Fortress 2. It's a gross understatement to say that it's been worth the wait. Now, Xbox 360 owners can gorge themselves on what should amount to nearly 20 or so hours of the most finely-crafted single player action they'll see this year, and countless hours of multiplayer.

Long Live the Free Man!

The first section of The Orange Box focuses on Half-Life 2. HL 2 has seen a major visual facelift since the Xbox version, with greater detail and various updates for HD-generation consoles. The game runs at resolutions up to 1080p and offers a variety of options for whatever your setup may be, including adjustments for gamers who use a PC monitor. While the frame rate isn't necessarily as high as what you'd see on a state-of-the-art PC, most of the time it runs at a fairly smooth 30 frames per second. You'll only see some chugs at certain points, such as during large chain explosions with equally large numbers of characters onscreen.

Without giving away too many spoilers, you'll be taking on the role of scientist Gordon Freeman, who awakens a few decades after the first game's events and finds himself in City 17, a totalitarian urban center run by Dr. Breen, humanity's puppet leader. The real leaders are the Combine, an alien race that has subdued humanity and plundered the Earth. Gordon is immediately welcomed to the resistance effort by other scientists, including Dr. Kleiner and Dr. Eli Vance. Eli's daughter Alyx accompanies you off and on throughout your adventures, and also harbors a crush on Gordon. The action will extend beyond the first game's ending with Episode One, in which you and Alyx will fight to escape City 17. In Episode Two, you'll find yourselves on the outskirts of the city, with a crucial mission on your hands.

The controls are extremely adjustable. Some will find the default look/move mechanics to be a bit slow, but a slider allows for three times the sensitivity. The default controls feel well-mapped to the 360 controller. Your right trigger will serve as your primary attack. The left trigger is the secondary attack. You'll jump with A, reload with B, and use X as your context-sensitive button for using objects or picking them up. Left bumper will let you sprint, which Gordon will need fairly often, but not enough for it to be an ergonomic nuisance. Right bumper allows you to switch weapons. Pretty standard stuff, but well-implemented nonetheless.

It's really within the gameplay and narrative that the Half-Life 2 package in The Orange Box shines. While you'll never feel completely confident that you know everything going on within the storyline, Valve's approach to both narrative and design is quite unique. At times, you'll be presented with a puzzle, and while it might seem a tad confusing, things always seem to fall together after a minute or so of searching. It's a refreshing change from the copy/paste level design of some other shooters, and it helps this series stand out. The narrative itself, while not always lucid, is always compelling, and you'll find that the battles, from the Combine Citadel in the first game, to claustrophobic shootouts in a dark garage in the first episode, to the grand finale of the latest episode, will leave you both exhilarated and in search of compatriots who've shared the same experiences.

What you'll probably notice most, whether you've played through Half-Life 2 and Episode One already or not, is the way that Episode Two manages to elicit that certain dread, in spite of its outdoorsy locale, that you're probably used to feeling in the dark, tight corridors of the other two games. While a sizable chunk of Episode Two will put you out in a rural area, the tensions of visiting abandoned villages are profoundly unsettling, and the change of scenery does a great job merging the vehicular missions found in Half-Life 2 with wide-open spaces seldom found in the other games. Also, in a small touch, by the time you reach the outskirts of City 17, you'll be damned happy about Valve's new gameplay implementation: the flashlight runs separately from the rest of Gordon's HEV suit power supply.

Let Them Eat... Cake

Portal, the next part of The Orange Box, is a fairly different animal. Whereas the Half-Life 2 saga will easily eat around 20 hours of your time, this first-person puzzler will trigger both nerdy bragging and blatant lies about the time taken to breeze through the game. We've heard wildly varying reports of people going from start to credits in less than two hours, while it's taken others five or six. No matter how you cut it, there isn't another game on the market that nails the organized chaos that is Portal, and you'll likely go back for more.

As part of an experiment in the Aperture Science Laboratories, you'll be the endless subject of mockery at the hands of a deadpan narrator, who will alternately praise, mock, and threaten you all in the space of a single puzzle. You'll start out with a basic model portal gun, which will allow you to exit through holes set up by the Aperture training facilities. Eventually, you'll work your way up to an upgrade that allows you full control of both entrance and exit portals. Much in the same way that Half-Life 2's controls feel smooth and well-translated to the Xbox 360 controller, Portal's simplicity of play -- you only need to fire portal openings, jump, and pick up objects -- lends itself well to console play.

You'll likely find that the first 15 puzzles are fairly quick to mow through, but your sense of timing and pre-planning will truly be put to the test during the last few puzzles you'll face. Nothing's hair-pullingly frustrating, but it's certainly no walk in the park, either. By the time you hit testchamber 17, you'll really see how tough the action can get. It becomes more and more about careful timing and foresight. Ultimately, your reward, the hilarious closing credits (complete with awesome music), make it a journey well worth taking. What Portal lacks in length, it more than makes up for in exhilaration.

The Next Evolution of Class Warfare

While the Half-Life 2 games and Portal will take up a decent-sized chunk of time, it's Team Fortress 2 that really ends up stealing the show. While Freeman's adventures are a fine example of great storytelling and craftsmanship, and Portal represents ingenuity and true innovation, it's Valve's new take on class-based multiplayer action that truly seals the deal on this Box and will keep the disc in your drive long after you've beaten the other games.

While other multiplayer shooters on Xbox Live put an emphasis on teamwork and cooperation, your TF2 experience lives (and dies) based on squad mate interaction. You've seen team deathmatches before, but the dynamics and balancing of each character class on this scale are things that've been missing from console shooters.

You've got Soldiers, Scouts and Pyro on offense, Heavies, Demomen and Engineers on defense, and Medics, Snipers and Spies as support classes. That's nine wildly different play styles on one battlefield, each with its own strengths to bring to the table, but also with some weaknesses that teammates will have to balance out. The distinctive art design choices also go a long way in assisting gameplay, as you'll only need a brief glance to know exactly who's coming around the corner or who's shooting at you from across the map.

We felt that our initial games earlier today over Xbox Live exemplified some of the growing pains that people will have when they first pick the game up, from too many Heavy gunners and not enough Medics to keep them alive during a Pyro swarm to teams falling apart because of an overall lopsidedness and a lack of planning. On the other hand, a well-oiled and communicative team will gain lots of victories. It's something that sounds like a no-brainer for nearly any game with online multiplayer, but seldom will you see a title on Xbox Live that forces you to play as a team to the degree that TF2 does.

If we have any complaints, it's that organizing a large match is the only way to play; paltry numbers will drag down the overall experience, as we found during some 3-on-3 sessions. Also, the load times when you're initializing a match can run pretty long. However, we didn't experience any lag or latency issues during the extensive time we played with the small number of gamers who already had copies of The Orange Box, just a few griefers on our team.

You'll also have constant updates. As the game loads, you'll see a progress report that breaks down your favorite character, kill stats, longest time spent alive (and which class), and your overall points scored. During gameplay, as you perform various feats, you'll get a tally of what you've done, post-mortem. If you've managed to beat your previous personal best in backstabbings as the Spy, the game will let you know. If you're a Sniper, you'll know how many headshots you sank on this life versus your best, as well. It's all well structured to not only keep you on your toes, but to remind you how you're progressing in the game. It goes a long way to enhance the experience and encourage you to keep playing.

The idea of six maps out of the box might seem paltry to some, but the levels of depth and design in each of those maps really shows off what Valve has been hard at work on. Replayability is the driving force here. There are sections of each area that feel like they've been custom-designed to play off the best attribute of a certain class. A narrow tunnel will be good for a Scout to navigate, but a carefully placed engineer turret or a Pyro will end those aspirations quickly. If a defending team is attempting to re-capture a point but mysteriously can't, it might be because a Spy is within their ranks, preventing them from gaining it so quickly.

It would be impossible to discuss the myriad ways that The Orange Box works without discussing Valve's implementation of Achievements. The game boasts 99 of them in total, cracking Microsoft's limit of 50, and while some of them are tough --Episode Two boasts some of the roughest of all-- the distribution across all five games is rather broad and fair. You'll rack up a good number of points by simply playing through the titles, and in the case of the Half-Life 2 games, surviving the big battles. Of course, if you want to clear Portal completely, it'll take you more time than your first run-through. TF2 rewards successful performance within your class, as well as playing as many maps as possible, or playing offense and defense exceptionally well. We have nothing but great things to say about Valve's use of Achievements as bonus incentives for enjoying the ride and rewarding all types of gamers for their time invested.

Even though The Orange Box deserves accolades regarding the amount of "bang for your buck," it's really about quality here, not quantity. Aside from the fact that you're receiving five games on one disc, the craftsmanship that has gone into each of these titles rears its head with every Antlion you shoot, every high-velocity portal transfer you make, and every sentry gun you assemble. The amazing part is that these three diverse games are all running on the same engine. We cannot overstate the fact that if you are an Xbox 360 owner, there are few games this year that can match up to what Valve is offering here. It's hard to imagine anyone who buys The Orange Box regretting their purchase for a second.