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The Orange Box
Having recently had my age-old laptop die on me, I invested in a shiny new desktop PC, which meant I could actually get my hands on some reasonably 'next-gen' titles since I wasn't able to run anything more taxing than Worms Armageddon on my laptop and I haven't yet been sucked into an Xbox 360 or PS3 (or indeed a Wii) yet.
Anyway, first on my list of titles to get a hold of was Half-Life 2. I was a huge fan of the original Half-Life and also the multiplayer component Team Fortress Classic (and Counter Strike to a lesser extent). So picking up The Orange Box with all the Half-Life 2 content to date as well as Team Fortress 2 and Portal seemed the obvious thing to do.
This probably comes as no surprise as most of you have probably played these games already but they are a triumph. For those who haven't yet experienced Half-Life 2, I would urge you to go out and get it now. But if you require a bit more convincing, here's a low-down on everything The Orange Box contains.
Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2
The main single player component comes in the form of Half-Life 2, and the two currently released episodes which continue the story directly from the end of HL2. You take on the role of Gordon Freeman from the original Half-Life, being inserted into an Earth where a strange alien race known only as the Combine have taken over. You're not spoon-fed any of the storyline, instead the game gives you little snippets of information through other characters talking to you or each other, and the desire for knowledge of what exactly is going on is part of the driving force that will keep you playing until you reach the end. Of course, the other part is that the gameplay is so damn good, and the game feels incredibly well balanced, never feeling unfair but often posing significant challenges and some incredibly memorable set-pieces.
You start off the game being loaded onto a train by the mysterious G-man who made frequent brief appearances in the original, usually shortly before another near-death experience for Gordon. You arrive at City 17, and soon see some rather fascist looking security guards. Pretty soon you're bundled into a room with one of them, and you begin to expect a pretty severe beating, before the guard reveals himself as Barney the security guard from Black Mesa (the research complex where the original took place). He leads you to a hideout of Dr. Kleiner, one of the scientists you may recognise from the original, who gives you your HEV suit (which provides you with the in-game Heads Up Display and a significant level of protection over your fellow human beings) before attempting to teleport you to a human resistance base. Unfortunately this fails, and you end up just outside the lab, with the Combine alerted to your position and with no weapons except a crowbar Barney throws you (another reference to the original game where the crowbar was your only means of defence at the start of the game). This is where it really starts. From here you need to somehow escape the city and make your way to the resistance base, and ultimately help them kick the Combine off of planet Earth.
As you escape the City you'll run into a wide variety of people, from the oppressed civilians living in some pretty squalid conditions, to the Civil Protection teams, humans working with the Combine as a sort of fascist police force, who will be your main foes initially. You'll also run into some old enemies from Black Mesa, the headcrabs make a return as well as the 'zombies' they create when they latch onto a victims head. These seem to be used as a weapon by the Combine, early on you'll see rockets being fired, but rather than explode they just sit in the ground... Until you hear a horrible screech and see a clawed alien crab flying towards your face. Again, this is a plot detail that is never really explained, leaving you to figure things out for yourself the Combine use these headcrabs as weapons against rebellious humans, but are also seen fighting the crabs and zombies, so seemingly they have no control over them and simply use them when necessary. Overwatch troops eventually make an appearance, military humans who have had various Combine enhancements, who will make up the bulk of your enemies later on, and some resistance fighters who will help you along the way with supplies, vehicles and even accompany you, fighting by your side.
Speaking of vehicles, there are a few on offer including a hovercraft and a beach buggy, as well as a 'regular' car in Episode 2. One of the great things about HL2 is that it is so polished. The main game is a First Person Shooter, and indeed everything is viewed from this perspective, but adding vehicles to the mix doesn't pan out to a third person perspective, which would destroy the illusion of 'being' Gordon, but keeps you viewing everything from his eyes and yet the handling feels perfect. Nothing feels like a poorly imagined tacked on extra as is so often the case when a developer thinks Hey, you know what would be cool? A driving section in my FPS!. In fact, it feels a totally natural progression of both the game and story after all you're trying to travel to a far off resistance base and it would be madness to make the whole journey on foot, especially with hostile aliens on the prowl!
And with all those aliens you'll be needing some pretty souped up weaponry to deal with them. The arsenal stays true to the original HL game, with the aforementioned crowbar as your melee weapon, a pretty standard array of basic guns including pistol, shotgun and machine gun (with a secondary grenade launcher option) and laser-guided rocket launcher to take down heavily armoured foes. You also get your hands on a Combine pulse rifle which has a devastating secondary function, firing a highly charged energy ball that 'pinballs' around rooms disintegrating enemy soldiers on contact and once you team up with Alyx, the daughter of Dr. Eli Vance (another old Black Mesa employee), you'll get hold of the gravity gun, essential for many of the small puzzles in the game, and also necessary for moving (and indeed catching and throwing) objects. The gravity gun is one of the most fun weapons as you discover you can pick up explosive barrels and lob them at enemies, catch thrown grenades and toss them back, and even move cars piled up in the road to clear your path. In the Half-Life spirit you can also pick up some organic alien weaponry that sets the scene for one of the best sequences in the game after running from endless giant insects and facing off with the 'queen' you acquire her pheromone sac, meaning her spawn obey your orders, allowing you to take on a full Combine base using a constantly replenishing army of allies, advancing up a heavily fortified beach head like something from a World War II flick (but with alien insectoids rather than privates with rifles) then emerging in the base so your new found friends can feast on the Combine within.
This is just one of many brilliant set pieces. Another sees you trapped within a prison block, beset from all sides by Combine troops, using some reprogrammed turret defences to hold them off as the wave upon wave come at you from all directions. Yet another, in Episode 2, sees similar turrets used to hold off a large number of alien insects from multiple tunnels at once with the help of a couple of increasingly panicky resistance fighters and eventually some kick-ass alien allies. A whole chapter of the original HL2 is dedicated to a town that was used by the resistance, and was heavily bombed with headcrab missiles, making it totally infested now. There is one living resident, a slightly deranged priest who has set numerous traps to fend off the zombies. This chapter is used as a sort of 'horror' Resident Evil style setting and also lets you get to grips with the gravity gun shortly after acquiring it, as there are so many zombies you'll need to be imaginative about ways to conserve ammo, such as using huge saw blades and heavy spikes to see off foes in a pretty gruesome manner. The chapter also introduces you to new varieties of zombies, some are covered in poison headcrabs, throwing them at you from afar, while others are incredibly agile, letting out an enraged screech before leaping towards you, able to clamber up buildings and over rooftops in their quest to kill.
The final chapter of HL2 is absolutely brilliant as well, taking away all your regular arsenal as you infiltrate the Combine HQ I won't spoil things for you but suffice to say you obtain a new and incredibly satisfying way to see off enemies, although it does make things somewhat easy. The finale of Episode 2 is also great, as you have to fend off an army of Striders, huge organic alien tripod-like enemies with spiked legs and powerful guns. There's even some pretty comedic moments, largely due to Dr. Kleiner's 'pet' headcrab, which has been de-clawed but still constantly tries to 'copulate' with unsuspecting humans heads, and also due to Alyx's 'pet' robot, named Dog. You also actually care about your companions, particularly Alyx who, unlike many AI controlled accomplices, is useful to have in a fire fight and seems pretty human to boot (although it's glaringly obvious to everyone around that she has a thing for Gordon). It also helps that the characters are all well animated, and graphically look very good with expressive faces and voice acting that is way above par for videogames.
My one qualm with HL2, and indeed Episode 1 and 2, is that they are quite short. In fact, ignore that. They aren't really short at all, HL2 coming in at 15 hours or so while each of Episode 1 and 2 are about 5 hours. But I just seem to remember the original Half-Life being massive, far longer than HL2 was maybe my memory is playing up and really it's no longer at all, and playing HL2 has inspired me to go back to the original after all these years to remember where it started so maybe I'll find out shortly. However, saying I want more of HL2 is really no criticism at all. What I will say is that I want to know more of the plot. I'll try not to give too much away, but at the end of HL2 and at various points in the Episodes, you'll see the mysterious G-man who will speak to you in a suitably cryptic manner, but by the end of Episode 2 you have been given some tantalising tid-bits which are cut short. I just hope Episode 3, whenever it comes out, brings it to some satisfactory conclusion and we're not stuck in a 'Lost' style cycle where nothing is ever explained properly (and you're not even given sufficient information to make an educated assumption).
Overall, an excellent bundle that will compel you to keep playing until you've reached the end, at which point you'll be searching high and low on the internet for rumours of Episode 3.
Portal
Next in our bundle is Portal. This is a game which is set in the Half-Life universe, although it doesn't really fill in any gaps in terms of story, and you can't even be sure when it is set (having said this it's quite possible Episode 3 will tie up somehow with the events from Portal Epsiode 2 makes a number of references to Aperture Science).
You play as a test subject in an Aperture Science laboratory, and after waking from a pod are introduced to the concept of a portal. Instead of the door opening in your 'cell' (consisting of a sleep pod, toilet and radio playing annoying music), a portal appears. Looking through this portal you can see yourself. And when you step through you emerge outside your cell but looking back at it from another angle. This takes a while to get your head round. You are constantly guided through the game by a female computerised voice, giving helpful, if somewhat sarcastic, advice. Initially the puzzles just consist of walking through pre-placed portals to help you get your head around the game mechanic, but soon you get hold of a portal shooting device, allowing you to place one end of the portal (the blue coloured end) on a wall, floor or ceiling. The other end (the orange) is still static for each room. The portals can be traversed in either direction, so you can walk through the blue end and emerge in the orange or vice versa, and there can only ever be one blue portal and one orange portal. This means when you have control of just the blue end, you'll often be placing a blue portal nearby to get to the orange portal, then firing towards where you really want to be to place a blue portal there, and walking back through the orange end. Pretty soon you'll also nab the orange end of the gun and you can place both ends and this is where things start to get more interesting. More and more elements are introduced, such as boxes you need to carry to pressure sensitive buttons to keep doors open, and energy balls that need to be used to power-up devices. These energy balls are another element from the Half-Life universe, and they are damaging to the player and bounce off walls, often meaning you need to open a portal where they will bounce and where you want them to exit so you can get the ball into the correct device.
Essentially the game consists of 19 'lab' levels, where you are coached by your computerised guide and slowly introduced to more and more concepts and danger, including toxic sludge on the floor and amusingly polite automated turrets. These all serve as fun puzzles and there are quite a few moments where you just grin to yourself at how cool something was, such as when you encounter your first puzzle requiring you to use the 'momentum in = momentum out' principle of the portals, thus allowing yourself to 'slingshot' yourself long distances by jumping into another portal from a great height. Luckily the player has been fitted with some nifty shock absorbers, meaning no matter how far you fall you never take any damage. You also recover any damage taken after a short period, meaning if you duck into some cover after a turret shoots at you, you'll recover, and it also negates the need for the additional clutter of a health bar. The presence of turrets may indicate some elements of a shooter here, but it's not really the case. The turrets are a puzzle element in themselves you need to devise how you're going to get past them or knock them over without getting killed, and there are no 'real' guns to use, just your portal device, and the ability to pick up small objects.
After some time you'll begin to notice more and more messages scrawled on walls indicating that The Cake is a LIE, making reference to the promised cake and party that GLaDOS (the computerised voice you hear throughout) promises as a reward if you complete all 19 puzzles. It comes as no surprise then that the cake and party don't emerge and in fact something more sinister awaits as you finish the final puzzle suffice to say the game isn't over quite yet, and GLaDOS gets more and more irate from this point, which is often hilarious. Your reward when you finally complete the game is yet more hilarity in the form of GLaDOS singing you a song in her computerised, sarcastic manner.
Portal is a mind-bending, brilliant puzzler which essentially defies normal puzzle game convention by both being set in a 'real world' setting rather than abstract realms (like Tetris, etc) and also by being viewed from a first person perspective. It is however short, it will only take about 3 hours to play through, although you then have some 'Advanced' levels and other challenges you can try your hand at.
Team Fortress 2
The online component of the Orange Box is the sequel to Team Fortress Classic. It's a multiplayer game where you play on two teams ('Red' or 'Blu') and can choose to play as 9 different classes, each with their own skills suited to different situations. It is really very similar to Team Fortress Classic, but that's fine really because it's a winning formula. Every class has a distinct set of weapons and attributes, whether it's the Scout who can run fast and double jump, but has little health and no heavy weapons, or the all round Soldier sporting a rocket launcher, or the maxed out health of the Heavy, carrying a massive chain gun. Each have their place and you'll need a good mix of classes to win a game Spies can disguise and cloak themselves as well as sapping enemy structures, so they become the arch nemesis of Engineers who build automated sentry guns, health and ammo dispensers, and teleportation devices. Medics are handy to to pair up with Heavies to keep them constantly healthy and absorbing big chunks of enemy fire, while Snipers take out the foes from afar by aiming for the head, and Pyros get up close and personal sowing mass confusion and panic as they set everyone alight and running for the nearest pool of water.
Using this team dynamic as a basis, Team Fortress 2 gives a wide range of game modes. There's capture the flag (or in this case, it's a briefcase with intelligence), where each team has an identical base and you can either defend your own base and flag or charge into the enemies all guns blazing to grab their case and leg it back home. Then there are various attack / defend game modes, sometimes with a number of capture points one team will be defending while the other attacks, with the ultimate aim of capturing the enemy base, other times the attacking team will have to stay close to a cart of explosives to keep it heading towards the enemy base, at which point it will explode. There's arena mode where you get a single life per round and each team either needs to eliminate all opposition or capture a central control point, at which point the next round begins. Then there's king of the hill with a single capture point requiring each team to hold it for a given time frame to claim victory.
TF2 has the edge over it's predecessor due to a number of enhancements. First there are Steam Achievements to be unlocked, and these open up additional weaponry for you. This weaponry isn't necessarily better or worse than the equipment you hold initially, just different. For example, a new pistol for your spy to carry means you cause critical damage on headshots, but also means regular damage is lessened. A bow and arrow for the sniper means more damage, but you lose the zoom of your rifle and you have to take into account that the arrow flies in an arc (ie. you often have to aim slightly above your target). A new flame-thrower causes less damage, but causes critical damage when you hit an enemy from behind. It's this sort of thing that allows you to customise each class to the requirements of the level and your personal preference, although it does take some time to unlock a lot of the upgrades meaning you'll have to do with 'the basics' for quite some time.
Although I really enjoy TF2, if you're not a fan of online gaming or you dislike being 'pwn3d' by irritating 13 year olds who spend all their time playing online shooters, this isn't going to change your mind. But because of the emphasis on teamwork, it does mean you can try to stick close to some of your team mates and hopefully you'll have more chance of staying alive and aiding in killing a few of the opposition, so it's perhaps a better place to start than all out deathmatch games. So if you like the thrill of playing against other human players and enjoy a bit of team based destruction, this is really the game for you.
Overall
Overall, the Orange Box is a great little bundle, but you should note you need Steam to run the games this means you will need an internet connection to 'register' the games, as well as sporadically to play them (you can start Steam in an offline mode, although occasionally it seems to refuse, forcing you to start in online mode even to play an offline game). It's also a bit strange that the retail version of the Orange Box seemed to require me to download various parts of most of the games after installation I could play HL2 immediately, but Episode 1 and 2 were marked as 'downloading', which seems to hint to me that the DVD discs in the physical release don't actually contain the games (or not all of them), meaning if you want to delve straight into Ep1 or 2 you might be left frustrated. TF2 also requires downloading, but that is expected being an online game they release regular updates, so initially you need to update to the latest version before you can play. Disregarding these very minor problems, the Orange Box is, as stated before, a real triumph of gaming, and it can be picked up for a steal from many retailers for only about £15. So if you still haven't played it, get hold of it now!
Having recently had my age-old laptop die on me, I invested in a shiny new desktop PC, which meant I could actually get my hands on some reasonably 'next-gen' titles since I wasn't able to run anything more taxing than Worms Armageddon on my laptop and I haven't yet been sucked into an Xbox 360 or PS3 (or indeed a Wii) yet.
Anyway, first on my list of titles to get a hold of was Half-Life 2. I was a huge fan of the original Half-Life and also the multiplayer component Team Fortress Classic (and Counter Strike to a lesser extent). So picking up The Orange Box with all the Half-Life 2 content to date as well as Team Fortress 2 and Portal seemed the obvious thing to do.
This probably comes as no surprise as most of you have probably played these games already but they are a triumph. For those who haven't yet experienced Half-Life 2, I would urge you to go out and get it now. But if you require a bit more convincing, here's a low-down on everything The Orange Box contains.
Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2
The main single player component comes in the form of Half-Life 2, and the two currently released episodes which continue the story directly from the end of HL2. You take on the role of Gordon Freeman from the original Half-Life, being inserted into an Earth where a strange alien race known only as the Combine have taken over. You're not spoon-fed any of the storyline, instead the game gives you little snippets of information through other characters talking to you or each other, and the desire for knowledge of what exactly is going on is part of the driving force that will keep you playing until you reach the end. Of course, the other part is that the gameplay is so damn good, and the game feels incredibly well balanced, never feeling unfair but often posing significant challenges and some incredibly memorable set-pieces.
You start off the game being loaded onto a train by the mysterious G-man who made frequent brief appearances in the original, usually shortly before another near-death experience for Gordon. You arrive at City 17, and soon see some rather fascist looking security guards. Pretty soon you're bundled into a room with one of them, and you begin to expect a pretty severe beating, before the guard reveals himself as Barney the security guard from Black Mesa (the research complex where the original took place). He leads you to a hideout of Dr. Kleiner, one of the scientists you may recognise from the original, who gives you your HEV suit (which provides you with the in-game Heads Up Display and a significant level of protection over your fellow human beings) before attempting to teleport you to a human resistance base. Unfortunately this fails, and you end up just outside the lab, with the Combine alerted to your position and with no weapons except a crowbar Barney throws you (another reference to the original game where the crowbar was your only means of defence at the start of the game). This is where it really starts. From here you need to somehow escape the city and make your way to the resistance base, and ultimately help them kick the Combine off of planet Earth.
As you escape the City you'll run into a wide variety of people, from the oppressed civilians living in some pretty squalid conditions, to the Civil Protection teams, humans working with the Combine as a sort of fascist police force, who will be your main foes initially. You'll also run into some old enemies from Black Mesa, the headcrabs make a return as well as the 'zombies' they create when they latch onto a victims head. These seem to be used as a weapon by the Combine, early on you'll see rockets being fired, but rather than explode they just sit in the ground... Until you hear a horrible screech and see a clawed alien crab flying towards your face. Again, this is a plot detail that is never really explained, leaving you to figure things out for yourself the Combine use these headcrabs as weapons against rebellious humans, but are also seen fighting the crabs and zombies, so seemingly they have no control over them and simply use them when necessary. Overwatch troops eventually make an appearance, military humans who have had various Combine enhancements, who will make up the bulk of your enemies later on, and some resistance fighters who will help you along the way with supplies, vehicles and even accompany you, fighting by your side.
Speaking of vehicles, there are a few on offer including a hovercraft and a beach buggy, as well as a 'regular' car in Episode 2. One of the great things about HL2 is that it is so polished. The main game is a First Person Shooter, and indeed everything is viewed from this perspective, but adding vehicles to the mix doesn't pan out to a third person perspective, which would destroy the illusion of 'being' Gordon, but keeps you viewing everything from his eyes and yet the handling feels perfect. Nothing feels like a poorly imagined tacked on extra as is so often the case when a developer thinks Hey, you know what would be cool? A driving section in my FPS!. In fact, it feels a totally natural progression of both the game and story after all you're trying to travel to a far off resistance base and it would be madness to make the whole journey on foot, especially with hostile aliens on the prowl!
And with all those aliens you'll be needing some pretty souped up weaponry to deal with them. The arsenal stays true to the original HL game, with the aforementioned crowbar as your melee weapon, a pretty standard array of basic guns including pistol, shotgun and machine gun (with a secondary grenade launcher option) and laser-guided rocket launcher to take down heavily armoured foes. You also get your hands on a Combine pulse rifle which has a devastating secondary function, firing a highly charged energy ball that 'pinballs' around rooms disintegrating enemy soldiers on contact and once you team up with Alyx, the daughter of Dr. Eli Vance (another old Black Mesa employee), you'll get hold of the gravity gun, essential for many of the small puzzles in the game, and also necessary for moving (and indeed catching and throwing) objects. The gravity gun is one of the most fun weapons as you discover you can pick up explosive barrels and lob them at enemies, catch thrown grenades and toss them back, and even move cars piled up in the road to clear your path. In the Half-Life spirit you can also pick up some organic alien weaponry that sets the scene for one of the best sequences in the game after running from endless giant insects and facing off with the 'queen' you acquire her pheromone sac, meaning her spawn obey your orders, allowing you to take on a full Combine base using a constantly replenishing army of allies, advancing up a heavily fortified beach head like something from a World War II flick (but with alien insectoids rather than privates with rifles) then emerging in the base so your new found friends can feast on the Combine within.
This is just one of many brilliant set pieces. Another sees you trapped within a prison block, beset from all sides by Combine troops, using some reprogrammed turret defences to hold them off as the wave upon wave come at you from all directions. Yet another, in Episode 2, sees similar turrets used to hold off a large number of alien insects from multiple tunnels at once with the help of a couple of increasingly panicky resistance fighters and eventually some kick-ass alien allies. A whole chapter of the original HL2 is dedicated to a town that was used by the resistance, and was heavily bombed with headcrab missiles, making it totally infested now. There is one living resident, a slightly deranged priest who has set numerous traps to fend off the zombies. This chapter is used as a sort of 'horror' Resident Evil style setting and also lets you get to grips with the gravity gun shortly after acquiring it, as there are so many zombies you'll need to be imaginative about ways to conserve ammo, such as using huge saw blades and heavy spikes to see off foes in a pretty gruesome manner. The chapter also introduces you to new varieties of zombies, some are covered in poison headcrabs, throwing them at you from afar, while others are incredibly agile, letting out an enraged screech before leaping towards you, able to clamber up buildings and over rooftops in their quest to kill.
The final chapter of HL2 is absolutely brilliant as well, taking away all your regular arsenal as you infiltrate the Combine HQ I won't spoil things for you but suffice to say you obtain a new and incredibly satisfying way to see off enemies, although it does make things somewhat easy. The finale of Episode 2 is also great, as you have to fend off an army of Striders, huge organic alien tripod-like enemies with spiked legs and powerful guns. There's even some pretty comedic moments, largely due to Dr. Kleiner's 'pet' headcrab, which has been de-clawed but still constantly tries to 'copulate' with unsuspecting humans heads, and also due to Alyx's 'pet' robot, named Dog. You also actually care about your companions, particularly Alyx who, unlike many AI controlled accomplices, is useful to have in a fire fight and seems pretty human to boot (although it's glaringly obvious to everyone around that she has a thing for Gordon). It also helps that the characters are all well animated, and graphically look very good with expressive faces and voice acting that is way above par for videogames.
My one qualm with HL2, and indeed Episode 1 and 2, is that they are quite short. In fact, ignore that. They aren't really short at all, HL2 coming in at 15 hours or so while each of Episode 1 and 2 are about 5 hours. But I just seem to remember the original Half-Life being massive, far longer than HL2 was maybe my memory is playing up and really it's no longer at all, and playing HL2 has inspired me to go back to the original after all these years to remember where it started so maybe I'll find out shortly. However, saying I want more of HL2 is really no criticism at all. What I will say is that I want to know more of the plot. I'll try not to give too much away, but at the end of HL2 and at various points in the Episodes, you'll see the mysterious G-man who will speak to you in a suitably cryptic manner, but by the end of Episode 2 you have been given some tantalising tid-bits which are cut short. I just hope Episode 3, whenever it comes out, brings it to some satisfactory conclusion and we're not stuck in a 'Lost' style cycle where nothing is ever explained properly (and you're not even given sufficient information to make an educated assumption).
Overall, an excellent bundle that will compel you to keep playing until you've reached the end, at which point you'll be searching high and low on the internet for rumours of Episode 3.
Portal
Next in our bundle is Portal. This is a game which is set in the Half-Life universe, although it doesn't really fill in any gaps in terms of story, and you can't even be sure when it is set (having said this it's quite possible Episode 3 will tie up somehow with the events from Portal Epsiode 2 makes a number of references to Aperture Science).
You play as a test subject in an Aperture Science laboratory, and after waking from a pod are introduced to the concept of a portal. Instead of the door opening in your 'cell' (consisting of a sleep pod, toilet and radio playing annoying music), a portal appears. Looking through this portal you can see yourself. And when you step through you emerge outside your cell but looking back at it from another angle. This takes a while to get your head round. You are constantly guided through the game by a female computerised voice, giving helpful, if somewhat sarcastic, advice. Initially the puzzles just consist of walking through pre-placed portals to help you get your head around the game mechanic, but soon you get hold of a portal shooting device, allowing you to place one end of the portal (the blue coloured end) on a wall, floor or ceiling. The other end (the orange) is still static for each room. The portals can be traversed in either direction, so you can walk through the blue end and emerge in the orange or vice versa, and there can only ever be one blue portal and one orange portal. This means when you have control of just the blue end, you'll often be placing a blue portal nearby to get to the orange portal, then firing towards where you really want to be to place a blue portal there, and walking back through the orange end. Pretty soon you'll also nab the orange end of the gun and you can place both ends and this is where things start to get more interesting. More and more elements are introduced, such as boxes you need to carry to pressure sensitive buttons to keep doors open, and energy balls that need to be used to power-up devices. These energy balls are another element from the Half-Life universe, and they are damaging to the player and bounce off walls, often meaning you need to open a portal where they will bounce and where you want them to exit so you can get the ball into the correct device.
Essentially the game consists of 19 'lab' levels, where you are coached by your computerised guide and slowly introduced to more and more concepts and danger, including toxic sludge on the floor and amusingly polite automated turrets. These all serve as fun puzzles and there are quite a few moments where you just grin to yourself at how cool something was, such as when you encounter your first puzzle requiring you to use the 'momentum in = momentum out' principle of the portals, thus allowing yourself to 'slingshot' yourself long distances by jumping into another portal from a great height. Luckily the player has been fitted with some nifty shock absorbers, meaning no matter how far you fall you never take any damage. You also recover any damage taken after a short period, meaning if you duck into some cover after a turret shoots at you, you'll recover, and it also negates the need for the additional clutter of a health bar. The presence of turrets may indicate some elements of a shooter here, but it's not really the case. The turrets are a puzzle element in themselves you need to devise how you're going to get past them or knock them over without getting killed, and there are no 'real' guns to use, just your portal device, and the ability to pick up small objects.
After some time you'll begin to notice more and more messages scrawled on walls indicating that The Cake is a LIE, making reference to the promised cake and party that GLaDOS (the computerised voice you hear throughout) promises as a reward if you complete all 19 puzzles. It comes as no surprise then that the cake and party don't emerge and in fact something more sinister awaits as you finish the final puzzle suffice to say the game isn't over quite yet, and GLaDOS gets more and more irate from this point, which is often hilarious. Your reward when you finally complete the game is yet more hilarity in the form of GLaDOS singing you a song in her computerised, sarcastic manner.
Portal is a mind-bending, brilliant puzzler which essentially defies normal puzzle game convention by both being set in a 'real world' setting rather than abstract realms (like Tetris, etc) and also by being viewed from a first person perspective. It is however short, it will only take about 3 hours to play through, although you then have some 'Advanced' levels and other challenges you can try your hand at.
Team Fortress 2
The online component of the Orange Box is the sequel to Team Fortress Classic. It's a multiplayer game where you play on two teams ('Red' or 'Blu') and can choose to play as 9 different classes, each with their own skills suited to different situations. It is really very similar to Team Fortress Classic, but that's fine really because it's a winning formula. Every class has a distinct set of weapons and attributes, whether it's the Scout who can run fast and double jump, but has little health and no heavy weapons, or the all round Soldier sporting a rocket launcher, or the maxed out health of the Heavy, carrying a massive chain gun. Each have their place and you'll need a good mix of classes to win a game Spies can disguise and cloak themselves as well as sapping enemy structures, so they become the arch nemesis of Engineers who build automated sentry guns, health and ammo dispensers, and teleportation devices. Medics are handy to to pair up with Heavies to keep them constantly healthy and absorbing big chunks of enemy fire, while Snipers take out the foes from afar by aiming for the head, and Pyros get up close and personal sowing mass confusion and panic as they set everyone alight and running for the nearest pool of water.
Using this team dynamic as a basis, Team Fortress 2 gives a wide range of game modes. There's capture the flag (or in this case, it's a briefcase with intelligence), where each team has an identical base and you can either defend your own base and flag or charge into the enemies all guns blazing to grab their case and leg it back home. Then there are various attack / defend game modes, sometimes with a number of capture points one team will be defending while the other attacks, with the ultimate aim of capturing the enemy base, other times the attacking team will have to stay close to a cart of explosives to keep it heading towards the enemy base, at which point it will explode. There's arena mode where you get a single life per round and each team either needs to eliminate all opposition or capture a central control point, at which point the next round begins. Then there's king of the hill with a single capture point requiring each team to hold it for a given time frame to claim victory.
TF2 has the edge over it's predecessor due to a number of enhancements. First there are Steam Achievements to be unlocked, and these open up additional weaponry for you. This weaponry isn't necessarily better or worse than the equipment you hold initially, just different. For example, a new pistol for your spy to carry means you cause critical damage on headshots, but also means regular damage is lessened. A bow and arrow for the sniper means more damage, but you lose the zoom of your rifle and you have to take into account that the arrow flies in an arc (ie. you often have to aim slightly above your target). A new flame-thrower causes less damage, but causes critical damage when you hit an enemy from behind. It's this sort of thing that allows you to customise each class to the requirements of the level and your personal preference, although it does take some time to unlock a lot of the upgrades meaning you'll have to do with 'the basics' for quite some time.
Although I really enjoy TF2, if you're not a fan of online gaming or you dislike being 'pwn3d' by irritating 13 year olds who spend all their time playing online shooters, this isn't going to change your mind. But because of the emphasis on teamwork, it does mean you can try to stick close to some of your team mates and hopefully you'll have more chance of staying alive and aiding in killing a few of the opposition, so it's perhaps a better place to start than all out deathmatch games. So if you like the thrill of playing against other human players and enjoy a bit of team based destruction, this is really the game for you.
Overall
Overall, the Orange Box is a great little bundle, but you should note you need Steam to run the games this means you will need an internet connection to 'register' the games, as well as sporadically to play them (you can start Steam in an offline mode, although occasionally it seems to refuse, forcing you to start in online mode even to play an offline game). It's also a bit strange that the retail version of the Orange Box seemed to require me to download various parts of most of the games after installation I could play HL2 immediately, but Episode 1 and 2 were marked as 'downloading', which seems to hint to me that the DVD discs in the physical release don't actually contain the games (or not all of them), meaning if you want to delve straight into Ep1 or 2 you might be left frustrated. TF2 also requires downloading, but that is expected being an online game they release regular updates, so initially you need to update to the latest version before you can play. Disregarding these very minor problems, the Orange Box is, as stated before, a real triumph of gaming, and it can be picked up for a steal from many retailers for only about £15. So if you still haven't played it, get hold of it now!
Now that's thorough! Nice review/s! :)
The Orange Box
Having recently had my age-old laptop die on me, I invested in a shiny new desktop PC, which meant I could actually get my hands on some reasonably 'next-gen' titles since I wasn't able to run anything more taxing than Worms Armageddon on my laptop and I haven't yet been sucked into an Xbox 360 or PS3 (or indeed a Wii) yet.
Anyway, first on my list of titles to get a hold of was Half-Life 2. I was a huge fan of the original Half-Life and also the multiplayer component Team Fortress Classic (and Counter Strike to a lesser extent). So picking up The Orange Box with all the Half-Life 2 content to date as well as Team Fortress 2 and Portal seemed the obvious thing to do.
This probably comes as no surprise as most of you have probably played these games already but they are a triumph. For those who haven't yet experienced Half-Life 2, I would urge you to go out and get it now. But if you require a bit more convincing, here's a low-down on everything The Orange Box contains.
Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2
The main single player component comes in the form of Half-Life 2, and the two currently released episodes which continue the story directly from the end of HL2. You take on the role of Gordon Freeman from the original Half-Life, being inserted into an Earth where a strange alien race known only as the Combine have taken over. You're not spoon-fed any of the storyline, instead the game gives you little snippets of information through other characters talking to you or each other, and the desire for knowledge of what exactly is going on is part of the driving force that will keep you playing until you reach the end. Of course, the other part is that the gameplay is so damn good, and the game feels incredibly well balanced, never feeling unfair but often posing significant challenges and some incredibly memorable set-pieces.
You start off the game being loaded onto a train by the mysterious G-man who made frequent brief appearances in the original, usually shortly before another near-death experience for Gordon. You arrive at City 17, and soon see some rather fascist looking security guards. Pretty soon you're bundled into a room with one of them, and you begin to expect a pretty severe beating, before the guard reveals himself as Barney the security guard from Black Mesa (the research complex where the original took place). He leads you to a hideout of Dr. Kleiner, one of the scientists you may recognise from the original, who gives you your HEV suit (which provides you with the in-game Heads Up Display and a significant level of protection over your fellow human beings) before attempting to teleport you to a human resistance base. Unfortunately this fails, and you end up just outside the lab, with the Combine alerted to your position and with no weapons except a crowbar Barney throws you (another reference to the original game where the crowbar was your only means of defence at the start of the game). This is where it really starts. From here you need to somehow escape the city and make your way to the resistance base, and ultimately help them kick the Combine off of planet Earth.
As you escape the City you'll run into a wide variety of people, from the oppressed civilians living in some pretty squalid conditions, to the Civil Protection teams, humans working with the Combine as a sort of fascist police force, who will be your main foes initially. You'll also run into some old enemies from Black Mesa, the headcrabs make a return as well as the 'zombies' they create when they latch onto a victims head. These seem to be used as a weapon by the Combine, early on you'll see rockets being fired, but rather than explode they just sit in the ground... Until you hear a horrible screech and see a clawed alien crab flying towards your face. Again, this is a plot detail that is never really explained, leaving you to figure things out for yourself the Combine use these headcrabs as weapons against rebellious humans, but are also seen fighting the crabs and zombies, so seemingly they have no control over them and simply use them when necessary. Overwatch troops eventually make an appearance, military humans who have had various Combine enhancements, who will make up the bulk of your enemies later on, and some resistance fighters who will help you along the way with supplies, vehicles and even accompany you, fighting by your side.
Speaking of vehicles, there are a few on offer including a hovercraft and a beach buggy, as well as a 'regular' car in Episode 2. One of the great things about HL2 is that it is so polished. The main game is a First Person Shooter, and indeed everything is viewed from this perspective, but adding vehicles to the mix doesn't pan out to a third person perspective, which would destroy the illusion of 'being' Gordon, but keeps you viewing everything from his eyes and yet the handling feels perfect. Nothing feels like a poorly imagined tacked on extra as is so often the case when a developer thinks Hey, you know what would be cool? A driving section in my FPS!. In fact, it feels a totally natural progression of both the game and story after all you're trying to travel to a far off resistance base and it would be madness to make the whole journey on foot, especially with hostile aliens on the prowl!
And with all those aliens you'll be needing some pretty souped up weaponry to deal with them. The arsenal stays true to the original HL game, with the aforementioned crowbar as your melee weapon, a pretty standard array of basic guns including pistol, shotgun and machine gun (with a secondary grenade launcher option) and laser-guided rocket launcher to take down heavily armoured foes. You also get your hands on a Combine pulse rifle which has a devastating secondary function, firing a highly charged energy ball that 'pinballs' around rooms disintegrating enemy soldiers on contact and once you team up with Alyx, the daughter of Dr. Eli Vance (another old Black Mesa employee), you'll get hold of the gravity gun, essential for many of the small puzzles in the game, and also necessary for moving (and indeed catching and throwing) objects. The gravity gun is one of the most fun weapons as you discover you can pick up explosive barrels and lob them at enemies, catch thrown grenades and toss them back, and even move cars piled up in the road to clear your path. In the Half-Life spirit you can also pick up some organic alien weaponry that sets the scene for one of the best sequences in the game after running from endless giant insects and facing off with the 'queen' you acquire her pheromone sac, meaning her spawn obey your orders, allowing you to take on a full Combine base using a constantly replenishing army of allies, advancing up a heavily fortified beach head like something from a World War II flick (but with alien insectoids rather than privates with rifles) then emerging in the base so your new found friends can feast on the Combine within.
This is just one of many brilliant set pieces. Another sees you trapped within a prison block, beset from all sides by Combine troops, using some reprogrammed turret defences to hold them off as the wave upon wave come at you from all directions. Yet another, in Episode 2, sees similar turrets used to hold off a large number of alien insects from multiple tunnels at once with the help of a couple of increasingly panicky resistance fighters and eventually some kick-ass alien allies. A whole chapter of the original HL2 is dedicated to a town that was used by the resistance, and was heavily bombed with headcrab missiles, making it totally infested now. There is one living resident, a slightly deranged priest who has set numerous traps to fend off the zombies. This chapter is used as a sort of 'horror' Resident Evil style setting and also lets you get to grips with the gravity gun shortly after acquiring it, as there are so many zombies you'll need to be imaginative about ways to conserve ammo, such as using huge saw blades and heavy spikes to see off foes in a pretty gruesome manner. The chapter also introduces you to new varieties of zombies, some are covered in poison headcrabs, throwing them at you from afar, while others are incredibly agile, letting out an enraged screech before leaping towards you, able to clamber up buildings and over rooftops in their quest to kill.
The final chapter of HL2 is absolutely brilliant as well, taking away all your regular arsenal as you infiltrate the Combine HQ I won't spoil things for you but suffice to say you obtain a new and incredibly satisfying way to see off enemies, although it does make things somewhat easy. The finale of Episode 2 is also great, as you have to fend off an army of Striders, huge organic alien tripod-like enemies with spiked legs and powerful guns. There's even some pretty comedic moments, largely due to Dr. Kleiner's 'pet' headcrab, which has been de-clawed but still constantly tries to 'copulate' with unsuspecting humans heads, and also due to Alyx's 'pet' robot, named Dog. You also actually care about your companions, particularly Alyx who, unlike many AI controlled accomplices, is useful to have in a fire fight and seems pretty human to boot (although it's glaringly obvious to everyone around that she has a thing for Gordon). It also helps that the characters are all well animated, and graphically look very good with expressive faces and voice acting that is way above par for videogames.
My one qualm with HL2, and indeed Episode 1 and 2, is that they are quite short. In fact, ignore that. They aren't really short at all, HL2 coming in at 15 hours or so while each of Episode 1 and 2 are about 5 hours. But I just seem to remember the original Half-Life being massive, far longer than HL2 was maybe my memory is playing up and really it's no longer at all, and playing HL2 has inspired me to go back to the original after all these years to remember where it started so maybe I'll find out shortly. However, saying I want more of HL2 is really no criticism at all. What I will say is that I want to know more of the plot. I'll try not to give too much away, but at the end of HL2 and at various points in the Episodes, you'll see the mysterious G-man who will speak to you in a suitably cryptic manner, but by the end of Episode 2 you have been given some tantalising tid-bits which are cut short. I just hope Episode 3, whenever it comes out, brings it to some satisfactory conclusion and we're not stuck in a 'Lost' style cycle where nothing is ever explained properly (and you're not even given sufficient information to make an educated assumption).
Overall, an excellent bundle that will compel you to keep playing until you've reached the end, at which point you'll be searching high and low on the internet for rumours of Episode 3.
Portal
Next in our bundle is Portal. This is a game which is set in the Half-Life universe, although it doesn't really fill in any gaps in terms of story, and you can't even be sure when it is set (having said this it's quite possible Episode 3 will tie up somehow with the events from Portal Epsiode 2 makes a number of references to Aperture Science).
You play as a test subject in an Aperture Science laboratory, and after waking from a pod are introduced to the concept of a portal. Instead of the door opening in your 'cell' (consisting of a sleep pod, toilet and radio playing annoying music), a portal appears. Looking through this portal you can see yourself. And when you step through you emerge outside your cell but looking back at it from another angle. This takes a while to get your head round. You are constantly guided through the game by a female computerised voice, giving helpful, if somewhat sarcastic, advice. Initially the puzzles just consist of walking through pre-placed portals to help you get your head around the game mechanic, but soon you get hold of a portal shooting device, allowing you to place one end of the portal (the blue coloured end) on a wall, floor or ceiling. The other end (the orange) is still static for each room. The portals can be traversed in either direction, so you can walk through the blue end and emerge in the orange or vice versa, and there can only ever be one blue portal and one orange portal. This means when you have control of just the blue end, you'll often be placing a blue portal nearby to get to the orange portal, then firing towards where you really want to be to place a blue portal there, and walking back through the orange end. Pretty soon you'll also nab the orange end of the gun and you can place both ends and this is where things start to get more interesting. More and more elements are introduced, such as boxes you need to carry to pressure sensitive buttons to keep doors open, and energy balls that need to be used to power-up devices. These energy balls are another element from the Half-Life universe, and they are damaging to the player and bounce off walls, often meaning you need to open a portal where they will bounce and where you want them to exit so you can get the ball into the correct device.
Essentially the game consists of 19 'lab' levels, where you are coached by your computerised guide and slowly introduced to more and more concepts and danger, including toxic sludge on the floor and amusingly polite automated turrets. These all serve as fun puzzles and there are quite a few moments where you just grin to yourself at how cool something was, such as when you encounter your first puzzle requiring you to use the 'momentum in = momentum out' principle of the portals, thus allowing yourself to 'slingshot' yourself long distances by jumping into another portal from a great height. Luckily the player has been fitted with some nifty shock absorbers, meaning no matter how far you fall you never take any damage. You also recover any damage taken after a short period, meaning if you duck into some cover after a turret shoots at you, you'll recover, and it also negates the need for the additional clutter of a health bar. The presence of turrets may indicate some elements of a shooter here, but it's not really the case. The turrets are a puzzle element in themselves you need to devise how you're going to get past them or knock them over without getting killed, and there are no 'real' guns to use, just your portal device, and the ability to pick up small objects.
After some time you'll begin to notice more and more messages scrawled on walls indicating that The Cake is a LIE, making reference to the promised cake and party that GLaDOS (the computerised voice you hear throughout) promises as a reward if you complete all 19 puzzles. It comes as no surprise then that the cake and party don't emerge and in fact something more sinister awaits as you finish the final puzzle suffice to say the game isn't over quite yet, and GLaDOS gets more and more irate from this point, which is often hilarious. Your reward when you finally complete the game is yet more hilarity in the form of GLaDOS singing you a song in her computerised, sarcastic manner.
Portal is a mind-bending, brilliant puzzler which essentially defies normal puzzle game convention by both being set in a 'real world' setting rather than abstract realms (like Tetris, etc) and also by being viewed from a first person perspective. It is however short, it will only take about 3 hours to play through, although you then have some 'Advanced' levels and other challenges you can try your hand at.
Team Fortress 2
The online component of the Orange Box is the sequel to Team Fortress Classic. It's a multiplayer game where you play on two teams ('Red' or 'Blu') and can choose to play as 9 different classes, each with their own skills suited to different situations. It is really very similar to Team Fortress Classic, but that's fine really because it's a winning formula. Every class has a distinct set of weapons and attributes, whether it's the Scout who can run fast and double jump, but has little health and no heavy weapons, or the all round Soldier sporting a rocket launcher, or the maxed out health of the Heavy, carrying a massive chain gun. Each have their place and you'll need a good mix of classes to win a game Spies can disguise and cloak themselves as well as sapping enemy structures, so they become the arch nemesis of Engineers who build automated sentry guns, health and ammo dispensers, and teleportation devices. Medics are handy to to pair up with Heavies to keep them constantly healthy and absorbing big chunks of enemy fire, while Snipers take out the foes from afar by aiming for the head, and Pyros get up close and personal sowing mass confusion and panic as they set everyone alight and running for the nearest pool of water.
Using this team dynamic as a basis, Team Fortress 2 gives a wide range of game modes. There's capture the flag (or in this case, it's a briefcase with intelligence), where each team has an identical base and you can either defend your own base and flag or charge into the enemies all guns blazing to grab their case and leg it back home. Then there are various attack / defend game modes, sometimes with a number of capture points one team will be defending while the other attacks, with the ultimate aim of capturing the enemy base, other times the attacking team will have to stay close to a cart of explosives to keep it heading towards the enemy base, at which point it will explode. There's arena mode where you get a single life per round and each team either needs to eliminate all opposition or capture a central control point, at which point the next round begins. Then there's king of the hill with a single capture point requiring each team to hold it for a given time frame to claim victory.
TF2 has the edge over it's predecessor due to a number of enhancements. First there are Steam Achievements to be unlocked, and these open up additional weaponry for you. This weaponry isn't necessarily better or worse than the equipment you hold initially, just different. For example, a new pistol for your spy to carry means you cause critical damage on headshots, but also means regular damage is lessened. A bow and arrow for the sniper means more damage, but you lose the zoom of your rifle and you have to take into account that the arrow flies in an arc (ie. you often have to aim slightly above your target). A new flame-thrower causes less damage, but causes critical damage when you hit an enemy from behind. It's this sort of thing that allows you to customise each class to the requirements of the level and your personal preference, although it does take some time to unlock a lot of the upgrades meaning you'll have to do with 'the basics' for quite some time.
Although I really enjoy TF2, if you're not a fan of online gaming or you dislike being 'pwn3d' by irritating 13 year olds who spend all their time playing online shooters, this isn't going to change your mind. But because of the emphasis on teamwork, it does mean you can try to stick close to some of your team mates and hopefully you'll have more chance of staying alive and aiding in killing a few of the opposition, so it's perhaps a better place to start than all out deathmatch games. So if you like the thrill of playing against other human players and enjoy a bit of team based destruction, this is really the game for you.
Overall
Overall, the Orange Box is a great little bundle, but you should note you need Steam to run the games this means you will need an internet connection to 'register' the games, as well as sporadically to play them (you can start Steam in an offline mode, although occasionally it seems to refuse, forcing you to start in online mode even to play an offline game). It's also a bit strange that the retail version of the Orange Box seemed to require me to download various parts of most of the games after installation I could play HL2 immediately, but Episode 1 and 2 were marked as 'downloading', which seems to hint to me that the DVD discs in the physical release don't actually contain the games (or not all of them), meaning if you want to delve straight into Ep1 or 2 you might be left frustrated. TF2 also requires downloading, but that is expected being an online game they release regular updates, so initially you need to update to the latest version before you can play. Disregarding these very minor problems, the Orange Box is, as stated before, a real triumph of gaming, and it can be picked up for a steal from many retailers for only about £15. So if you still haven't played it, get hold of it now!
Having recently had my age-old laptop die on me, I invested in a shiny new desktop PC, which meant I could actually get my hands on some reasonably 'next-gen' titles since I wasn't able to run anything more taxing than Worms Armageddon on my laptop and I haven't yet been sucked into an Xbox 360 or PS3 (or indeed a Wii) yet.
Anyway, first on my list of titles to get a hold of was Half-Life 2. I was a huge fan of the original Half-Life and also the multiplayer component Team Fortress Classic (and Counter Strike to a lesser extent). So picking up The Orange Box with all the Half-Life 2 content to date as well as Team Fortress 2 and Portal seemed the obvious thing to do.
This probably comes as no surprise as most of you have probably played these games already but they are a triumph. For those who haven't yet experienced Half-Life 2, I would urge you to go out and get it now. But if you require a bit more convincing, here's a low-down on everything The Orange Box contains.
Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2
The main single player component comes in the form of Half-Life 2, and the two currently released episodes which continue the story directly from the end of HL2. You take on the role of Gordon Freeman from the original Half-Life, being inserted into an Earth where a strange alien race known only as the Combine have taken over. You're not spoon-fed any of the storyline, instead the game gives you little snippets of information through other characters talking to you or each other, and the desire for knowledge of what exactly is going on is part of the driving force that will keep you playing until you reach the end. Of course, the other part is that the gameplay is so damn good, and the game feels incredibly well balanced, never feeling unfair but often posing significant challenges and some incredibly memorable set-pieces.
You start off the game being loaded onto a train by the mysterious G-man who made frequent brief appearances in the original, usually shortly before another near-death experience for Gordon. You arrive at City 17, and soon see some rather fascist looking security guards. Pretty soon you're bundled into a room with one of them, and you begin to expect a pretty severe beating, before the guard reveals himself as Barney the security guard from Black Mesa (the research complex where the original took place). He leads you to a hideout of Dr. Kleiner, one of the scientists you may recognise from the original, who gives you your HEV suit (which provides you with the in-game Heads Up Display and a significant level of protection over your fellow human beings) before attempting to teleport you to a human resistance base. Unfortunately this fails, and you end up just outside the lab, with the Combine alerted to your position and with no weapons except a crowbar Barney throws you (another reference to the original game where the crowbar was your only means of defence at the start of the game). This is where it really starts. From here you need to somehow escape the city and make your way to the resistance base, and ultimately help them kick the Combine off of planet Earth.
As you escape the City you'll run into a wide variety of people, from the oppressed civilians living in some pretty squalid conditions, to the Civil Protection teams, humans working with the Combine as a sort of fascist police force, who will be your main foes initially. You'll also run into some old enemies from Black Mesa, the headcrabs make a return as well as the 'zombies' they create when they latch onto a victims head. These seem to be used as a weapon by the Combine, early on you'll see rockets being fired, but rather than explode they just sit in the ground... Until you hear a horrible screech and see a clawed alien crab flying towards your face. Again, this is a plot detail that is never really explained, leaving you to figure things out for yourself the Combine use these headcrabs as weapons against rebellious humans, but are also seen fighting the crabs and zombies, so seemingly they have no control over them and simply use them when necessary. Overwatch troops eventually make an appearance, military humans who have had various Combine enhancements, who will make up the bulk of your enemies later on, and some resistance fighters who will help you along the way with supplies, vehicles and even accompany you, fighting by your side.
Speaking of vehicles, there are a few on offer including a hovercraft and a beach buggy, as well as a 'regular' car in Episode 2. One of the great things about HL2 is that it is so polished. The main game is a First Person Shooter, and indeed everything is viewed from this perspective, but adding vehicles to the mix doesn't pan out to a third person perspective, which would destroy the illusion of 'being' Gordon, but keeps you viewing everything from his eyes and yet the handling feels perfect. Nothing feels like a poorly imagined tacked on extra as is so often the case when a developer thinks Hey, you know what would be cool? A driving section in my FPS!. In fact, it feels a totally natural progression of both the game and story after all you're trying to travel to a far off resistance base and it would be madness to make the whole journey on foot, especially with hostile aliens on the prowl!
And with all those aliens you'll be needing some pretty souped up weaponry to deal with them. The arsenal stays true to the original HL game, with the aforementioned crowbar as your melee weapon, a pretty standard array of basic guns including pistol, shotgun and machine gun (with a secondary grenade launcher option) and laser-guided rocket launcher to take down heavily armoured foes. You also get your hands on a Combine pulse rifle which has a devastating secondary function, firing a highly charged energy ball that 'pinballs' around rooms disintegrating enemy soldiers on contact and once you team up with Alyx, the daughter of Dr. Eli Vance (another old Black Mesa employee), you'll get hold of the gravity gun, essential for many of the small puzzles in the game, and also necessary for moving (and indeed catching and throwing) objects. The gravity gun is one of the most fun weapons as you discover you can pick up explosive barrels and lob them at enemies, catch thrown grenades and toss them back, and even move cars piled up in the road to clear your path. In the Half-Life spirit you can also pick up some organic alien weaponry that sets the scene for one of the best sequences in the game after running from endless giant insects and facing off with the 'queen' you acquire her pheromone sac, meaning her spawn obey your orders, allowing you to take on a full Combine base using a constantly replenishing army of allies, advancing up a heavily fortified beach head like something from a World War II flick (but with alien insectoids rather than privates with rifles) then emerging in the base so your new found friends can feast on the Combine within.
This is just one of many brilliant set pieces. Another sees you trapped within a prison block, beset from all sides by Combine troops, using some reprogrammed turret defences to hold them off as the wave upon wave come at you from all directions. Yet another, in Episode 2, sees similar turrets used to hold off a large number of alien insects from multiple tunnels at once with the help of a couple of increasingly panicky resistance fighters and eventually some kick-ass alien allies. A whole chapter of the original HL2 is dedicated to a town that was used by the resistance, and was heavily bombed with headcrab missiles, making it totally infested now. There is one living resident, a slightly deranged priest who has set numerous traps to fend off the zombies. This chapter is used as a sort of 'horror' Resident Evil style setting and also lets you get to grips with the gravity gun shortly after acquiring it, as there are so many zombies you'll need to be imaginative about ways to conserve ammo, such as using huge saw blades and heavy spikes to see off foes in a pretty gruesome manner. The chapter also introduces you to new varieties of zombies, some are covered in poison headcrabs, throwing them at you from afar, while others are incredibly agile, letting out an enraged screech before leaping towards you, able to clamber up buildings and over rooftops in their quest to kill.
The final chapter of HL2 is absolutely brilliant as well, taking away all your regular arsenal as you infiltrate the Combine HQ I won't spoil things for you but suffice to say you obtain a new and incredibly satisfying way to see off enemies, although it does make things somewhat easy. The finale of Episode 2 is also great, as you have to fend off an army of Striders, huge organic alien tripod-like enemies with spiked legs and powerful guns. There's even some pretty comedic moments, largely due to Dr. Kleiner's 'pet' headcrab, which has been de-clawed but still constantly tries to 'copulate' with unsuspecting humans heads, and also due to Alyx's 'pet' robot, named Dog. You also actually care about your companions, particularly Alyx who, unlike many AI controlled accomplices, is useful to have in a fire fight and seems pretty human to boot (although it's glaringly obvious to everyone around that she has a thing for Gordon). It also helps that the characters are all well animated, and graphically look very good with expressive faces and voice acting that is way above par for videogames.
My one qualm with HL2, and indeed Episode 1 and 2, is that they are quite short. In fact, ignore that. They aren't really short at all, HL2 coming in at 15 hours or so while each of Episode 1 and 2 are about 5 hours. But I just seem to remember the original Half-Life being massive, far longer than HL2 was maybe my memory is playing up and really it's no longer at all, and playing HL2 has inspired me to go back to the original after all these years to remember where it started so maybe I'll find out shortly. However, saying I want more of HL2 is really no criticism at all. What I will say is that I want to know more of the plot. I'll try not to give too much away, but at the end of HL2 and at various points in the Episodes, you'll see the mysterious G-man who will speak to you in a suitably cryptic manner, but by the end of Episode 2 you have been given some tantalising tid-bits which are cut short. I just hope Episode 3, whenever it comes out, brings it to some satisfactory conclusion and we're not stuck in a 'Lost' style cycle where nothing is ever explained properly (and you're not even given sufficient information to make an educated assumption).
Overall, an excellent bundle that will compel you to keep playing until you've reached the end, at which point you'll be searching high and low on the internet for rumours of Episode 3.
Portal
Next in our bundle is Portal. This is a game which is set in the Half-Life universe, although it doesn't really fill in any gaps in terms of story, and you can't even be sure when it is set (having said this it's quite possible Episode 3 will tie up somehow with the events from Portal Epsiode 2 makes a number of references to Aperture Science).
You play as a test subject in an Aperture Science laboratory, and after waking from a pod are introduced to the concept of a portal. Instead of the door opening in your 'cell' (consisting of a sleep pod, toilet and radio playing annoying music), a portal appears. Looking through this portal you can see yourself. And when you step through you emerge outside your cell but looking back at it from another angle. This takes a while to get your head round. You are constantly guided through the game by a female computerised voice, giving helpful, if somewhat sarcastic, advice. Initially the puzzles just consist of walking through pre-placed portals to help you get your head around the game mechanic, but soon you get hold of a portal shooting device, allowing you to place one end of the portal (the blue coloured end) on a wall, floor or ceiling. The other end (the orange) is still static for each room. The portals can be traversed in either direction, so you can walk through the blue end and emerge in the orange or vice versa, and there can only ever be one blue portal and one orange portal. This means when you have control of just the blue end, you'll often be placing a blue portal nearby to get to the orange portal, then firing towards where you really want to be to place a blue portal there, and walking back through the orange end. Pretty soon you'll also nab the orange end of the gun and you can place both ends and this is where things start to get more interesting. More and more elements are introduced, such as boxes you need to carry to pressure sensitive buttons to keep doors open, and energy balls that need to be used to power-up devices. These energy balls are another element from the Half-Life universe, and they are damaging to the player and bounce off walls, often meaning you need to open a portal where they will bounce and where you want them to exit so you can get the ball into the correct device.
Essentially the game consists of 19 'lab' levels, where you are coached by your computerised guide and slowly introduced to more and more concepts and danger, including toxic sludge on the floor and amusingly polite automated turrets. These all serve as fun puzzles and there are quite a few moments where you just grin to yourself at how cool something was, such as when you encounter your first puzzle requiring you to use the 'momentum in = momentum out' principle of the portals, thus allowing yourself to 'slingshot' yourself long distances by jumping into another portal from a great height. Luckily the player has been fitted with some nifty shock absorbers, meaning no matter how far you fall you never take any damage. You also recover any damage taken after a short period, meaning if you duck into some cover after a turret shoots at you, you'll recover, and it also negates the need for the additional clutter of a health bar. The presence of turrets may indicate some elements of a shooter here, but it's not really the case. The turrets are a puzzle element in themselves you need to devise how you're going to get past them or knock them over without getting killed, and there are no 'real' guns to use, just your portal device, and the ability to pick up small objects.
After some time you'll begin to notice more and more messages scrawled on walls indicating that The Cake is a LIE, making reference to the promised cake and party that GLaDOS (the computerised voice you hear throughout) promises as a reward if you complete all 19 puzzles. It comes as no surprise then that the cake and party don't emerge and in fact something more sinister awaits as you finish the final puzzle suffice to say the game isn't over quite yet, and GLaDOS gets more and more irate from this point, which is often hilarious. Your reward when you finally complete the game is yet more hilarity in the form of GLaDOS singing you a song in her computerised, sarcastic manner.
Portal is a mind-bending, brilliant puzzler which essentially defies normal puzzle game convention by both being set in a 'real world' setting rather than abstract realms (like Tetris, etc) and also by being viewed from a first person perspective. It is however short, it will only take about 3 hours to play through, although you then have some 'Advanced' levels and other challenges you can try your hand at.
Team Fortress 2
The online component of the Orange Box is the sequel to Team Fortress Classic. It's a multiplayer game where you play on two teams ('Red' or 'Blu') and can choose to play as 9 different classes, each with their own skills suited to different situations. It is really very similar to Team Fortress Classic, but that's fine really because it's a winning formula. Every class has a distinct set of weapons and attributes, whether it's the Scout who can run fast and double jump, but has little health and no heavy weapons, or the all round Soldier sporting a rocket launcher, or the maxed out health of the Heavy, carrying a massive chain gun. Each have their place and you'll need a good mix of classes to win a game Spies can disguise and cloak themselves as well as sapping enemy structures, so they become the arch nemesis of Engineers who build automated sentry guns, health and ammo dispensers, and teleportation devices. Medics are handy to to pair up with Heavies to keep them constantly healthy and absorbing big chunks of enemy fire, while Snipers take out the foes from afar by aiming for the head, and Pyros get up close and personal sowing mass confusion and panic as they set everyone alight and running for the nearest pool of water.
Using this team dynamic as a basis, Team Fortress 2 gives a wide range of game modes. There's capture the flag (or in this case, it's a briefcase with intelligence), where each team has an identical base and you can either defend your own base and flag or charge into the enemies all guns blazing to grab their case and leg it back home. Then there are various attack / defend game modes, sometimes with a number of capture points one team will be defending while the other attacks, with the ultimate aim of capturing the enemy base, other times the attacking team will have to stay close to a cart of explosives to keep it heading towards the enemy base, at which point it will explode. There's arena mode where you get a single life per round and each team either needs to eliminate all opposition or capture a central control point, at which point the next round begins. Then there's king of the hill with a single capture point requiring each team to hold it for a given time frame to claim victory.
TF2 has the edge over it's predecessor due to a number of enhancements. First there are Steam Achievements to be unlocked, and these open up additional weaponry for you. This weaponry isn't necessarily better or worse than the equipment you hold initially, just different. For example, a new pistol for your spy to carry means you cause critical damage on headshots, but also means regular damage is lessened. A bow and arrow for the sniper means more damage, but you lose the zoom of your rifle and you have to take into account that the arrow flies in an arc (ie. you often have to aim slightly above your target). A new flame-thrower causes less damage, but causes critical damage when you hit an enemy from behind. It's this sort of thing that allows you to customise each class to the requirements of the level and your personal preference, although it does take some time to unlock a lot of the upgrades meaning you'll have to do with 'the basics' for quite some time.
Although I really enjoy TF2, if you're not a fan of online gaming or you dislike being 'pwn3d' by irritating 13 year olds who spend all their time playing online shooters, this isn't going to change your mind. But because of the emphasis on teamwork, it does mean you can try to stick close to some of your team mates and hopefully you'll have more chance of staying alive and aiding in killing a few of the opposition, so it's perhaps a better place to start than all out deathmatch games. So if you like the thrill of playing against other human players and enjoy a bit of team based destruction, this is really the game for you.
Overall
Overall, the Orange Box is a great little bundle, but you should note you need Steam to run the games this means you will need an internet connection to 'register' the games, as well as sporadically to play them (you can start Steam in an offline mode, although occasionally it seems to refuse, forcing you to start in online mode even to play an offline game). It's also a bit strange that the retail version of the Orange Box seemed to require me to download various parts of most of the games after installation I could play HL2 immediately, but Episode 1 and 2 were marked as 'downloading', which seems to hint to me that the DVD discs in the physical release don't actually contain the games (or not all of them), meaning if you want to delve straight into Ep1 or 2 you might be left frustrated. TF2 also requires downloading, but that is expected being an online game they release regular updates, so initially you need to update to the latest version before you can play. Disregarding these very minor problems, the Orange Box is, as stated before, a real triumph of gaming, and it can be picked up for a steal from many retailers for only about £15. So if you still haven't played it, get hold of it now!