The Orange Box Review
Score 5/5
Half Life 2 is the darling first-person shooter for PC enthusiasts. I have never been a PC enthusiast. I have never, up until this point, played Half Life or Half Life 2. I have merely read of its alleged greatness. So I approached The Orange Box - a compilation of Half Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode 1, Half Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 - as an inductee to the Half Life universe, with a console gaming frame off mind. My limited experience with PC gaming has been generally negative; I have found PC games to be unbalanced and unforgiving. My expectations for Half Life 2, then, were lukewarm at best. Especially so considering Half Life 2 is a three year old game, and I had just recently come off of playing the much hyped and well received Halo 3. To my pleasant surprise, Half Life 2 and, indeed, nearly the whole The Orange Box package, is a brilliantly designed gaming experience top to bottom.
Half Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode 1, Half Life 2: Episode 2
Told entirely in first person, you, as Gordon Freeman, a physicist formerly employed at the Black Mesa research institute, traverse throughout City 17 and its outskirts battling the Combine, a force of both alien and human and crossbred monstrosities bent on the total occupation of Earth. The premise is familiar, but like the best of videogames, Half Life 2’s simple premise is brought to life in an expansive and rich universe.
The Combine pushed their invasion through a dimensional portal linking their world with our own. But not just organized, sentient beings made their way through: a complete ecology of invasive species both animalistic and parasitic made the trip as well. Earth becomes home to this ecology, full of dynamic relationships resulting in dynamic and varied encounters. From Combine soldiers and their military apparatus, to Head Crabs mated with humans, to the Ant Lion hordes and their hive like hierarchy, each of these ‘factions’ bring with them their own complexity, their own fully fleshed out structure and relations. None of this complexity is delivered through dialogue or other narrative device. Rather, you simply take all of it in through osmosis, through contact will all of these denizens. It is in this subtle yet very effective method of story telling that the game wraps you up in a world much larger than the polygonal constraints you tread through.
There is, of course, an actual narrative, and it is carried out nearly exclusively through real time conversations between characters and scripted events. In this particular aspect, Half Life 2 immediately impresses. Voice acting is solid through and through, with all of the actors toning down the typically overwrought and phony emotion found in many videogames, playing it straight most of the time. This lends an endearing personality to most characters, not the least of which is Alyx Vance, your female side-kick and potential love interest. You and Alyx are part of a rag tag human resistance, supported by the brain-trust of scientists with intimate knowledge of The Combine and the Black Mesa incident. All of the characters personalities are brought to life, aside from the excellent voice acting, with the utmost top-notch facial animation I have ever witnessed. It is perhaps this innovation in particular that is most becoming as it lends all characters relatable, likable, and captivating personas.
Like any good tale, Half Life 2 steeps its rather run-of-the-mill premise in mystery and nuance. story is woven seamlessly throughout the game, and as these story moments unfold in front of you in real time, they never interrupt the spot-on perfectly paced play time. Much of the nuanced take on presentation seems rather highbrow for a simple first person shooter, but the gameplay matches that presentation with ease.
Half Life 2 does not come equipped with a plethora of unique and alien weaponry. In fact, most weapons are your standard fair: a pistol, shotgun, automatic rifle, magnum, and the ever-trusty crowbar. What unique weapons there are to Half Life 2 are few. Despite their mundane appearance, they are all massively satisfying to wield. Even the pistol exhibits great force and effectiveness. The assault rifle cracks-off at an alarmingly powerful rate, as too does the Combine version which erupts in nearly ear-splitting bass.
It serves the weapons well, then, that the enemies you are up against are as interesting and varied. For one thing, they all react well to taking damage and the physics on display are quite remarkable. For another, there are so many types of enemies and styles of aggression that combat rarely, if ever, feels monotonous. Combine soldiers will charge, flank, take cover, and are intelligently menacing. They do not take a lot to dispatch, but their numbers and strategy take care of any weaknesses they may have individually. What they sport in vehicles is another whole level of menacing. Gunships, which can only be described as hovering porpoise-like helicopters, dog your every step and can only be taken down with the heaviest of armaments. Striders, which can only be described as giant daddy-long-legs, are equally as persistent, and pack even greater fire power. Not only are they shockingly original and fascinating to witness, but the effort exuded to take just one down also results great satisfaction. With a plethora of different foes with distinct behavior, things never get dull.
Half Life 2 does have one remarkable weapon: the Gravity Gun. The gravity gun effectively turns the world itself into a weapon. One function zaps objects sending them flying, the other latches onto objects so that they can be carried with ease. Latch onto an object to carry it, and you can then zap it creating a deadly projectile. As you might expect, there are many items strewn about levels taking advantage of this mechanic. Really, anything from rocks, to tree trunks, to barrels are at hand. But the most effective and satisfying come in the form of various exploding and flammable receptacles and large circular saws. Send a circular saw flying into a crowd of headcrab zombies, and they topple to the ground bisected at the waist.
The Gravity Gun’s ability to manipulate objects inherently means that the world is full of robust physics, and this is most certainly the case in Half Life 2. But Half Life 2 goes beyond just using physics to make the combat more interesting: It employs it in the form of frequent puzzles. Indeed, the game breaks up the action frequently by facing you with puzzles to sort out before moving on. These puzzles can take the form of how to appropriately pass through one area to the next, or as simple as taking a loose electrical plug and plugging it back into the environment. Many involve weighing down ramps on one end so that the other elevates to a precipice. But this is just one example of how the physics play a role in the game. It is this very natural approach to puzzle solving that lends the game another level of immersion as rarely is a puzzle so abstract as to cause a disconnect from the natural setting the game takes place in.
In this way, from the beginning to end, Half Life 2 plays out. You will fight your way through City 17, to the outskirts of the City, and back and forth again, frequently punctuated by physics based puzzles. The game flows in one set piece, with no interruption between stages or levels; you are covering ground, foot by foot, traversing from point A to B. While this may seem bland, the level design is so expertly executed it elevates your journey into something really memorable. Besides fighting and puzzle solving, you will take to vehicles during extended stretches. These too are surprisingly fleshed out lengthy sequences that compliment the game quite well. They also have the added benefit of making you aware that you really are travelling large distances. While on the foot, the levels are equally well designed, from simple corridor crawls, to alien architecture, to outdoor woodland, and beyond. One particularly fantastic sequence involves traversing the understructure of a suspension bridge, with nothing but the structure itself to travel over, while being dogged by a gunship. There is nothing under the bridge itself except the beam support structure and what you would expect to find, no floating platforms or other such abstract videogame ploy. And yet, it works very, very well.
The pacing of Half Life 2 flows. There is rarely a moment where you are underwhelmed as challenges are presented at a steady, even pace. The only knock against Half Life 2 is that this pacing is so incredibly methodical, you could practically set your watch to it; the game at times borders on mechanical, almost lifeless precision. But it never gets there because the gameplay is so solid to begin with. It must also be said that along with all of this excellent pacing, the normal difficulty setting felt so intimately tuned into my own skill level that the game was always challenging enough without frustrating, and never so easy that you could glide through without repercussion. Frankly, it was like the game was reading my mind.
Half Life 2 is not without its faults, though few. Half Life 2 is not so replay friendly as it happens to be quite linear; going back and playing again is not going to reveal anything new; Half Life 2 is a heavily scripted game. Squad members, other human resistance fighters, join you in battle. But this mechanic doesn’t really work. In the tight confines of City 17’s ghettos, your squad-mates constantly get in your way and block your path. “Sorry, Freeman” is a phrase uttered by them often when they block your path. The very fact that Valve thought to include this voice sample is telling. Finally, Episode 2 is a bit underwhelming compared to the rest of the Half Life 2 saga; it does not offer the same thrills or variety of either the original or Episode 2. It very much feels like Valve was working out the kinks with episodic content, kinks that were more than corrected in Episode 2.
Portal
Portal is a first person puzzle game involving - you guessed it - portals. You are a subject in an unknown testing facility, required to use portal technology to pass from challenge to challenge, housed in separate rooms of the facility. A portal is a doorway to another portal elsewhere in the level, and can be freely passed through in the opposite direction as well. You are given a portal gun used to deploy a maximum of two portals at one time.
It’s a simple concept brought to life with a good deal of complexity and very clever design. At its simplest, you shoot a portal opening onto a wall next to you, and shoot another onto a wall past impassible obstacles. Enter the portal closest to you and you exit the portal on the other side, thus effectively passing the challenge.
One particularly great wrinkle in the design revolves around the use of momentum and gravity. Much like Half Life 2 itself, physics play an integral role in Portal. If you place a portal on the ground below you, then another high on a wall behind you, entering the portal on the ground ejects you from the one above and flings you forward. As you fall you gain momentum. Now, as you fall towards the portal below, you will re-enter the portal on the ground with much greater momentum thus flinging yourself from the portal above with much greater force. Many puzzles are designed around this gravity and momentum and feel wonderful.
Portal’s puzzles are all well designed and steadily increase in complexity. There are but a few that are needlessly frustrating, due less to puzzle design and more to control and perspective issues. Even the toughest puzzles can be solved in a relatively short period of time with some persistence. In fact, Portal overall is a short game; too short, in fact. After all is said and done, you will have completed Portal in just a few hours, four hours tops.
Despite its short playtime, Portal is steeped in great atmosphere and an actual story that is sinister and unexpected, elevating it above just a simple puzzle game. Portal manages to leave abstraction behind and places itself firmly in the Half Life universe, though not directly related to the events in Half Life 2. As you traverse from puzzle to puzzle, a robotic female voice provides feedback and often amusing commentary. As you progress, you get the sinking feeling that something is not quite right; observation windows conspicuously devoid of observers, glitches and slips in the robotic observer’s voiceover, and torn away wall segments exposing messages left behind by previous test subjects.
Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2, on the other hand, is completely unrelated with anything to do with the Half Life universe. It is, unfortunately, the weakest addition to The Orange Box.
TF2 is an entirely team-objective based online multiplayer game, heavy on strategy. There are no death match or team death match variants. Instead, the game supports game modes such as capture the flag and control (capture specific areas on the map). There are six maps, each pertaining to just one particular game mode. In other words, the maps cannot be swapped between game types, as each is exclusively used for one game type. (Mind you, some maps do use the same game type as others.) What you have then is not a tremendous amount of variety, but a very focused experience based entirely around strategy.
The emphasis on strategy is supported by class based character designations. There are nine characters split up between three classes. Some are either offensive, defensive, or support by design. Each character comes with a specific weapon set and attributes, non-transferable to other characters. So, for instance, you have the offense based Scout who comes with a shotgun primary weapon and can run very quickly, the defense based Heavy who lugs around a massive chain gun and moves very slowly, and the support based Medic whose primary function is to dynamically replenish the health of a nearby teammate. Each character has a very specific skill set and role.
This all amounts to an absolute requirement of teamwork in order to have a fighting chance. Somebody has got to pick up a support role in conjunction with players who will carry out your more traditional roles. For instance, a team without Medics is a team ripe for the picking. A team with Medics has some uber-powerful offensive-defensive punch, as Medics can follow right behind Heavies, Soldiers, Demomen, or whoever, and constantly replenish their health thus effectively making them both wickedly powerful and practically invincible. I found this out pretty quick, being on the losing end of a match with a disorganized team without proper support players.
The maps themselves are also fairly complex with quite a few strategic options. For instance, there are multiple paths to get to the same goal. In fact, some paths go over, under, and even underwater. Despite plenty of proper signage, there is plenty of room for the newbie to get lost in.
This complexity in design centered on strategy is both TF2’s greatest strength and weakness. It is not a game that is simply picked up and played at whim, especially with a bunch of randomly matched players online. If you cannot properly communicate and come up with a solid game plan, you will almost certainly lose. It is also not a very visceral experience. Glitchy connections and do-it-yourself matchmaking rounds out the criticisms leveled against TF2.
TF2 does do a lot very well, however. Most notably, of course, is the presentation. It looks great with its superbly animated cartoon style presentation. TF2 has a very distinct personality. It is also full of encouragement, so much so that it goes to the point of giving you the bright side of statistics after you’ve been fragged. For instance, it will let you know that with whatever certain class of character you’re playing with that you’ve survived the longest, beaten your previous kill score, or scored more points than in previous plays. It also employs a stylistic kill-cam that freeze frames the opponent that dispatched you. If one opponent dispatches you enough times, they become your nemesis and are marked accordingly.
TF2 is a game likely to reward players with ready-made teams and teammates willing to put in the time to dig deep and play a lot. But as a pick up and play solo venture, TF2 simply isn’t going to do. In a season full of fantastic multiplayer packages from Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, Team Fortress 2 is the least compelling of the bunch.
Conclusion
Half Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode 1, and Half Life 2: Episode 2, are collectively the greatest first-person shooter collection on the planet. While Episode 2 was released just this year, Episode 1 and the original Half Life 2 were released one year and three years ago respectively. And yet, the game is still impactful and thoroughly enjoyable this far removed from the hype. With fantastic additions like Portal and, to a lesser extent, TF2, The Orange Box is a mind-bogglingly great deal. If you have yet to experience Half Life 2, you simply must pick up The Orange Box.
peachey @ November 17, 2007