Constipation is no laughing matter
I can throw down mini-reviews tardy like the rest of them, so Valve’s The Orange Box is now appearing in full force. By cleverly including Half Life 2: Episode Two, POrtal, and Team Fortress in one package, the developer jam-packed a barrel of fun into one entity as to rate higher in Game of the Year awards. Priced at $49.95 on Valve’s online-delivery platform Steam, on the surface it seems like a deal especially with the inclusion of Half Life 2 and Half Life 2: Episode One totaling the value at $129.75 (go, go gadget infomercials for this clever marketing technique.) When you consider the majority of customers already own the two previously released games in the set, their attachment to The Orange Box was really just to make up for the lack of content (from the perspective of playing time), whether it was high-quality or not.
POrtal uses the engine rendering techniques found in Prey to seamlessly make rooms flow into each other at any angle by allowing you to shoot a gun onto (almost) any surface to initialize a doorway and then use a secondary shot on another surface to complete the portal. The result is a series of physics puzzles involving turrets, crates (I didn’t test out the STC), lasers, and dangerous liquids that look like steaming, toxic poop. The architecture has a kind of old-school Lego simplicity with its square angles and texture work, but that expands once you get “outside” the training area. Much of the love surrounding this game is the vocoded female voice narrating your experience and in the process mocking nonchalant, inconsequential deaths found in video games. The logical android characters in the game all show a subtle self-awareness of their human counterparts and expose a slightly malevolent edge in their behaviour that escalates through the levels. Examples include the turrets’ exclamations of “I don’t blame you” when you knock them over or the female voice-over promising to stop “enhancing the truth” in her narration.
Things have gone all upsidedown face *stare*
While this clever humour roused a few smirks out of me, the resulting interwebisms culled from this game just need to fucking die. Yes, “the cake is a lie” and the coda song managed to be a noteworthy quirky portions of the game’s content, but they are not catchphrases to be abused at every turn for months. Sledgehammer, head. The game is also very short in length, taking about three hours on average to cover. Hopefully, once the mod tools come out, we’ll see more creative campaign add-ons like Ren 2. You should also check out the video of Zero Punctuation’s review for all its motor-mouthed witticisms.
For Half Life 2: Episode Two, any preview claiming the world was more open, it didn’t mean open-ended. You can see more outdoor terrain, that’s all. Any illusion of non-linearity in the final strider fight is a complete illusion. The fights are still predictable and so are the paths that must be taken. It’s still the rail-shooter we’ve come to hate love. After its absence in episode one, vehicular gameplay returns in the form of a make-shift muscle car (or hot rod; fuck that cokehead Tim Allen) which manages to handle a bit better than the Highway 17 buggy. You’re also exposed to two new enemies, a Hunter which is just a mini-strider that can charge you and an Acidlion which is a larval antlion that shoots… acid. In my face, in my face.
“Hello, random character” (not the gnome)
The episode starts out at the train wreckage where episode one ended with. The pre-release game trailers showed Alyx dangling from the edge of the intro train bridge but instead you start below the bridge. According to the commentary, Valve changed the segment where she initially is hurt/disabled because falling from a bridge is too arbitrary. So you can fight alone, like Gordon will always be. Alone. The portal storm and resulting bridge collapse is very neat to see in real time, exposing you to the live cutscenes throughout the game that feature its physics engine. One odd part in the game occurs shortly after the bridge when Alyx makes video contact with a rebel base called White Forest where Kleiner and her father Eli are located. A new character Dr. Magnuson comes on screen and immediate indicates what an antagonistic fuckface he is, while the player isn’t introduced whatsoever as to how this character is related to anyone. So we have Alyx, Barney, and these generally likable characters on the good side, so let’s throw a neurotic and megalomaniac cunt in for good measure. Right on.
The interaction with NPCs is much like as in Half-Life 2 where everyone knows your character (the free-man, thank you Vortigaunt annunciator) and throws weak fire at enemies while you do all the work. Of course, Gordon being the mute R-tard, is always the passive puppet in the narrative. At one point, Alyx even asks, “what do you think?”, as if you have a choice. Thanks for volunteering me for all the dangerous tasks, assbags. There are some amusing lines of dialog during the idle time, if you pay attention. For instance, when you’re about to enter the White Forest base, follow two characters that run in the opposite direction and sit at the cliff on watch out. You’ll hear the black male claim, “after this is over, I’m gonna mate!”, with the white female responding, “that’s enough out of you.” Racial. Inside the base for the Our Mutual Fiend chapter, you can stand beside a security dude on detail staring at a group of surveillance monitors utter, “I hate my life”. Cheer up, emo NPC. 
I just felt like stacking some cars, ok?
Just last week I played through the previous two games and was chuckling throughout due to every interaction forcing the NPC to use the phrase “Gordon Freeman”. Every time. This time I took eight hours to beat Half Life 2 and Episode One in three, while Episode Two takes about the same time as its predecessor. The ending seems to reference episode three taking part in an Arctic section, or at least an area with foreseeable, tangible weather. It also throws in a loose Portal connection and gives a snippet of story regarding G-Man. For reals though, the story isn’t the reason people play this series. It’s just the production values and design cohesiveness, which Half Life 2: Episode Two shows in spades.
There are some cutesy additions to the package, like the Xbox Live-style achievement system on Steam where you can lengthen your ePenis while simultaneously crying yourself to sleep. The “Rocket Man” one is a complete nuisance once the gunship comes into play half-way through the episode since the lawn gnome won’t stay in your car due to the shoddy physics. I believe the only people with all 22 achievements in Half Life 2: Episode Two are Asian.
We also get the long-delayed multiplayer online addition, Team Fortress 2, with all its The Incredibles-inspired artwork and bloody loud humour. I truthfully haven’t even touched this part of the release since my computer desk is an ergonomic nightmare that doesn’t allow for reflexes to properly take charge. It’s a cheap clothes dresser where the keyboard tray is one of the drawers flipped over. White trash ahoy. Once I have played it, I just might review Team Fortress 2… too. Until then, FOAD. <3
And best of all you can hang out with me on Steam!
Cleveland Steamer incoming !!