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Oct 13 / Ozymandias

The Orange Box

Just a quick post to point you to The Orange Box. For those of you living under a rock, The Orange Box is a compilation of five games from Valve: Half-Life 2, HL2 Episode 1, HL2, Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. I’m one of those people who never finished the original Half-Life 2, but always regretted it. Kept meaning to come back to it but held off when I heard it was coming to Xbox 360. And the wait was well worth it – the games are great in themselves, and the ports are beautifully done with fantastic sound, physics, and visuals. Valve also did some nice work with achievements, enumerating them within the game and even giving detail to multi-part achievements in the UI. I could go on and on, but I’ll just point you to the Metacritic summary of reviews (where it’s currently scoring an average of 97 percent.) Definitely check it out if you weren’t sure!
 

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  • Butwheaty

    If I can get a working 360, I’d love to check this game out.  I am seriously debating on checking out Portal on Steam … that’s the only game that looks somewhat interesting.

  • WarriorSan

    Same here…I almost finished Half-life 2 and for some reason I never did (newer games etc.) and also regretted it..Now I have a new chance and now I even get achievements for it ;) also Portal is great!

  • MwC Rampage

    I never finished Half-Life 2 either. I played it on the original Xbox, but I’m not buying the Orange Box though. Too many games coming out this holiday season and my money are tied up right now on Rock Band and Mass Effect. The Orange Box just has to wait.

  • Ozymandias

    I’m sort of dreading Mass Effect – suspect it’s going to be a huge timesuck and keep me from doing anything else for a month straight! (Not that that’s a bad thing, but….)

  • Xwar

    Just 97? It’s getting massively *under*rated!

  • imaginedbug

    I won’t be buying the orange box for a while yet. There’s more coming out that I’ll enjoy more and haven’t played before; Kane & Lynch, Army of Two, CoD4 and Assassin’s Creed.

    According to the reviews I’ve read it’s a great package, but Portal isn’t really a game but more a 2 hour long tech demo, and TF2 is very limited.

  • alex

    why the hell there is no hdmi pack included in the halo 3 special edition console?i bought a hdmi to dvi convertor yesterday.And the console was successfully connected to my LCD monitor via DVI. Then comes the problem…i cant get the audio output…i need that audio adapter..but the adapter isnt sold seperately..to get the adapter i need to pay 50 bucks for the HDMI pack…i dun need the HDMI cable…

  • @alex

    Basically M$ screwed you deliberately by not allowing both to be outputted at same time. Very clever design M$

  • John-Paul

    Portal is a humorous as it is fun.  That computer voice could do stand-up comedy.

    Same here though, never finished Halflife 2 on Xbox, LOVING it twenty times more on the 360.  Now just can’t wait to get to the other episodes.

    My ONLY complaint is basic, it needs a bot setup in Team Fortress…. that would be nice.  It’s a little overwhelming to try and jump into a team based shooter game without being able to get ANY practice first, so I have an idea it may go ignored in favor of the other titles on the disk, for me at least.

  • http://http:technowledgy.spaces.live.com BackScatter

    I’ve never been a PC gamer myself, so I missed out on the entire Half Life experience.  I picked up a copy of The Orange Box yesterday and am really looking forward to giving that game a run.

    … That is if I can stop playing Portal.  What a wickedly twisted and fun game – You should definitely check it out if you haven’t already.  I love the comical touch, and the song during the credits is laugh out loud funny.  Great package and well worth the price of admission.

  • http://live.xbox.com/member/DevsterC DevsterC

    Yeah, they need bots in all these FPS games. They don’t have to be amazing AIs, just enough that one can orient themselves without going online and getting whupped whilst getting used to controls…

  • John-Paul

    DevsterC, exactly, if you look at some games like Perfect Dark Zero you can even set up bot behaviors… overall it makes it perfect for either practicing alone or if you only have a couple friends on live you can still fill out the match.

    Everyone keeps saying Portal is only a 2 hour tech demo, which is fair I guess, but it took me 2 and a half hours to finish it and then a majority of the challenges come in AFTER you beat the inital run.. so, I think 2 hour tech demo is not giving it enough credit. I could easily see another 2 or 3 hours after the game "ends".

    Now who wants some cake?? lol.

  • http://www.xlife.nl RDJ134

    I finished Half Life 2 but whas realy dissapointed with the ending. But most of the time it looked awsome.

  • 360 tag: JJS UK

    Ozymandias can I answer my question honestly and frankly?

    Are you concerned Bioware has been brought by EA in relation to future 360 Bioware titles? For example Mass Effect 3 could be appear on PS3! Even Jade Empire 2.. terrible thought. Why so? Well they won’t push the 360 if they have to multiplatform, it seems such bad news for 360 rpg fans. EA in my opinion is a company which makes average quality games with famous IPs to drive sales. Not quality defining games which Bioware is known for.

    Alot of Bioware fans think Microsoft have lost your jewel RPG developer.

    I hope this post appears unlike my last!

    *cough* editing *cough*

  • Ozymandias

    I’m actually not that worried about Bioware being bought. Let me make clear this is my personal opinion, but EA is a large, publicly-held company that *needs* to support every platform they can to be successful. While this means future Bioware IP titles are likely to appear on other platforms, it also means those titles will likely appear on the 360 as well. Yes, as an "Xbox guy" I’d love to have it remain exclusive… on the other hand, the first one is effectly exclusive for at least a year or so (assuming development time), so it certainly doesn’t hurt.

    Longer term, it’s my hope that our ongoing investment into the platform and developer tools will make future multi-platform SKUs from any publisher or developer look better on the 360. That’s already common today.

    Finally, hate to disappoint you all, but I still don’t edit or filter comments… have better things to do with my time. Heck, I rarely go check for caught spam – it’s usually one of you mentioning something you wrote got caught. I’ll go do that now.

  • 360 tag: JJS UK

    I heard what youre saying Ozymandias that Bioware wil still make 360 games but you’re missing or ignoring my main point which is with Bioware developing their games multiplatform they wont be able to fully utilize the 360 power. Therefore in essence the future Bioware will be a skeleton of actual 360 potential, the main focus when developing future games will be multiplatform rather than pushing the 360.

    The other huge point is Bioware is Microsoft no1 RPG 360 games developer, losing such is a huge blow. I know you wont say but I think MS is making alot of mistakes, for example:-

    1. 3 RLOD

    2. Peter Moore goes to EA

    3. Bizarre sold to Activision

    4. Bungie goes independant

    5. Bioware brought by EA

    That’s all within 3 months.. even a blind man would sat who’s in charge? ;O)

  • 360 tag: JJS UK

    Sorry for my grammer, should proof read.

    Finally with Bioware gone.. there no sole world-class rpg western developer working solely on 360, dont mention mistwalker jrpg(lost in the past games)

  • 360 tag: JJS UK

    * grammar *

    .. I win the idiot award :O)

  • Ozymandias

    Re: "I heard what youre saying Ozymandias that Bioware wil still make 360 games but you’re missing or ignoring my main point which is with Bioware developing their games multiplatform they wont be able to fully utilize the 360 power. Therefore in essence the future Bioware will be a skeleton of actual 360 potential, the main focus when developing future games will be multiplatform rather than pushing the 360."

    Actually, considering that the 360 is the lead SKU for this title (and many, many others), I don’t think that’s the case. But your opinion may vary.

  • Xwar

    >I win the idiot award

    That you do. That you do.