Developer: Valve | Publisher: EA/Steam | For: 360, PS3, PC
Reviewer: Cian Ginty Ok, so the Orange Box was released at the end of last year on consoles, but we think it’s worth a mention for anybody who has recently bought an PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.
The Orange Box isn’t a game, it’s five games boxed as one – Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and the multiplayer Team Fortress 2. If you’re not a PC gamer, you might have played Half-Life when it got off to a poor console start on PlayStation 2, the game was just about playable compared to the award-winning PC version, but things have changed since then.
Half-Life has been a standard setter since its first PC release in 1998. Half-Life 2 was long delayed but well worth the wait, again getting critical acclaimed. Then, since its launch, games developer Valve switched to a ‘episode’ based releases using their Steam download system – the Orange Box partly acts as catch up for console users.
Half-Life 2, Episode One, and Episode Two are your standard-setting first person shooters. Think highly developed storyline, impressive graphics, and never-ending action mixed in with a range of weapons and enemies, and you’re just about there.
Portal is puzzle game like you never. As with the original Half-Life, you’re our stuck in a weapons research and development. But there’s a twist. It looks like a first person shooter, but the game does not have any guns you can pick up.
Instead you have a portal shooter, getting place-to-place or
disabling
automatic guns requires a bit of thinking. Did we mention the computer
which controls the compound has gone crazy and is trying to kill you?
If you could call Orange Box a game it would be game of the year 2007,
but, since it’s not a game, it is the best every value the games
industry has ever seen.
This article first appeared in the Ballyfermot Post in print and online at ballyer.net.
Comments