games
In a world where 60 smackers routinely nets you gaming crap like Lair and Blue Dragon, The Orange Box is like Easter, Christmas and Halloween rolled into one tidy little package. Chock-full with 2004’s Half-Life 2, 2006’s Half-Life 2: Episode One, the multiplayer Team Fortress 2, Half-Life: Episode Two and Portal, this isn’t just an amazing deal—it resets the bar for gaming value.
Of course, that value is significantly more problematic if you’re a PC gamer who already shelled out for Half Life 2 and Episode One. Suddenly, you’re an unwilling victim of Valve’s longstanding addiction to content repackaging, and you may end up feeling like the schmuck who bought the director’s cuts of The Lord of the Rings DVDs, only to see the super-extended director’s cuts hit stores three months later.
There’s nothing but A-list gaming here, especially if you’ve been tracking the ongoing adventures of Gordon Freeman, science geek/savior extraordinaire, but Portal‘s actually the best reason to give The Orange Box a major shake. It’s a mind-bending first-person puzzler that finds you crawling the floors (and walls, and ceilings) of the mysterious Aperture Sciences Laboratories, shooting a gun that blasts glowing blue and orange portals through walls and dimensions while a disembodied computer voice provides direction (and unintentional comic relief).
The first time you approach a portal and catch a glimpse of yourself across the room from a completely different perspective, you’ll think, "Wow, this is what Lewis Carroll must have felt like every day." Haters can argue that we saw this same technique last year in Prey, but it wasn’t implemented nearly as cleverly. Unraveling the puzzles in all 19 stages—not to mention the brutal advance challenges that open up once you do—requires tossing your spatial thinking into a blender and pressing speed-puree. Oh, and Dramamine helps, too. A lot.
And as for Gordon and Alyx? Episode Two‘s both longer and more dramatic than Episode One, with a bigger emphasis on vehicle-driving sequences and epic throwdowns with Combine aliens. (The battle that closes this chapter’s a real doozy.)
It feels almost Scroogelike to ask for more at this point, but Episode Three can’t come soon enough. Hey, Valve: How ’bout throwing it in with Portal 2?
