The Orange Box (HL2E2, Portal & TF2)

They Call It The Orange Box For A Reason
Its Orange And Its A Box

Man, the number of anime episodes released each day is really high, roughly 3 new episodes released each day plus old seasons doesn’t leave much time to blog on them, sadly. Not only that, but a lot of great games have been released recently, and even more in the next few weeks, like Kane and Lynch and Gears of War PC. One of the recently released games that have killed what little of a social life I had left is the Orange Box, containing Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode 1, Half Life 2 Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2. All amazing games and for a great price, it’s the best selling game out right now. Half Life 2 Episode 2 continues the epic saga of Gordon Freeman and his struggle to help his fellow man regain their rights and freedom in a dystopia future. Portal is the first of what Valve promises to be a series of mind boggling puzzles mixed with witty humor and an amazing plot. Team Fortress 2 is the second installment of the 9 year old Team Fortress, many gamers have been waiting for this game so long they’ve gotten married and have even had a few kids. Miku and I will be covering all the new games in the Orange Box in this review, Miku covering Half Life 2 Episode 2, and Ill be covering Portal and Team Fortress. Behold the first collaborative post on Nakadashi Kibou.

Portal

5 Star Accommodation

Most people buying the Orange Box considered Portal to be a fun add-on, but they were mostly focused on Half Life 2 Episode 2 and Team Fortress to really give a rat’s ass to what Portal was and how it played, and only even started it after beating HL2E2 and playing a few games of TF2. Thankfully Miku suggested I play Portal first, seeing as he had the Orange Box a few days before I did, I’m happy I listened. Portal being the underdog of the bunch made me think “Beat it, have some fun and then get to the big guns”. Yet now that I beat HL2E2 and played enough TF2 games to know where the good vantage points are, I can safely say that Portal is one of the best games I’ve played in a very long time. It destroys HL2E2 and TF2 with ease in terms of fun and originality and introduces a complete new type of experience to puzzle and first person gaming, and Ill tell you why.

Levels Get Harder Further On, But Youll Never Feel Frustrated

Portal is at its core a puzzle game, the point is to get from point A to point B without dying and using portals to get there. For those of you who haven’t seen the trailers or have played the game, the player awakens in a cell with no back-story or reasoning and is given the “Aperture Handheld Portal Device”, the point of this seems to be a test facility of some point, and thankfully you’re the little mouse in the maze. The portal-gun allows you to make two portals in which you can enter one and come out the other, which allows infinite possibilities, like the endless fall; making a portal in the ceiling and one on the floor, and the fling; using gravity to toss you across the room. You’ll have to use your brain a lot if you plan on making it out of this place alive and the Artificial Intelligence named “Glad0s” isn’t exactly making it any easier for you.

Insane Rantings From Past Test Subjects Prove Helpful

Portal to me is perfect, Id like to pick it apart and show you its flaws so we could all laugh at them, but there really isn’t any. The maps are difficult yet not impossible, the plot is amazing yet subtle and forces you to use your imagination to figure out what’s going on and even ties in with the story of Half Life in certain areas, the effects are amazing, the voice acting is dead on and somehow Portal makes you feel emotions that you’ve never thought possible. Half way through the game, after wandering the metallic halls scared and alone, wondering what the hells going on, you encounter the person that consoles you and makes you feel like everything’s going to be okay. Wait… did I say person? I meant object. Enter the Weighted Companion Cube, the only thing you can truly trust in this hellhole of a testing facility. It doesn’t talk, it doesn’t light up and it doesn’t do anything at all really. It’s a metal cube with a heart on it that you use to hold down buttons and block incoming fire with, yet for some unfathomable reason, you love it like it was your own blockish child. Gamers become madly in love with this cube, I haven’t met a single person who’s played Portal that didn’t end up ranting on how awesome it was, and I’ve met plenty. It’s a mystery to never be solved, but I do know one thing, I’m ordering a plush companion cube from the Steam store even if it kills me. Along with the cube is enemy turrets with a sweet little robotic voice that consoles you when you knock them over or kindly ask for you to come back so they can shoot you, it really makes you feel bad when you have to disable them. These feelings towards blocks and turrets seem insane to someone who’s never played Portal, but believe me, beat Portal and you’ll be ordering a plush cube with the rest of us.

What A Beauty

Portals only questionable trait is its length, the time it takes to beat it is roughly 2 to 3 hours, which sounds short, but is really perfect for this kind of game. It makes it so there’s no over repetition in the maps, it doesn’t make it feel boring at any time and there’s also achievements and challenges to complete once you beat the campaign to keep you entertained for hours after its over. Portal while being the shortest and most unappealing of the group is the best in my opinion; if someone asked me to give it a rating I would say 10/10 without a moments pause. Valve is already talking about a second Portal and are even considering Portal multiplayer, but they haven’t gone into any detail besides the fact that there WILL be more Portal, no questions asked. They know they’ve stumbled upon another gem and they’ll probably keep making Portal games so long as the public wants it and they can keep coming up with great ideas for it, much like Half Life. Do yourself a favor and buy Portal if you don’t like the other things on the Orange Box, it appeals to such a large audience and really pushes what we consider to be puzzle games, its revolutionary, don’t miss out on it.

Team Fortress 2

BOOM HEASHSOT!!!!11

Team Fortress 2, one of the most anticipated games on the Orange Box, rivaled only by HL2E2, but not by much. Gamers have waiting 9 long years for this game, which used to be a mod for Half Life Source, most people considered TF to be revolutionary (there’s that word again) in terms of online gaming, and it really was. Team Fortress 2 was due to release a long time ago, but kept being postponed due to design and game play issues, the team didn’t think it rivaled that of the first TF, and kept scrapping it and starting over, keeping some ideas from the last one and adding new ones with every version. Finally, years later, Team Fortress finally hits the shelves, with animation that has an uncanny resemblance to The Incredibles and keeping some of the things that made Team Fortress so good and adding a few new ones as well. They got rid of the grenades (thank god), which I can only guess to be because of how the veterans of the game would exploit the bouncy little things by barricading themselves in rooms or on the top of stairs and rack up kills, ruining the experience for new players and people who don’t like being killed by someone with no real skill. Team Fortress 2 keeps the class aspect that that first one was so popular for, you get to choose your favorite class before heading out into battle which allowed for people to master the class they felt the most comfortable in and allowing for a little differentiation. TF2 going to be one of those games people will be playing for years to come, much like Counter Strike and Diablo, it’s was destined to be a classic before it was released and it finally quenches the thirst TF1 players have been craving for oh so long.

TF2 kept the same classes that were in the first one, although making a few changes and tweaks from the first they’re generally the same. Ill go through each one and go through the pros and cons, seeing as how I’ve played as enough of each class to know.

• Heavy: The bronze of the bunch basically, he’s equipped with a minigun and a shotgun and used his 2 hulking fists as melee. His health is the largest of them all so he can take the most damage, and in the right hands can be the reason your team wins or not. When playing online, anyone with a microphone screams “HEAVY”, because everyone knows if they don’t take him out, the games pretty much over. The bad; Heavy’s are slow as hell, it takes 3 times as long for them to cross the field then most classes, also they eat ammo like a starved wolf on a chicken farm, if you don’t re-supply on ammo every few minutes, you’re basically target practice for everyone. Heavy’s can melt other guns into ammo for his minigun, but its hard to do that in the middle of combat, if you’re well stocked and watch out for snipers you’re a huge asset to the team and can defend points for a long time, as well as take them.
  

• Engineer: The one with a southern accent, equipped with a shotgun, a toolbox and a wrench for melee. His specialty is building; equipping the toolbox allows you to choose whether to make a dispenser, a turret or a transporter. Dispensers supply ammo, health and metal to anyone who stands next to it, and is important if you want to build a turret in a remote location, since you’ll need the dispenser to supply you with metal if you’ll want to build more things or upgrade your turret. Turrets shoot enemies automatically and are the pride and joy of most engineers. Turrets have 3 stages, the first is a small 1 barrel turret that doesn’t do much damage, the next is a double minigun turret that deals medium damage and the last stage is a two large miniguns and a rocket launcher on top that has the maximum damage. To upgrade to the next stage you’ll need to supply the turret with 200 metal which you can give by hitting the turret with your wrench. Transporters take the person whose standing on it from point A to B, of course the engineer will have to build 2 transporters before it’s operational. Engineers also have a detonator that will cause the turret to explode which is handy if an enemy tries to sneak up behind it, but you’ll have to remake the turret all over again. Besides the turrets engineers aren’t much use in combat, unless you’re really skilled with a shotgun, so it’s better to stay with your turret if you ever choose to be one, turrets don’t have a lot of health and need looking after, but if you can do that, you’ll rack up points really fast.
  

• Demoman: The Irish black alcoholic, demos are equipped with a grenade launcher, a sticky bomb launcher and a bottle of whiskey for melee. Demos are good for those people from TF1 who like shooting grenades from the top of stairwells, though most demos enjoy using sticky bombs a lot more. Demos can use the sticky bomb launcher to set traps just about anywhere, on the wall around the door or surrounding the flag, they can stick it and wait for their prey. The only thing wrong with that is sticky bombs need looking after, you have to detonate them yourself, and if you’re not there to make sure no ones running past it, there’s no use putting them there at all. A good demoman can defend a point or flag from anyone for a really long time, and can be useful in combat for flushing people out of cover with a well placed grenade, though useless at long distances. They’re mostly defense only, so unless you’ve mastered the grenade launcher, you’re better off staying near the point/flag.
  

• Scout: The youngest and fastest, scouts are equipped with a scattergun, a pistol and a baseball bat for melee. Scouts are the fastest class by far, making them really useful in capture the flag or zipping past turrets. Though with speed comes a downfall, their health. Scouts are one of the classes with the least HP, but make up for it since they’re pretty hard to hit when they’re moving. Scouts also have a double jump, so they can clear large gaps and reach places other classes cant. Scouts are good for in and out operations, so don’t charge in to a group of enemies expecting to take them all out. The scattergun has little to no accuracy, its good for up-close and personal kills, if the targets far away switch to pistol, though it doesn’t go a great deal of damage. Take the longer routes and ways no one else can, like on top of buildings and get to the target as quickly as possible. Scouts are a good thing to have in CTF operations and dodging others, but lack in the opposition department, don’t stand still and you’ll last a long time.
  

• Pyro: The incoherent one, he’s equipped with a flamethrower, a shotgun and a fire axe for melee. Pyros are great at taking down people in enclosed areas, but are literally useless at medium to long distance. The good thing about being a Pyro is that if you set an enemy on fire, hell keeps burning for a good while unless he gets re-supplied, a medic or jump in the water, so you don’t have to worry much if your target runs away. Pyros are amazing at defending specific areas and provide much needed cover to people taking over a point or a solid defense when protecting the flag. Pyros need to stay in enclosed areas, where the target cant move around much, hallways and small rooms are perfect. Run up to your prey, set him alight and keep the heat on until he’s down. If you’ve got to go outside, do it fast then find another building to hide in, because you’re just going to be target practice for anyone on the other team. A Pyro means you can leave your base knowing no one will be touching your point or flag.
  

• Soldier: The unimaginative one, they’re equipped with a rocket launcher, a shotgun (again), and a shovel for melee. Soldiers are… the normal online shooter character. There’s nothing really special about the class, which I guess in a way makes it special. Soldiers have good HP, a rocket launcher which is good for medium to longish range combat and a shotgun for closer kills. There’s no pro or con to them, they’re the medium of all the other classes, good for either defense or offense and aren’t too slow or too fast. One thing that soldiers can do is rocket jump, they jump and shoot a rocket down and use the propulsion of the rocket to shoot themselves up, though at the cost of some HP. No matter what the situation is a Soldier can jump in a cope with it, which makes them a useful addition to any team.
  

• Sniper: My personal favorite class, snipers are equipped with a sniper rifle of course, a machine gun and a machete for melee. Snipers are good for long distance kills and are really helpful in taking down Heavy’s. Snipers cause more damage the longer they aim with the scope, so if you aim for long enough, you can deal a lot of damage with one shot, unless you hit the head, then it’s a one hit kill. Snipers are thankfully given a machinegun incase someone gets too close for you to cope with, just switch to that and you’re suddenly equally matched. If there’s one sniper on either team, they usually don’t get along very well, and end up having little sniper duels behind the scenes. If in the middle of battle and I see another sniper, I take aim instantly and try to take him out before he does me in, and suddenly it’s a battle of sniping skills. Snipers are good outdoors in open ended maps, though most maps have little windows or balconies made specifically for Snipers. A good sniper can hold off whoever comes into view, literally taking on the entire opposition alone, allowing the others to attack while he or she defends. A Sniper is really valuable in just about any map, and the other team will soon realize if they’re in trouble or not depending on how many sniper headshot kills they see on the top right of their screen. Stay outside, stay out of sight and move to another location if another sniper spots you, because they’ll be aiming at where they saw you before if you kill them. Do that and you’ll be just about the only defense your team will need.
  

• Medic: My second favorite class, medics are equipped with a healing gun, a needle shooter and a medical saw for melee. Medics are the only class that can heal besides engineers and their dispensers. Most teams have a medic no matter what, and if they don’t, chances are they won’t last long. The healing gun shoots a sort of laser that heals allies and if you heal enough people you get a power called “Uber” that will render you and the person your healing invincible for a short period of time. A medic healing a person with full HP actually gives him 50 HP more then usual, but it goes back down to normal once he stops healing. The needle gun is good for short to medium range, but doesn’t deal that much damage. A good medic is needed on any team, no matter what. Healing wounded teammates and reinforcing them can give your team the extra push they need to win. A medic giving uber to a Heavy literally makes them unstoppable, and medics get assist kills for every kill the person they’re healing takes down. A medic is amazingly valuable and respected, stay with your team and help them out, they’ll thank you for it later.
  

• Spy: The hated ones, equipped with a revolver, a zapper and a mask and a knife for melee. Spies are potentially the most dangerous of all the classes. The revolver deals a good amount of damage but it only has 6 shots, they have zappers which slowly disable and destroy any engineer’s turret, they have masks which allow them to look like any class from either team and a knife wound from behind is an instant kill. Along with all that the spy can active a cloak that will render him invisible for a short amount of time. A well trained spy can sneak into your group of teammates dressed as an ally and slowly start picking them off, or stay invisible in the shadows and wait for someone to separate and take them out. With those entire specialties spy’s are hard to master and require a while to become good at, but when you do its well worth it. The downfall; spies like the scout have low HP, meaning if you’re discovered, you’re screwed. Beside that spies can’t take an enemies point or flag while invisible or disguised, so they’ll have to expose themselves if they want to get points that way. A good spy’s value is rived only by that of the medic. A spy can infiltrate and reveal the whereabouts of any member on the opposing teams discreetly take out anyone and even receive HP from enemy medics and walk past enemy turrets. If you’re a spy, don’t choose a class to imitate like the scout because you’re speed isn’t consistent to theirs, and you’ll be easy to spot. Choose a class with the same speed, don’t draw attention to yourself and take to the shadows when you’re invisible, they can still see the flocculation from your cloak in the light. Master being a spy and you can take out anyone and not even have to waste any ammo.
  

With all the classes out of the way (finally), we can sum it all up with the maps and game play. The game was released with only 6 maps, most of which don’t differ much from the other. The game was also released with only 2 game modes, Capture the Flag and Capture the Points. Though knowing Valve they’ll probably release more maps and game types somewhere in the near future. Until then though were stuck mastering these maps and game types, hopefully they’ll introduce a team deathmatch and king of the hill in the next update. Another thing the boys down at Valve did, and are quite proud of, is the kill-cam. When players die the camera instantly flies over to the person who killed you, this allows you to seek vengeance more easily next turn and also allows you to snap a nice little picture with the F5 button if you feel the need. The two teams are differentiated by colors and bases of course, people on the red team wear red and people on the “Blu” team wear blue. When running from one base to another, you’ll notice a difference as you leave your territory and enter theirs. The red base is made mostly of wood and the things inside are compromised of warmer colors, whereas the blue base is mostly metallic and the insides are made from a brighter color. This allows you to know once you’ve cross “the line” and entered they’re base, and also lets you know there’s more chances of meeting an enemy here.

Reds Base Compared to Blues, Obvious Difference

Overall Team Fortress 2 is a solid online game; it’ll be a lot more fun in a few months probably when there are more maps to choose from and more game modes, but even still. The multiple classes allow for a completely different feel to the game depending on what class you choose and experimenting with them can be really fun and rewarding. Mastering a class boosts your worth to the team and allows you to rank up more points, so its better if you choose a class that suits you best and stick with it unless you find yourself in a situation that demands a change or you feel like a change of pace. You wont have any problems finding a sever with people in it and everyone there’s pretty nice and learn to depend on teamwork. Stick with TF2 for a while, its going somewhere good, I can guarantee you’ll find a class that suits you and that the game will be a lot more fun once the new maps are released. That’s it for my part; enjoy Miku’s review on HL2E2. It’s already 1 o’clock in the morning and I’ve got to wake up early for class tomorrow, so I’ll wish you all well. Look into the Orange Box if you haven’t already, there’s more then likely something for you in there, and if you ever want someone to play with online leave a comment with your Steam ID and I’d be happy to play with you. This is konakona, signing off for now, Thanks for reading.