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All Aspects are Brilliant

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: February 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

We love portal, and we play Team Fortress 2 non-stop all night, every night. We can barely fit our review of Team Fortress 2 into this review space but you can see the other full reviews of the other components on our bellaonline website.

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One of the three games in Valve's "Orange Box" package, Team Fortress 2 is a long-awaited sequel (announced in 1998) to the original "Team Fortress Classic" mod for Half-Life 1. Despite the abhorrently long delay, this game is worth every second of development.

Team Fortress was one of the first big games to use classes, each with their own weapons and specialty. Following either a Capture The Flag or a Control Point objective type, players combined the unique abilities of each class to capture their objectives. TF2 has kept this basic premise, and added a wicked, madcap sense of humor and colorful stylistic choices to it.

There are 9 classes in the game each given their own weapons (including a unique melee weapon), abilities, and personalities. First is the scout, who is the fast character who is meant to rush in, get the flag, and get out. In TF2, the Scout has a smart mouth and constantly wisecracks as he downs foes with one of his three weapons - a shotgun, a pistol, and an aluminum bat. The Soldier is next - a grunt armed with a rocket launcher, a shotgun, a shovel, and a military drawl. The soldier can "rocket jump" by firing at his feet, which injures him but launches him far upwards. The Pyro is armed, as one might guess, with a flamethrower (as well as a shotgun and a fire axe) and is the game's least comprehensible character - muffled as he is by his flame-retardant suit and mask. The Pyro is meant to ambush characters, due to the flamethrower's short range, but if he can get in close and start spraying fire and setting enemies ablaze, the kills just rack up.

The Demoman is a bit of a quandary - a self-described "black Scottish cyclops", he is equipped with two grenade launchers (one that launches regular grenades, one that launches remote-detonated "sticky" grenades that can be used as deterrents for enemies proceeding carelessly through doors) and an empty bottle as a melee weapon. The Heavy is perhaps the game's most recognizable character - a huge, Russian man armed with a minigun. Gameplay for the Heavy consists of firing or winding up the character's huge weapon, or on occasion using his backup shotgun or his mighty fists. The Engineer is one of the more intellect-oriented classes in the game; not adept at physical combat, the Engineer prefers to build gadgets to help his team. The devices that can be built are a sentry gun (an automatically firing turret that can be upgraded to three different levels of weaponry), a dispenser (which gives health and ammo), and a teleporter. All of the engineer's devices require metal to build or upgrade, which is gained by collecting ammo from fallen enemies. The Engineer's personality is laid-back, with a southern drawl more relaxed than the Soldier's.

The Medic is the main support unit for any team - with the use of his healing Medigun, the Medic is responsible for keeping his team alive. Furthermore, after healing enough, the Medic can use his Ubercharge ability to render himself and a target invulnerable for roughly ten seconds. The Medic has a German accent, perhaps a nod to the stereotypical Mad Doctor. Snipers are Australian Bush Rangers armed with high-powered rifles. These rifles charge up their power, but only when zoomed in; this encourages snipers to wait and time their shots, rather than using the sniper rifle as a really accurate close-combat weapon (as seen in Counter-Strike). Requiring reflexes and accuracy, the Sniper is a highly specialized class, and every map has windows looking out over a large battleground for the Sniper to fully use his abilities. Finally, the Spy is perhaps the most complex class. Capable of taking the appearance of an enemy unit (to allies, he appears to be wearing a paper mask with the target class' face drawn on it), the Spy must try his best to infiltrate the enemy and take them out - through backstabbing, sappers (which disable engineer tools), and good old-fashioned misdirection. As a backup, Spies can cloak themselves, useful for infiltrating and exiting the enemy base. While Spies cannot be easily detected, certain suspicious behaviors can be noted and so a Spy must try his best to blend in - for example, not charging the enemy base from his own base, where no regular soldier would be doing so.

These nine classes form the wildest, most madcap First Person Shooter in recent history. Set on six different stages (the development team states in the in-game commentary that more were considered, but playtesters noted that players usually only play maps that they really like over and over, for example De_Dust in Counter-Strike) with a Mad Scientist theme, players join either the BLU (Builder's League United) or RED (Reliable Excavation Demolition) teams. Both sides are fronts for secret corporations, and the maps revolve around capturing secret data (the equivalent of CTF) or important secret bases housing nuclear weapons or laser beams (the Control Point game type).

The graphics are the most noticable and unique new feature to the game. Using a cartoonish style and shading/lighting type, the characters and maps are designed to let the characters stand out and be identifiable by their color, class, and weapon (in that order). The result is fantastic - TF2's style is possibly the best use of a cartoonish style in a video game that I have seen. Each character is vibrantly alive and unique, a fact further fleshed out by their in-game taunts and sounds (many taunts activate automatically when certain conditions are met - for example, if a Scout kills a Heavy with his bat, there's a sound clip for that). A far cry from the mostly silent and serious setting of Team Fortress Classic, TF2 embraces the ridiculousness and outlandishness present in its gameplay, making light of combatants rushing headlong into their death (when killed, you get a screenshot of your killer, complete with arrows marking your body and, if you were killed by something explosive, any little parts that are nearby).

As a whole, this game is a blast. Its frantic gameplay, hilarious voice acting, and strategic simplicity make this a game for almost anyone to enjoy. There's nothing to dislike about this game - even the small map selection doesn't seem to matter because of how involved one becomes with the strategy used in each. This game is brilliant.

10/10.

The Games Are EXCELLENT, Steam Is AWFUL

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: January 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Half-Life 2 is fun and gorgeous. Even 3 years after its release, it's still got the punch to stun, awe and envelop you in its complex web of puzzles and fast action. Portal is addictive puzzle gaming and even the Episodes provide more action and good story. TF2....well, let's just say that it's more fun than should be legal. You can read any review of any part of this Orange Box and believe what they say about how GOOD the games are.

However, you cannot possibly know how awful Steam is unless you click every attachment in spam emails that you get. Steam is a virus that runs your games for you and inserts itself between you and a good time. Constant validation bugs ensure that you'll be sitting there watching Steam validate for hours on end without changing instead of playing TF2, or Steam crashing on you just before you beat that puzzle in Portal you've been working on for hours. Or it just spams you with ads for other games when you open it up. Support? DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH! When Steam hangs on you, the ONLY solution you'll ever get is to spend 6 hour reinstalling/redownloading Steam and all your games and reupdating them. Then, after Steam hangs again, you uninstall it and go buy games that let YOU own them...not lease them from this infernal agent of irritation.

Steam is the WORST thing to ever happen to gaming and I join the other reviewers in wishing its creator to be shot into the sun from a giant cannon using...STEAM power.

Blarrrrgh, Steam sucks as much as HL2 and TF2 rule. If you want the fun, you'll have to put up with the pain of Steam.

This being said, I will never, EVER, EVER, EVER buy a game through Steam, nor will I forgive Valve for implementing a system that is a giant ad delivery system.

Steam will never threaten to stab you.....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Buy Portal. Play Portal. Love Portal.

The other games in the package are worth playing, if only to say you did it, but I'm not as big of a fan of Half Life 2 as the rest of the world is. I don't play online games, so Team Fortress 2 has no appeal. I do, however, love Portal. Imagine, if you will, a science fiction short story in video game form. You will think, you will question, you will laugh, and you will do it all in around 3 1/2 hours... on your first play through.

If you're not familiar with the premise, the game involves you moving through an obstacle filled environment using only your wits, a gun that rips a hole in space-time... and the trusty Apature Science weighted companion cube. All the while you are instructed by a disembodied, somewhat malfunctioning robotic voice. I won't give anything away, but suffice it to say that this voice steals the show.

Portal includes a few gameplay variations that add more depth to the fairly easy single player puzzles. My favorite of which, doing each of the 6 chambers in the least amount of portals, kept me playing for close to 10 hours by themselves. The challenge levels added another few hours and I've played through the single player just to hear the dialog a few times. It's a marvelous game and a perfect example of what a game can accomplish with excellent writing.

The portal gun itself is used to great effect. The puzzles range from intuitive and fun ("flinging") to ridiculously challenging and fulfilling. The creative range you have to solve the puzzles is huge and dwarfs even what you are capable of doing in games like Crysis or GTA. The fact that the game is entirely non-violent is also a significant plus for me.

I would like to point out that Steam's failings are greatly overexaggerated. When HL2 was first released, Steam did, in fact, blow chum, but now is harmless and even functional. You can open the Steam menu in any game you'd like, giving you access to your friend's list, giving us PC gamers the closest thing to Xbox Live we can get, closer even than Microsoft's own Windows Live. If you don't believe me, you can download Steam and try it with non-Steam games first to see if you love it or hate it. When you've gotten over that, buy Portal and experience the greatest source of Internet memes since Family Guy.

Big Brother

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 26
Date: January 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I wish I had read the bad reviews before waisting my money.
Valve is so threatened by hackers stealing their code that they are punishing all the rest of us.
Their "Orwellian" scheme is to get you to buy the game and then make you agree to a lisence that says you don't own it, even though you paid for it.
I have never had a game like this, where I couldn't access the game directly from the disc. It's outrageous that Valve could do this.
Do not buy this game. You have to download the game from the internet.
It smacks of spyware.

Crashed My System

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 25
Date: December 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

When launching any of the games purchased, I couldn't get passed the intro as my system kept crashing. My PC is only a year old and exceeds the minimum requirements, I have an NVIDIA 7300 LE, new X-FI Xtreme Audio sound card, and 2.66 GHz Pentium 4.

My PC kept locking up so many times that when I powered off, it corrupted my master boot file which took me a day figure out how to fix. Once back into Windows, I IMMEDIATELY uninstalled everything.

What really shocks me is a game maker that suggests you completely remove all anti-virus software completely in order to solve lock-up problems. I use Norton AV 2008, and if Steam can't get their game to work properly with such a popular AV software package, they have no business trying to sell this product.

Steam Really Messed this one up

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 17
Date: December 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Steam used to be an optional install for your computer now that you are forced to install it before you can install this game. I have had a pretty little orange box sitting on my shelf for a week. If you use AOL as an ISP, I would recommend not purchasing this game until they come out with a fix for this, because you can not download the steam update while using AOL therefore the whole game is useless and unable to be installed until this is fixed. The orange box has become a pretty expensive BOOKEND for me. THANKS STEAM!

Inside an Orange Box: Where to Put Valve and Steam

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 31
Date: December 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I like game software, owning what I purchase. Valve Software and Steam, the internet-based registration process, prevents me from ever buying Halflife anything, anymore.

I was one of the few lucky ones to get Steam to work on my PC when I purchased Half-Life 2. But then I realized that I bought a licensing scheme, not a game.

Never again, no matter how "good" the gameis supposed to be..

One of the best purcheses i ever made.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: November 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

HL2 is an amazing, compelling, well made, beautiful game, Episodes 1&2 are just as cool and fun and worthy of HL2, Team Fortress 2 is probably the most fun i ever had with online gaming, and portal is just spectacular. Portal is a special, truly unique experience. You get 5 top notch games, the best games around in my opinion, for the price of one. Worth every dime and if your a gamer your crazy not to go ahead and buy this. This is by far the best purchase i have ever made in the gaming world, and I made quite a few :).

A great deal

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: December 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game for $25 during black Friday. I honestly have to say this is an awesome deal for what you are getting. I never bought Half-Life 2 nor Episode 1, but after playing it I can tell you that this set of games is an awesome value. If you were an early adopter you might have felt ripped off after buying episode 1, but first time buyers will enjoy it. Half-Life 2 is fairly long, but the episodes are extremely short. Portal is a short game but it is still a great game. Team Fortress 2 is what most people will play after beating the other games. The time you will spend in Team Fortress 2 will probably outweigh the time in the other games. Overall the graphics are great, but compared to newer games they are aging. After beating Half-Life 2 and the episodes be sure to download Half-Life 2: Lost Coast for an interesting side story. Overall these are my thoughts on the games:

Half-Life 2: The longest game and probably the best story out of all the games included.

Episode 1: Overall a good game, better graphics (HDR lighting), but too short.(I feel sorry if you paid $50 for this)

Episode 2: Short like Episode 1, but the gameplay and story is more climatic. I am looking forward to episode 3 (the final episode).

Portal: A fun puzzle game, I almost overlooked it, but it is definitely worth playing. It is a side story in the Half-Life universe.

Team Fortress 2: This game is just awesome. I didn't know that the source engine could produce graphics like this. The gameplay is usually fast paced (depending on the server). The Heavy feels nerfed due to it fast draining ammo and extremely wide bullet spread and the scout can no longer run past sentries, but it is still a fun game, and will provide many hours of mayhem on your pc.

Well thats about it. If you are an owner of Episode 1 and Half-Life 2, this may not be worth your money and wait until episode 3 comes bundled. If you have never played any of these games you should definitely check this out.

Total package

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: December 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The Orange Box is a great deal. It includes Half-Life 2, episodes one and two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. Episode One was a little bit of a let down as far as story and action go, but it did have some really cool visual effects. Episode Two was much better. I also highly recommend listening to the commentary if you want to learn more about the game design. Portal is a great puzzle game and it has some really good unlockables. Team Fortress is fun but it is better if you know people that also play.

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