Video Games : Half-Life 2: The Orange Box (PC DVD)

Rating: - Steam destroys my game play!
I don't want to repeat what has already been written about the numerous problems caused by the Steam engine, but I will certainly be joining those who have decided never to buy a Steam enabled game again.

Above and beyond all of the restrictions and setup problems others have highlighted, I now believe that it is the Steam engine, not my graphics card, processor or operating system which has left my Orange Box games virtually unplayable! When Steam is running my mouse pointer constantly turns to the busy indicator, about every two seconds for perhaps four seconds. Looking at the system resources shows 54% of the processor is being used up and this plummets to 2% when Steam is closed.

Given the following spec...

AMD Turion 64 x2 TL-60 2.00 GHz processor
3 Gig RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7150M

... you would expect Half Life 2: Episode 2 to run smoothly wouldn't you? Yet it actually runs so badly at times it is like watching 10 fps video! The graphics look fantastic... I just don't have the time to wait whilst I watch them being 'drawn' ... horizontal lines making their way down the screen like an old TV with (excuse the pun) a dodgy valve!

Given the amount of processor time that valve appears to be taking up, if this is not the cause of my problems, it certainly ain't helping!

I have tried absolutely everything to resolve this problem, all the driver updates, turn this on and that off and every other piece of advice offered by and to the numberous others on the various forums who are also suffering this type of problem...

My advice is don't waste your money on the Orange Box like I did ... or any other Steam enabled game for that matter!

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Rating: - Bargin
Half Life 2 is a brilliant game that still looks stunning today and Portal is pure brilliance. After completeing the game I'm still replaying it. It also comes with a commentry mode which is interesting to learn facts about the games devlopment. If your already a fan of Half Life having ep 1 an 2 and the lost coast level in this pack makes it a bargin even if these are reletively short.

Team Fortress two really isn't my thing and I find the interface for getting onto a game confusing hence the four stars. Otherwise all the other games are five.

Steam is very simple to use and frankly after reading all the bad comments about it I have to wonder why. I have experinced no difficultly with it (simply install, create an account then download the games you require (I brought the orange box through steam directly)). Plus there's always the option to play offline if it's not a multiplayer game. It's a nice touch however that you can talk to your friends either through text or voice (via the 'steam network') regradless of what game they are playing meaning I don't have to switch back to msn to know if someones talking to me.

The Orange box also comes with a orange box themed version of Peggle, which is more like a demo then a full game, but is a really enjoyable puzzle game.

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Rating: - The best, the only, Orange Box.
This game is amazing. Having played the Half-life 2 demo and lost coast over and over due to its amazing graphics and fun gameplay, I bought this. The first level was just fun, had an amazing atmosphere and was just awesome. Then next level was the reunion. With comedy and more, this short level was the most excitement you could get from a nutshell. Next was what was probably my least favourite level but had some good atmosphere and graphical quality to it.

But suddenly at the end of it... you get a vehicle! Great level!

Then later on another vehicle level.

And then fights in city 17 and the awesome ending.

The Half-life 2 episodes are also very good but short. In the first episode you get a very good thrill. Which I won't spoil for you.

In the second episode you get the best vehicle yet! Also there is a great cliffhanger which ties in with another one which is that you'll get a helicopter which you get to see.

Then portal is just amazing. Shoot portals. Go through portals. Good game. Good ending music. It's fun fun fun.

Also Team Fortress 2 is a very good comedic online fps with so many classes that you surely won't get bored.

Also the physics engine on all of these games is unbelievably realistic.

Thanks for reading my review!

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Rating: - Steaming back for refund!!!
What the hell *is* this 'Steam' rubbish anyway?

Here's our experience.

1. Buy game.
2. Install it.
3. Try to play it. Oops... it won't let us, until we sign up an account with them. So we go through all the usual annoyances as it tells us various user names are already taken, tells us our choice of password are no good, etc, etc, etc.

FINALLY it creates the account. Goody! Now, where were we...? Oh yes!

3. Try to play it. Oops - now when we try to run the game it opens up some sort of customised web browser thingie which tells us all sorts of stuff we aren't interested in.

One thing DOES interest us, and not in a good way. It offers us the opportunity to purchase the game. Hang on. If I haven't ALREADY purchased it, then what WAS this package Amazon sent me? What was that round, CD-looking thing I put into my PC?

After 20 minutes of messing about, it really stopped being funny. We've bought a game, installed it, been made to jump through all sorts of stupid hoops, and still cannot do ANYTHING to get it to actually play.

Conclusion: Steaming Mad. It may be a brilliant game, but enough is enough. It's going back, and we'll never buy anything from this braindead company again.

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Rating: - Orange Box (sp. HL2)

HALF-LIFE 2 & EPISODES

A lot of people say that some games get better with time. Most of those people are lying. Technology just progresses too quickly, trends are as fickle as the capricious northern winds, and games consoles live and die to be immediately replaced with the next model. Games just don't get better.

"Half-Life 2" is a game that gets better with time. Not just because people like it, but because it's still going. It's making babies. And, even when you play it for the second or third time, it seems like it's a living, breathing entity.

Since it was first released in 2004, its developer Valve has written two additional "episodes" to the storyline, carrying on from where the first game left off. They knew that they couldn't reserve the material for a sequel - this wasn't some half-assed attempt like "Halo 2" and "Halo 3" which are two halves of the same game. They knew that this was still "Half-Life 2" and they were going to release it as such, in the forms of "Half-Life 2: Episode One" and "Half-Life 2: Episode Two". The game still lives, and it's getting bigger and better as it goes.

"Episode Two" was released as part of Valve's game compilation "The Orange Box", and again individually in stores in 2007. After three years, it was still growing and developing, the story expanding as the characters deepened and more of its world revealed. "Episode Three", the last segment of "Half-Life 2", is being developed as you read this, but may yet be some time.

The game - and let's talk about it as one game; one story - is a first-person shooter of the highest calibre, reawakening the dormant scientist Gordon Freeman after his first adventure at Black Mesa in "Half Life". He wakes up on a train, heading into the subjugated City 17.

The world has moved on a little since Gordon was last around. After maybe two years, the dimensional rifts that happened as a result of Black Mesa's ill-destined experiments have been hijacked by an expanding alien race known as the "Combine". Their avatar on Earth, a corrupted human by the name of Dr Breen, has taken control of the city and the surrounding landscape, subduing the population until they are thoroughly defeated and hopeless.

Not entirely hopeless. There is a resistance movement, which Gordon becomes a part of. More than that, he becomes a sort of living martyr, a figurehead. The illustrious Gordon Freeman is back to lead the resistance against the Combine, and free humanity!

The storyline is awesome. And that's just the main segment of the game. The following two episodes incorporate spectacular set pieces and plot changes, tugging at the emotions of the three-dimensional characters as their plight becomes more dire by the minute. They aren't just add-ons or expansion packs, and there's so much stuff in there that I can't go into it here. Needless to say that if you like a game with story; with advanced graphics and in-game physics; with cool weapons like the "gravity gun" to accompany other ass-kicking human and Combine arms; with realistic characters with human expressions and top-class voice actors - then you need only purchase "Half-Life 2" and its accompanying episodes. A spectacular vision brought to life, as exciting, emotive and dramatic as anything a gamer could hope for.


PORTAL

Awesome puzzle game using the H-L2 engine. It involves creating an "open" portal with one button, and an "exit" portal with another - use it to figure out you way around obstacles and enemies.

Sounds very simple; in reality, it's an intricately desiged, incredibly-challenging game that fails only because it's too short. There is a very loose story and a boss battle of sorts at the end that really pushes this game from four stars to five. Awesome ending credits, with brilliant music throughout. Definately not one to miss.


TEAM FORTRESS 2

I have to confess, I haven't played Team Fortress 2. It's an online deathmatch FPS, using formulas that have been perfectly honed for years. The first Team Fortess had unbeatable gameplay - no exaggeration,
UNBEATABLE - and this has proven with fans to be even better.

The graphical style is unique amongst games, but borrows a lot from classic US and European newspaper strips, which also inspired the art style of films like "The Incredibles". The graphics are wonderful and vibrant, and the selection of character-types and weapons is wide and varied. There are also numerous achievements to unlock, and also a bunch of pretty funny cut-scenes for each character-type.

It's not my type of game, being online and without a story of any kind, but what I've seen is good and I trust the praise bestowed upon it by my peers!