THE orange box

T

Thrawn

It Wandered In From the Wastes
Yes, yes, The orange box was finally released. That means Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Half-Life Episode 2 have been released. I have yet to play Half Life but I thought I'd give you guys the skinny on the other two.

First off, TF2 has been discussed quite a bit already so most of you know I like that game alot. It is far less serious than Counter Strike or BF2 so it seems like people get angry much less often.

Steam works great with it, for those of you are are unfamiliar. I log in to steam and see my friend is on a server so I right click on his name and join him in the mayhem.

Team play is pretty good. A smart heavy or solider and a smart medic can do a lot of damage. Two spies can create some devastating havoc. Engineers help everyone.

I like this game alot. I have spent roughly 50 hours in game already so if you par that down to $$ per hour I am basicly breaking even at 1 dollar an hour. How can you complain about that?

Yesterday was the release of Portal. The whole point of the game is that there are two holes, blue and yellow. If you walk in the blue hole you come out of the yellow and vise versa. If you jump off a cliff into the yellow hole you come flying out the blue.

This game is a mind fuck. I am not going to give away any puzzle spoilers but some times you will have to jump in a hole, fall out of the ceiling and into your last hole and shoot yourself across the map. It is a ton of fun.

It also has one of the coolest endings I have ever seen. Just flat out cool.

My two gripes about the game is that it isn't difficult at all and it is EXCEEDINGLY short. I beat it in about 3 hours.

I still need to be HL Episode 1 (I am pretty sure it was included in the orange box) before I even fire up E2. But Portal and TF2 alone are worth shelling out the 50 bucks.

Go, buy, win!
 
well on one side this seems to be a rude rude milking of the cow till its dead dry - because of the high percent of previous assets ...

on the other hand .. it has that gorgeaous Team Fortress .. so i'm gonna shell out the money :roll:
 
I'm probably gonna fall for it too, i'm a big Team Fortress fan from since it was a humble Q1 mod.

Which kinda leads me to the question, how big and active is TF2 community? I'd hate to buy a game which barely anyone plays online.
 
Minor spoilers.

Portal is short and at the end got kinda repetitive: look up, see ledge, search for place to put portal to get on the ledge. Repeat. That goes for the style too, from the polished metallic to industrial.

Maybe I'm just too nit picky. The ending was cool. I wish they'd explain more, though.

Vorts in ep2 are not wrinkly and some sound pretty human, wtf?

t isn't difficult at all
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Bonus maps -> Challenges is your thing, then
 
Fall for what?

Portal + Ep 2 + TF2 is worth $50. At very least all of those are 20 bucks. Don't feel like you are getting suckered.

I haven't played my way through the advanced levels yet.

Repetitive is one thing that I am worried about for the portal game system. How far can you take that mechanic?
 
Thrawn said:
Fall for what?

Portal + Ep 2 + TF2 is worth $50. At very least all of those are 20 bucks. Don't feel like you are getting suckered.
Click to expand...

Not at all, it's just a figure of speech. I'm actually looking forward to my next payday, so i can spend the cash on the goodness.
 
Yes it is and it is pretty good if you ask me...A bit disappointed by Portal though...Cool idea but not difficult enough and TOOO SHOOOORT. Hope there will be additional maps soon ! ( Just in case : do not even consider buying it alone, without TF2 and Episode 2, it's just not worth 20 dollars )
 
It's a great deal for me. I haven't played none of the games on the disc. I only played a demo of HL2 so I shelled out the bucks without even thinking about it.


Oh my God, the ending song in Portal is the coolest, most random, most hilarious ever. The stuff that robot chick says is also really funny.
 
For me, Portal was easily the best thing in the box, and considering what else they put in there that's saying quite a bit. Yes, it was a tad on the easy side (I don't think any of those sentry turrets ever even succeeded in hurting my feelings, despite the frequent staring contests we'd have), but the core mechanic was just so novel, and the majority of the puzzles were just plain fun to solve.

The standout point had to be the game's unimpeachable sense of humor, though. I haven't played something that made me laugh like this since the original Monkey Island, and, as maximaz says, the ending is truly something to be seen.

As to the gripes that've been voiced: you can complain about it being short, and you can complain about it being repetitive, but you can't complain about both. There really is only so much you can do with a concept like this, and they did most all of it. If they had tightened it up, it would've been way too short, not to mention the gags you would've missed out on. If they had extended it, it would've become a reflexive slog. I think they settled on the perfect balance, and really, for a bonus toss-in that started as a college project, it was far better than anyone could've expected.
 
I have played and finished both Portal and Episode Two and I can honestly say that I'm pleasantly surprised by how good both of those games are. Apart from the fact that they are both too short, especially Portal.
 
just finished Portal. it pretty much treats you like an idiot for the first like 18 tests? ugh... too easy.

then the rest isn't that moronically easy, but still way too logical and boring really.

i feel the concept is nice and the end credits were kinda funny, but other than that? too easy, done too quickly and not enough 'sequences' where you have to go from one into the other portal & so on. very underexploited concept.

people tell me the bonus maps are better, so i'll take a look at that, but kinda boring overall.

TF2 on the other hand is a load of fun!
 
Maybe you are much smarter than me. While I think portal was pretty easy, I didn't really feel like it treated me like an idiot.

If you watch the developer comentary you learn alot about why the levels were developed how they were and how the first 14 levels simply train you on how to beat the last 4.

My girlfriend walked in as I was playing through one of the later levels a I tried to explain to her. I walk in the blue and come out the yellow, I walk in the yellow and come out the blue and she didn't get it. (No, she isn't blonde)

Then you do the developer commentary and you learn that they show you specific things. The show you yourself through a portal, the force you to enter a yellow portal so you know you can enter either one. They show you some specific things so you're less confused later on.

What I am hoping we will see is they take the portal system and throw it into a stealth game like theif or Splinter Cell. There is no way you could play a first person shooter with portals without going through the first 14 levels of that game.

ALL THAT BEING SAID. I do agree that TF2 is one of the most fun games I've played in a very long time. I got ubered and puched 5 people to death as a heavy and yelled "You are going to need much BIGGER GUNS!". That has got to be demoralizing to those bastards on the blue team.
 
Loving the orange box.

TFC2 is great.

I particularily love the art direction. You feel like you're part of an interactive Pixar movie that somehow had a bastard child with a Half Life modification. :lol:
 
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