Game Review: 'The Orange Box'
If you play games, you should own "The Orange Box." Period.
— -- They raised the bar for the first-person shooter genre with "Half-Life" and managed to one-up themselves with the release of the long-awaited and much beloved sequel "Half-Life 2."
Now the video game gods at Valve Software are at it again, this time offering up the holiday season's best value for gamers, which includes one of the most unique gaming experiences enthusiasts have ever been offered.
"The Orange Box" isn't just a video game, it's five. Included on the game disc are the critically acclaimed "Half-Life 2," the game's two minisequels, "Half-Life 2: Episode One" and "Half-Life 2: Episode Two," plus the latest version of the popular online shoot-em-up "Team Fortress 2" and the wholly original puzzle game "Portal."
Every minute of gaming offered up by "The Orange Box" is fun and worth its weight in gold, and while the graphical presentation of "Team Fortress 2" is amazing thanks to the use of "cel shading" to make the game look like a 3-D cartoon, it's "Portal" that stands out in this small, yet distinguished crowd.
In "Portal," Valve Software's unique brand of digital alchemy has generated a one-of-a-kind, fun and challenging gaming experience like nothing you've seen before.
As a test subject for Aperture Science Inc., it's your job to find your way out of a series of test chambers with only the company's latest high-tech device, the "Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device," to help you make your way around.
Though the eerily soothing female voice of your unseen A.I. supervisor, GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), guides you along with a few instructions, some ominous comments and the promise of cake upon successfully completing the test, there's not much story to speak of in Portal, and who cares? The game is so much fun, challenging and different, that a complex story would only get in the way.
When fired at a wall, the "portal gun" creates an opening and when fired again, it creates another. Walk through one portal, and you'll walk out the other. Generate a portal on the ceiling and fire one at your feet and you'll find yourself endlessly falling through the same room -- and building momentum at the same time. Launch one at a vertical wall as you're falling, and send yourself flying across the room.
