The Orange Box

Half Life 2 is the darling first-person shooter for PC enthusiasts, but I have never been a PC enthusiast. I have never, up until this point, played Half Life or Half Life 2 but have merely read of its alleged greatest. So I approached The Orange Box – a compilation of Half Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode 1, Half Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 – as an inductee to the Half Life universe with a console gamers frame of mind. My limited experience with PC gaming has been generally negative; I have found PC games to be unbalanced and unforgiving. My expectations for Half Life 2, then, were lukewarm at best. To my pleasant surprise, Half Life 2 and, indeed, nearly the whole The Orange Box package, is a brilliantly designed gaming experience top to bottom.

Half Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode 1, Half Life 2: Episode 2

For the uninitiated, the story in Half Life 2 is a mystery. The game offers nothing in the form of exposition. There is not much to go on, even in the manual. But what there is to go on is brilliantly and seamlessly presented. Told entirely in first person, you, as Gordon Freeman, a physicist formerly employed at the Black Mesa research institute, traverse throughout City 17 and its outskirts battling the “Combine,” a force of both alien and human and crossbred monstrosities bent on the total occupation of Earth. The premise is familiar, but like the best of videogames, Half Life 2’s simple premise is brought to life in an expansive and rich universe.

The Combine pushed their invasion through a dimensional portal linking their world with our own. But not just organized, sentient beings made their way through: a complete ecology of invasive species both animalistic and parasitic made the trip as well. Earth becomes home to this alien ecology, full of dynamic relationships resulting in varied encounters. From Combine soldiers and their military apparatus, to Head Crabs mated with human beings, to the Ant Lion hordes and their hive like hierarchy, each of these “factions,” if they can be called that, bring their own complexity, their own fully fleshed-out structure and relations. None of this complexity is delivered through dialogue or other narrative device; rather, you simply take all of it in through osmosis, through contact will all of these denizens. It is in this subtle yet very effective method of story telling that the game wraps you up in a world much larger than the polygonal constraints you tread through.

There is, of course, an actual narrative, and it is carried out nearly exclusively through real time conversations between characters and scripted events. In this particular aspect, Half Life 2 immediately impresses. Voice acting is solid through and through, with all of the actors toning down the typically overwrought and phony emotion found in many videogames, playing it straight most of the time. This lends an endearing personality to most characters, not the least of which is Alyx Vance, your female side-kick and potential love interest. You and Alyx are part of a rag tag human resistance, supported by the brain-trust of scientists with intimate knowledge of The Combine and the Black Mesa incident. All of the characters are brought to life, aside from the excellent voice acting, with the utmost top-notch facial animation I have ever witnessed. It is perhaps this innovation in particular that is most becoming as it lends all characters relatable, likable, and captivating personas.

Like any good tale, Half Life 2 steeps its rather run-of-the-mill premise in mystery and nuance. The friendly Vortigauhn alien race helps Gordon along on his quest, but their true intentions and motives are called into question. What’s more, a mysterious character that can only be described as a cross between the X-Files’ cigarette man with the verbal cadence of Christopher Walken, makes brief, powerful interventions through unknown means as he appears not physically but… well, you will see. The man’s intentions appear selfishly motivated, and yet he divulges innuendo and rumour calling into question many things. The story and universe in Half Life 2 is a remarkably mature achievement for videogames.

This story is woven seamlessly throughout the game, and never interrupts the perfectly paced gaming. Much of the presentation seems rather highbrow for a simple first person shooter, but the gameplay matches that presentation with ease. Half Life 2 does not come equipped with a plethora of unique and alien weaponry. In fact, most weapons are your standard fair: a pistol, shotgun, automatic rifle, magnum, and the ever-trusty crowbar. What unique weapons there are to Half Life 2 are few, including a more powerful Combine automatic weapon and a crossbow/sniper rifle that uses what must only be radioactive cells/arrows as projectiles. Despite their mundane appearance, they are all massively satisfying to wield. Even the pistol exhibits great force and effectiveness. The assault rifle cracks-off at an alarmingly powerful rate, as too does the Combine version which erupts in nearly ear-splitting bass.

It serves the weapons well, then, that the enemies you are up against are as interesting and satisfying. For one thing, they all react appropriately to being shot and the physics on display are quite remarkable. For another, there are so many types of enemies and styles of aggression that combat rarely, if ever, feels monotonous. Combine soldiers will charge, flank, take cover, and are intelligently menacing. They do not take a lot to dispatch, but their numbers and strategy take care of any weaknesses they may have individually. What they sport in vehicles is another whole level of menacing. Gunships, which can only be described as hovering porpoise-like helicopters, dog your every step and can only be taken down with the heaviest of armaments. Striders, which can only be described as giant daddy-long-legs, are equally as persistent, and pack even greater fire power. Not only are they shockingly original and fascinating to witness, but the effort exuded to take just one down also results in very satisfying gameplay.

The Combine are complemented by humans mutated by headcrabs and Ant Lions. The headcrab/human monstrosities are basically zombies rambling their way towards you, and offer up a fright or two. They are not terribly quick-witted, but they pop out at the most inopportune moments and require time to take down. The Ant Lions are equally dense, but are blazingly fast and aggressive in comparison, but do not require much to take down. As you progress through the levels, you are never quite certain what you will come up against, and what you will have to employ to get through. With a plethora of different foes with distinct behavior, things never get dull.

Half Life 2 does have one more weapon, and it is its most remarkable weapon: the Gravity Gun. As if all of the aforementioned weapons and enemies were not enough, the gravity gun effectively turns the world itself into a weapon. One function zaps objects sending them flying, the other latches onto objects so that they can be carried with ease. Latch onto an object to carry it, and you can then zap it creating a deadly projectile. As you might expect, there are many items strewn about levels that can take advantage of this mechanic, from rocks, to tree trunks and barrels. But the most effective and satisfying come in the form of various exploding and flammable receptacles (like the evergreen exploding barrel) and large circular saws. Send a circular saw flying into a crowd of headcrab zombies, and they topple to the ground bisected at the waist.

The Gravity Gun’s ability to manipulate objects inherently means that the world is full of robust physics, and this is most certainly the case in Half Life 2. But Half Life 2 goes beyond just using physics to make the combat more interesting: it employs it in the form of puzzles. Indeed, the game breaks up the action frequently by facing you with puzzles to sort out before moving on. These puzzles can take the form of how to appropriately pass through one area to the next, or as simple as taking a loose electrical plug and plugging it back into the environment. Many involve weighing down ramps on one end so that the other elevates to a precipice. But this is just one example of how the physics play a role in the game.

In this way, from the beginning to end, Half Life 2 plays out. You will fight your way through City 17, to the outskirts of the City, and back and forth again, frequently punctuated by physics-based puzzles. The game flows in one set piece, with no interruption between stages or levels; you are covering ground, foot by foot, traversing from point A to B. While this may seem bland, the level design is so expertly executed it elevates your journey into something really memorable. Besides fighting and puzzle solving, you will take to vehicles during extended stretches. These, too, are surprisingly well fleshed-out sequences that compliment the game quite well. They also have the added benefit of making you aware that you really are travelling large distances. While on foot, the levels are equally well-designed, from simple corridor crawls, to alien architecture, to outdoor woodland, and beyond. One particularly fantastic sequence involves traversing the understructure of a suspension bridge, with nothing but the structure itself to travel over, while being dogged by a gunship. There is nothing under the bridge itself accept the beam support structure and what you would expect to find (i.e., no floating platforms or other videogame ploys). And yet, it works very, very well.

The pacing of Half Life 2 flows extremely well. There is rarely a moment where you are underwhelmed as challenges - combat and puzzles and scripted story sequences - are presented at a steady, even pace. The only knock against Half Life 2 is that this pacing is so incredibly methodical, you could practically set your watch to it; the game at times borders on mechanical, almost lifeless precision. But it never really gets there because the gameplay is so solid to begin with. It must also be said that along with all of this excellent pacing, the normal difficulty setting felt so intimately tuned into my own skill level that the game was always challenging without frustrating, and never so easy that you could glide through without repercussion. Frankly, it was like the game was reading my mind. The other note on pacing is that while the game is chock-full of great scenarios, the game does not quite reach awe-inspiring moments. It is not until Episode 2 that the game really manages to take you off your feet.

As you may have gathered by this point, Half Life 2 is a heavily scripted game. It stands in stark contrast to a game like Halo 3 where, while certainly scripted at points, has much more sandbox-style play. Halo 3 demands a second play through or more due to the inherent variety, but Half Life 2 is not so replay friendly as it happens to be quite linear; going back and playing again is not going to reveal anything new. Despite this, Half Life 2 is a much more consistently enjoyable single-player experience overall. I’ll just put this bluntly: It is better than Halo 3.

Half Life 2 is not without its faults, though few. First are the squad mechanics. Well into the game you will gain control of squad members, other human resistance fighters, to direct in battle. But your squad control is very reminiscent of Gears of War’s: it doesn’t really work. It is also of no help that they introduce this squad mechanic in the tight confines of City 17’s ghettos with your squad-mates constantly getting in your way and blocking your path. “Sorry, Freeman” is a phrase uttered by your squad-mates often when they block your path. The very fact that Valve thought to include this voice sample is telling. Secondly, Episode 2 is a bit underwhelming compared to the rest of the Half Life 2 saga; it does not offer the same thrills and variety of either the original or Episode 2. It very much feels like Valve was working out the kinks with episodic content, kinks that were more than corrected in Episode 2.

Portal

Portal is a first person puzzle game involving - you guessed it – portals. You are a subject in an unknown testing facility, required to use portal technology to pass from challenge to challenge, housed in separate rooms of the facility. A portal is a doorway to another portal elsewhere in the level, and can be freely passed through in the opposite direction as well. You are given a portal gun used to deploy a maximum of two portals at one time.

It’s a simple concept brought to life with a good deal of complexity and very clever design. At its simplest, you shoot a portal opening onto a wall next to you, and shoot another onto a wall past impassible obstacles. Enter the portal closest to you and you exit the portal on the other side, thus effectively passing the challenge. At its most complex, you will have to time portal openings precisely to get power projectiles to travel across a level to a power receptacle, you will have to gain access to weighted cubes for placing on appropriate buttons, you will have to circumvent unmanned turrets impeding progress, and you will have to do all of these things at once.

One particularly great wrinkle in the design revolves around the use of momentum and gravity. Much like Half Life 2 itself, physics play an integral role in Portal. If you place a portal on the ground below you, then another high on a wall behind you, entering the portal on the ground ejects you from the one above and flings you forward. As you fall you gain momentum. Now, as you fall towards the portal below, if you direct yourself appropriately, you will re-enter the portal on the ground with much greater momentum thus flinging yourself from the portal above with much greater force. This is but one example; many puzzles are designed around this gravity and momentum and they feel wonderful.

Portal’s puzzles are all well designed. There are but a few that are needlessly frustrating, due less to puzzle design but more to control and perspective issues. Even the toughest puzzles can be solved in a relatively short period of time with some persistence. In fact, Portal overall is a short game; too short, in fact. After all is said and done, you will have completed Portal in just a few hours, four hours tops.

Despite its short playtime, Portal is steeped in great atmosphere and an actual story that is sinister and unexpected, elevating it above just a simple puzzle game. Portal manages to leave abstraction behind and places itself firmly in the Half Life universe, though not directly related to the events in Half Life 2. As you traverse from puzzle to puzzle, a robotic female voice provides feedback and often amusing commentary. As you progress, you get the sinking feeling that something is not quite right; observation windows conspicuously devoid of observers, glitches and slips in the robotic observer’s voiceover, and torn away wall segments exposing messages left behind by previous test subjects. Given its nature and placement within the Half Life universe, I would be very surprised if the portal gun did NOT make an appearance in Episode 3.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2, on the other hand, is completely unrelated with anything to do with the Half Life universe. It is a beast unto itself. It is, unfortunately, the weakest addition of to The Orange Box.

TF2 is an entirely team-objective based online multiplayer game, heavy on strategy. There’s no straight death match or team death match variants here. Instead, the game solely supports game modes such as capture the flag and control (capture specific areas on the map). There are six maps, each pertaining to just one particular game mode. In other words, the maps cannot be swapped between game types, as each is exclusively used for one game type. (Mind you, some maps do use the same game type as others.) What you have then is not a tremendous amount of variety, but a very focused experience based entirely around strategy.

There are nine characters split up between three classes that the player may choose from. Some are either offensive, defensive, or support by design. Each character comes with a specific weapon set and attributes that are non-transferable to other characters. So, for instance, you have the offense-based Scout who comes with a shotgun primary weapon and can run very quickly; the defense-based Heavy who lugs around a massive chain gun and moves very slowly; and the support based Medic whose primary function is to dynamically replenish the health of a nearby teammate.

What this all amounts to is a game that absolutely requires teamwork in order to have a fighting chance. Otherwise, you’re toast. Somebody has got to pick up a support role in conjunction with players who will carry out your more traditional roles. For instance, a team without Medics is a team without the ability to properly dispatch opponents. A team with Medics has some uber-powerful offensive-defensive punch, as Medics can follow right behind Heavies, Soldiers, Demomen, or whoever, and constantly replenish their health thus effectively making them both wickedly powerful and practically invincible. I found this out pretty quick, being on the losing end of a match with a disorganized team without proper support players.

The maps themselves are also fairly complex with quite a few strategic options. For instance, there are multiple paths to get to the same goal. In fact, some paths even go underwater. Despite proper signage, there is plenty of room for the newbie to get lost.

This complexity in design centered on strategy is both TF2’s greatest strength and weakness. It is not a game that is simply picked up and played at whim, especially along with a bunch of randomly matched players. If you cannot appropriately communicate and come up with a proper game plan, you will almost certainly lose. It is also not a very visceral experience. Glitchy connections and do-it-yourself matchmaking rounds out the criticisms leveled against TF2.

TF2 does do a lot very well. Most notably, of course, is the presentation. It looks great with its superbly animated cartoon-style presentation. If you’ve seen the trailers, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. TF2 has a very distinct personality. It is also full of encouragement, so much so that it goes to the point of giving you the bright side of statistics after you’ve been fragged. For instance, it will let you know that with whatever class of character you’re playing with that you’ve survived the longest, beaten your previous kill score, or scored more points than in previous plays. It also employs a stylistic kill-cam that freeze frames the opponent that dispatched you. If one opponent dispatches you enough times, they become your nemesis and are marked accordingly.

TF2 is a game likely to reward players with ready-made teams and teammates willing to put in the time to dig deep and play a lot. But as a pick up and play solo venture, TF2 simply isn’t going to do. In a season full of fantastic multiplayer packages from Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, Team Fortress 2 is the least compelling of the bunch.