The Orange Box Review

The Orange Box is on the PS3, and PC as well, but since I have it on the Xbox 360, I'm going to review the Xbox 360 version.

What is The Orange Box?

The Orange Box is a game package of 5 games on 1 disc. Are they great games? You bet they are. Half Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode One, Half Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. I mean it's a Valve, so it will obviously be good. Plus it is only $20-$30 US Dollars, cheap game, good game, good deal. I'm going to talk about each individual game in The Orange Box.

Half Life 2

The main game on The Orange Box, and six words can easily describe it. "Best First Person Shooter Game Ever". You play as a famous scientist named Goran Freeman and every thing is in his perspective and point of view, with interactive cut scenes. He is dropped off at City 17 and he is trying to get to a base called Black Mesa with a girl named Alyx. The base is ran by a man named Dr. Eli Vance. Gordan is was in a teleporter to teleport to that lab, but the lab he was trying to teleport from, Dr. Isaac Kleiner's lab, Dr. Kleiner's pet Lamarr who is a headcrab, who is actually an enemy throughout the lab, but Lamarr is the only good headcrab. Lamarr jumped on and messed up some of the wires for the teleporter and messed it up. Gordan instead transported to outside of Dr. Kleiner's lab, and has to make it to Black Mesa on foot. On his way he fights many combine cops, ships, gunmen ships, and zombies. Then...wait...why am I telling you this? I mean that is what the game is about, but you have to play it for yourself to experience this amazing game. This game contains 11-12 hours of gameplay.

Half Life 2: Episode One

Half Life 2: Episode One takes place after Half Life 2. At the end the of Half Life 2, if you must know, had to destroy a really tall building called the Citadel. The Citadel could of released Dark Energy so Gordan had to destroy it. When he destroyed it, an explosion happened, time froze, G-man talks to you, and the game ends. In Episode One, it Vortigaunts , who are friendly Aliens in the game, transported Gordan and Alyx to a save area that happened after the explosion, like a few hours after, so they don't really remember anything about the Citadel exploding. They talked to Dr. Kleiner and Dr. Eli and they warned that the Citadel's core could explode at any time, so they need to make it out of City 17 as quick as possible. You just play the game along Alyx throughout most of this game, and when you make it out of City 17, the core explodes causing a big explosion. The game ends from here. This episode is the shortest Half Life 2 game, and it should take you about 2-4 hours to beat. But it is still fun like all of the Half Life games, and it advances the story, so don't skip it.

Half Life 2: Episode Two

As of June 2010, this is the last Episode of the Half Life 2 series, although Half Life 2: Episode Three is currently being worked and it might be released in a year or two, hopefully a year. But Episode Two starts after Episode One. Gordan is inside of the train that him and Alyx escaped from, and it is flooding with water. You just have to make easily make it to the other side of the train where Alyx is at, and she'll open the door with the Gravity Gun and give you the Gravity Gun to use throughout the rest of the game. After they make it out of the train and advance a little bit, the Citadel's core released a massive super portal that can release stronger energy and increase the Combine's army than before the Citadel exploded before. So Gordan and Alyx have to make it to the base where the scientist Dr. Arne Magnusson built a rocket to destroy the portal. Gordan and Alyx are needed because the transmission packet which the Combine sacrificed the Citadel to send, copied by Alyx and Gordon before they escape. It contains data on the formation of the super portal, which the resistance can use to collapse the portal before it forms completely. So they need to make it to the base before the portal fully forms. It has a sad ending which I don't want to spoil for you guys for if you want to play it.Great episode, with some minor changes. Like the flashlight bar is now separated from the sprinting and oxygen bar, so you can use your flashlight and sprint at the same time without the bar going down as fast in Half Life 2, and Episode One. Episode Two is longer than Episode One with 7-8 hours of gameplay.

Portal

Portal is a puzzle game, a fun one too, where you play as a girl named Chell, who is pretty much a test rat. You are suppose to test out a device that can make portals, and there is like 20 test chambers that require you to think in order to get passed them. A person named GLaDOS is pretty much the voice you hear out through the game. You wake in this bed in this tiny chamber, confused on who you are, and GLaDOS welcomes you, and tells you that you will have to run some tests, and you will be awarded with cake at the end, which you never receive. This is where "The cake is a lie" meme comes from, there is a hidden room with that and other stuff written on the wall during the middle of the game. I'm not going to tell you the rest so I don't ruin the ending you for. Portal is very short and should take you 2 hours to beat. But once you beat it, you have advanced maps, and challenges to beat so you have more gameplay after you beat the main game.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is the only multiplayer game on The Orange Box, and it is a good multiplayer game too. Also, I'm just letting you guys know, TF2 on the PC is the best version because there is more official maps, custom maps, unlockable weapons, and every class has its own set of achievements, and the more achievements you unlock for a class, the more weapons you will unlock. The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions do not have this. But Team Fortress 2 has 3 different game modes. In capture the flag, the objective for both teams is to obtain a briefcase of intelligence from the enemy team's base and return it to their own base while protecting their own briefcase of intelligence. Control Point games is that there are control points, usually 3-5, and one team is defending their control points until the time runs out, and the other team is trying to capture all of the control points before the time runs out, and every time the other team captures a control point, five extra minutes will be added to the game. Territorial Control or King of the Hill is kind of like Control Point, but both teams only have one control point to capture, and have one control point to defend. Once one of the teams captures the enemies control point, the game is over. For the control points, when the game ends in a tie, then a Team deathmatch or Sudden Death match begins with no respawning and ends once all of the players on a team die. They also have a game called Payload, but that can only be played on the PC version so i'm not going to talk about it.

So in conclusion, The Orange Box is amazing I recommend that you get it. On the Xbox version, there is a total of 99 achievements leading to 1000 total gamerscore, but most of the achievements aren't that hard to do. Most of them are easy, some take time, and some are kind of difficult to do. I also heard that the PS3 version wasn't as good as the Xbox 360 and PC versions because they don't have trophies to unlock on it, which I don't why, it doesn't have the autosave feature, so you have to save the game manually more, the frame rates are kind of messed up, Portal has slow loading screens, and the connection to Team Fortress 2 is kind of bad because it is connected to EA and EA doesn't have the best connection in the world. But I think they have fixed some of that stuff, and it is still a good game on the PS3.

I give this game a 10/10, and is one of the best games I have ever bought.

~bob

Besides the spelling mistakes this is a great review, although I do not agree with you on Portal and Half-Life 2.

Nice Review. I give you a good rep for taking time and making a great review!

wrote:Besides the spelling mistakes this is a great review, although I do not agree with you on Portal and Half-Life 2.

I have Firefox spell check, can you please tell me what I possibly spelled wrong? I spelled deathmatch wrong but I fixed it. If you mean the names, then you're wrong because I spelled them write, I even looked online on how to spell the names and they were the same as how I put them here. Thanks...but wtf? How could you hate Half Life 2?

thanks james for this review i think i want it for my bday now

bob8972 wrote:

The Orange Box is a game package of 5 games on 1 disc. Are they great games? You beat they are.

Hmm, what spelling mistakes? And IDK, I could just never get into Half-Life 2, and I don't want to start a flame war so I'll leave it at that.

wrote:

bob8972 wrote:

The Orange Box is a game package of 5 games on 1 disc. Are they great games? You beat they are.

Hmm, what spelling mistakes? And IDK, I could just never get into Half-Life 2, and I don't want to start a flame war so I'll leave it at that.

Thanks for noticing...

I found a mistake too...

"Best First Person Shooter Game Ever".

pikachumasterbrad12 wrote:I found a mistake too...

"Best First Person Shooter Game Ever".

That's not a mistake, that's a fact.

Where's your source?

pikachumasterbrad12 wrote:Where's your source?

He's got a point! Some website's Ive read said that game's like MW2 or Halo 3 are the best!

CapnMatt wrote:

pikachumasterbrad12 wrote:Where's your source?

He's got a point! Some website's Ive read said that game's like MW2or Halo 3 are the best!

RIGHT HERE!


Btw Bradley have you even played HL2 before haha?

Oh and Matt, did you just say MW2?

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Yeah I have played it before my friend had it so I was like fuck I gotta play this shit. Dude you finally came out of the closet too!!!

So, did you like it?

Yes, I played it like 6 years ago man is that game old lol.