The Orange Box
is a video game compilation for Microsoft Windows, the Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 3. The Windows and Xbox 360 versions were produced and published by Valve Corporation and released on October 10 2007 as both a boxed retail copy and a Windows-only download through Valve's Steam service. The PlayStation 3 version was produced by Electronic Arts and released on December 11 2007 in North America and in Europe. Valve has also released a soundtrack containing music from the games within the compilation.
The compilation contains five games, all powered by Valve's Source engine. Two of the games included, Half-Life 2
and its first expansion, Episode One
, were previously released as separate products. Three new games are also contained within the compilation: the second expansion, Half-Life 2: Episode Two
; the puzzle game, Portal
; and Team Fortress 2
, the multiplayer game sequel to the Quake
modification, Team Fortress
. A separate product entitled The Black Box
was planned, which would have included only the new games, but it was cancelled.
The Orange Box
has received critical acclaim and Portal
was recognized as a surprise favorite of the package. The PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box
has been noted for several technical shortcomings that were not present in the other versions, which were later fixed through various patches. [1]
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THE ORANGE BOX TICKETS
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Overview
The Orange Box
features five complete games compiled into one retail unit:
Half-Life 2
and its two expansions,
Episode One
and
Episode Two
;
Portal
; and
Team Fortress 2
. All of these games use Valve's
Source engine.
Through the
Steam platform for the
Windows version, the games can collect and report in-depth data such as where the player's character died, completion time, and total victories in multiplayer modes. This data is compiled to generate gameplay statistics for
Episode One
,
Episode Two
, and
Team Fortress 2
.
[2]
Although
Half-Life 2
has the largest proportion of
Achievements, there are 99 spread across all five games, exceeding the 50-achievement limit that Microsoft maintains to feature the most Achievements of any Xbox 360 product.
[3] These Achievements include killing a certain number of monsters, finding hidden weapon caches, or other tasks specific to each game.
[4]
All the games except
Half-Life 2
contain in-game commentary that can be enabled, allowing the player to listen to the developers discuss the creation and purpose of particular sections and components of each game.
This has been a feature of every Valve game since
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
due to the commentary's popularity in that game, according to Erik Wolpaw, lead writer for
Portal
.
[5]
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2
is a
science fiction first-person shooter game and the sequel to
Half-Life
. While remaining similar in style to the original,
Half-Life 2
introduces new concepts to the series such as physics-based puzzles and vehicle sections. The game takes place in the fictional
City 17 and surrounding areas as the player takes on the role of scientist
Gordon Freeman. Freeman is thrust into a
dystopian environment in which the aftermath of the
Black Mesa Incident has come to bear fully upon human society, and he is forced to fight against increasingly unfavorable odds in order to survive. In his struggle, he is joined by various allies, including former Black Mesa colleagues, oppressed citizens of City 17, and the
Vortigaunts.
Half-Life 2
received critical acclaim, including 35
Game of the Year awards, when it was originally released for Windows in 2004.
[6] As of
June 8 2006 over four million copies of the game had been sold.
[7]
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode One
continues from the events of
Half-Life 2
.
Episode One
builds on the original, adding cooperative play with friendly
non-player characters such as
Alyx Vance, whose new abilities complement Freeman's abilities and allow her to comprehend and respond to the player's actions by lending help.
[8]
It is set immediately after the end of
Half-Life 2
in the war-torn City 17 and nearby areas.
Episode One
follows scientist Gordon Freeman and his companion Alyx Vance as they continue to cope with the events chronicled in
Half-Life 2
and humanity's continuing struggle against the
Combine. The game was originally released in 2006 for Windows as a standalone game and was generally well received,
[9] although it was criticized for its short length and lack of new features.
[10] [11]
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
was first available as part of the
The Orange Box
and focuses on expansive environments, travel, and less linear play. In the game, Gordon Freeman and the series' other major characters move away from City 17 to the surrounding wilderness following the closing events of
Episode One
.
[12] The game was praised for its new environments and features and was well received by critics.
[13]
Portal
Portal
is a
single-player first-person action/
puzzle game that was first available as part of
The Orange Box
. The game consists primarily of a series of puzzles that are solved by teleporting the player's character and simple objects using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device—the "portal gun". The goal of each puzzle is to reach an exit point. The portal gun and the unusual physics it creates are the emphasis of this game.
Portal
was a surprise favorite of
The Orange Box
, receiving widespread praise
[14] [15] and several Game of the Year awards.
[16] [17]
Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2
is a
multiplayer team-based
first-person shooter that was first available as part of
The Orange Box
. The game is a sequel to the original
Quake
modification,
Team Fortress
, and Valve's
Half-Life
modification,
Team Fortress Classic
. Its focus is on two competing teams that attack each other in order to achieve varying objectives, including capturing command points or defending them from attack, or
capturing a flag. Players can choose to play as one of nine classes in these teams, each with different strengths and weaknesses.
[18] [19] Unlike most other
Source-powered games,
Team Fortress 2
features a cartoon art style and non-realistic graphics.
Team Fortress 2
was very well received by critics and consumers alike;
[20] it was particularly praised for its unique artistic direction and graphics.
[21] [22]
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for
The Orange Box
consists of music that Valve employees composed for
Half-Life 2: Episode One
,
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
,
Portal
, and
Team Fortress 2
. It also includes the original version and an exclusive remix of "Still Alive", both by
Jonathan Coulton. It was released on
December 21 2007 and is sold by the official Valve Store,
Amazon.com, and digital music services such as
iTunes,
Napster, and
eMusic.
[23] A more-complete version of this soundtrack that also includes music files from
Half-Life
and
Half-Life 2
was released on Steam as part of the
Audiosurf
package.
[24] "
Still Alive" was subsequently released as a free downloadable song for the
music video game Rock Band
on
March 31 2008.
[25]
Development
The Black Box
Valve planned on releasing an additional compilation for Windows entitled
The Black Box
, which would have contained only the new material—
Episode Two
,
Portal
, and
Team Fortress 2
.
The Black Box
was later canceled for retail and is now only available through
Steam exclusively to owners of certain
ATI graphics cards, who received a voucher for a free copy of
The Black Box
.
[26]
During development, the simultaneous release of two game compilation packages with different content combinations was touted by Valve as a new direction for the game industry.
Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, said, "
The Black Box
and
The Orange Box
represent a new approach to publishing multiple products on multiple platforms."
[27] After first discontinuing
The Black Box
, however, Valve released all the new material for individual download via Steam.
[28] [29] [30]
The Black Box
was to be priced
US$10 lower than
The Orange Box
.
[31] To compensate for the cancellation of
The Black Box
, Valve offered gift subscriptions to Steam users who had previously purchased
Half-Life 2
or
Half-Life 2: Episode One
and then purchased
The Orange Box
so that they could give their second copies of those two games as gifts to people added to their Steam Friends list.
[32] Still, the cancellation of
The Black Box
sparked complaints from game critics and consumers alike, unhappy that they were obliged to pay for games that they already owned.
[33] [34] It also raised concerns among those who had bought the ATI
Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card, which came with a voucher for
The Black Box
, but Valve clarified that only the retail version of
The Black Box
had been canceled.
[35] While Valve never expressed its reasons for this decision, industry writers speculated that it might have been to increase profits on retail copies or to avoid customer confusion between similar game packages and their availability across the platforms.
PlayStation 3 version
While the Windows and Xbox 360 versions of
The Orange Box
were developed and published by Valve, the development of the PlayStation 3
port was outsourced to
Electronic Arts. In an interview with Edge Magazine prior to the game's release, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell commented, "I think the people who have The Orange Box on the PS3 are going to be happy with their game experience. We’ve done the PC and 360 versions here and EA has a team doing the PS3 version – and they’ll make the PS3 version a good product; EA got the job done in putting a lot of people with PS3 experience on the project. But I think it’s harder to get it to the same standard as the 360 and PC versions". Despite this, he noted that Valve will probably handle PlayStation 3 versions of its products in the future.
[37]
In a preview of
The Orange Box
in November 2007,
1UP.com revealed numerous problems with the late
beta build of EA's PlayStation 3 version of
The Orange Box
, citing pervasive
frame rate issues which, they claimed, "at best merely hinder gameplay and at worst make the experience downright unplayable."
[38] IGN's Hilary Goldstein disagreed, writing that although EA "is one of the worst offenders when it comes to porting games to the PS3," the frame rate issues were not bad enough "to make me throw my controller in disgust."
[39]
On
January 3 2008 IGN reported that Valve employees had created a
thread on Valve's
website forums for players to list the problems they had encountered and to suggest fixes
[40], which caused speculation that a
patch was being planned to address the issues in the PlayStation 3 version, such as the frame rate issues, the connection problems in
Team Fortress 2
, and the slow loading times in
Portal
. A patch for the PlayStation 3 version was later released in North America on
March 19 2008 and in Europe a short while after that; however, it made no mention of fixing frame rate issues or slow loading times
[41].
Region-specific versions
Valve deactivated accounts with
CD keys that were purchased outside of the consumer's territory in order to maintain the integrity of
region-specific licensing. This generated complaints from North American customers who had circumvented their Steam
end-user license agreement by purchasing
The Orange Box
through cheaper, Asian retailers.
[42] [43] Some customers who then purchased the game a second time from a local vendor experienced difficulty adding the new CD key to their accounts in order to activate their newly-purchased games and also had trouble communicating with Steam's customer support team about this problem.
[44] Doug Lombardi of Valve stated, "Some of these users have subsequently purchased a legal copy after realizing the issue and were having difficulty removing the illegitimate keys from their Steam accounts. Anyone having this problem should contact Steam Support to have the Thai key removed from their Steam account."
[45]
The German version of
The Orange Box
is set to a low violence mode in order to comply with
German laws prohibiting the sale of violent video games. Blood effects are replaced by sparks and bullet wounds are replaced with dents as if the characters were metal robots. Additionally in
Team Fortess 2
, instead of body parts being scattered after a player's character is blown apart, various items such as hamburgers, coils,
rubber ducks, and
Chattery Teeth appear. Characters from different classes leave different items and different ratios of these items when killed by explosives.
[46] [47] In the
Half-Life
games, bodies fade away after the death of
non-player characters and the blood has been altered to a grey color.
[48]
Promotions
Pre-purchasing of the Windows version on Steam began on
September 11 2007. Those who pre-purchased via this method received a ten-percent discount and were able to play the
Team Fortress 2
beta starting on
September 17 2007.
[49] The Orange Box
comes with
Peggle Extreme
, a ten-level playable demo of
Peggle Deluxe
that is only avaliable for PC, with graphical themes from
The Orange Box
.
Peggle
, published by
PopCap Games, is a puzzle game combining elements of
pinball and
pachinko.
[50]
Reception
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Since its release,
The Orange Box
has been met with universal acclaim from reviewers.
IGN described
The Orange Box
as "the deal of the century" and awarded both the Windows and Xbox 360 versions with an Editors' Choice Award.
[68] All three versions won
GameSpot's Editors' Choice Award.
Portal
has been singled out for praise by reviewers.
Official Xbox Magazine
admired its unique puzzle gameplay mechanics, stating that it was the first major advance in puzzle gaming "since Russians started
dropping blocks."
[69] The Escapist's usually acerbically critical reviewer,
Ben Croshaw, stated in his
Zero Punctuation review that he couldn't think of any criticism for
Portal
, which has "some of the funniest pitch-black humor [he had] ever heard in a game" and concluded that it is "absolutely sublime from start to finish," and that he would "jam forks in his eyes if he ever described another game like that again."
[70]
The PlayStation 3 version's critical review scores suffered because of the technical issues first uncovered by 1UP.com. While discussing the retail version on a
podcast, 1UP.com staff members agreed that a significant number of the frame rate problems had been resolved, but not all of them. They concluded that the PlayStation 3 version was not quite as smooth as the Xbox 360 version and recommended that "if you own both [consoles], you should do the 360" version.
[71] Kotaku's Michael McWhertor echoed that recommendation, stating that those who only have a PlayStation 3 should still consider
The Orange Box
.
[72]
While
frame rate issues were the main complaint, the PlayStation 3 version was also criticized for unreliable
voice chat and excessive network delay or
lag in
Team Fortress 2
,
as well as long load times generally.
It was, however, praised for featuring
anti-aliasing like the Windows version, which is not present in the Xbox 360 version.
After release, the game received further criticism from fans for the lack of surround sound support when using an optical cable. An open letter to Valve, asking them to put pressure on EA to release a fix was posted to the Steam forum
[73]. A response was posted by a Valve employee going by the name of "BurtonJ"
[74], directing disappointed customers to a dedicated thread
[75] on the subject.
Awards
The Orange Box
has won a number of awards for its overall high standard and use of technology. The compilation won "Computer Game of the Year" at the
Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' 11th Annual
Interactive Achievement Awards and was nominated in the "Overall Game of the Year", "Action Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming" categories.
[76] The Orange Box
won the "Breakthrough Technology Award" and the "Best PC Game Award" at the 2007
Spike Video Game Awards, and was additionally nominated in the "Game of the Year", "Best Shooter", "Best Xbox 360 Game", and "Best Multiplayer Game" categories.
[77] [78] It was also named the second-best video game of 2007 by
Time Magazine
,
[79] while the PlayStation 3 version was nominated in the category of Action and Adventure at the
BAFTA Video Games Awards.
[80] Valve also received developer awards for their work on
The Orange Box
.
[81] [82] The Orange Box
received 17 Game of the Year awards and over 100 awards in total.
[83]
Portal
won "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design", "Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering", and "Outstanding Character Performance" at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.
The game won 76 awards, including 37 Game of the Year awards,
and was recognized for innovative design and game mechanics.
[84] [85] [86] The dark humor of
Portal
and the ending music track
Still Alive
were also singled out for awards.
[87] [88]
Team Fortress 2
was nominated in the categories of "Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction" and "Outstanding Achievement in Animation" at the 11th Interactive Achievement Awards.
Although unsuccessful at the IAA, the game did receive 10 awards, including five Game of the Year awards,
and other awards for its artistic direction and multiplayer gameplay.
[89] [90] [91]
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
won four awards, including one Game of the Year award, and was recognized for excellent
NPC AI, level design, and story.
References
- The Orange Box PS3 Patch Released
- Game and Player Statistics
- 99 Achievements in The Orange Box
- Achievements: Half Life 2: The Orange Box
- Still Alive: Kim Swift And Erik Wolpaw Talk Portal
- Valve Awards
- First in Half-Life episodic trilogy debuts at number 1
- ''Half-Life 2: Episode One'' Preview
- Half-Life 2: Episode One Reviews
- Half-Life 2: Episode One Review
- Episode One review
- Opening the Valve
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two (pc: 2007): Reviews
- Portal Reviews (PC)
- Portal (pc: 2007): Reviews
- Game of the Year — Portal
- Game of the Year Awards 2007
- ''Half-Life 2: Episode Two'' - The Return of ''Team Fortress 2'' and Other Surprises
- ''Team Fortress 2'' Hands-On Preview
- Metacritic: ''Team Fortress 2 (pc: 2007): Reviews
- PC Review: ''Team Fortress 2''
- Review: Half-Life 2: The Orange Box
- Friday, December 21 2007
- Surf your Music! Audiosurf Now Available for Pre-purchase
- "Still Alive" Confirmed for ''Rock Band'' Release
- ATI Steam Offer
- EA and Valve Unveil The Black Box and The Orange Box
- ''Team Fortress 2''
- ''Portal''
- ''Half-Life 2: Episode Two''
- Black Box in a Pine Box
- Orange Box Gift Subscriptions
- Valve cancels The Black Box, forces consumers to rebuy content
- Half-Life 2 Black Box gone, only Orange Box remains
- ATI R600 Valve coupon owners are safe
- Valve Doesn't Care About Black Boxes: Half-Life 2 Black Box Cancelled
- More from Gabe Newell: part two
- This version of The Box has issues. (Mini-preview)
- The Orange Box PS3 Hands-On
- Orange Box PS3 Patch Imminent?
- What was fixed in the 1.10 patch for Orange Box on Playstation 3?
- Steam Error: Game not available in your territory
- Valve locking out user accounts for "incorrect territory"
- Valve "Deactivating" Customers Who Bought "Orange Box" Internationally
- Valve Responds to Steam Territory Deactivations
- Team Fortress 2
- Team Fortress 2 [Microsoft XBox 360 / Deutschland]
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two
- Pre-purchase Orange Box on Steam, play TF2 beta next week
- About the Game
- Half-Life 2: Orange Box (Windows)
- Half-Life 2: Orange Box (Xbox 360)
- Half Life 2: Orange Box (PS3)
- The Orange Box
- The Orange Box Review (PC)
- Xbox 360 The Orange Box Review
- PlayStation 3 The Orange Box Review
- The Orange Box Review
- The Orange Box Review
- The Orange Box Review
- The Orange Box Review
- Orange Box, The (PC: 2007): Reviews
- Orange Box, The (xbox360: 2007): Reviews
- Orange Box, The (ps3: 2007): Reviews
- The Orange Box — PC
- The Orange Box — XBOX 360
- The Orange Box — PS3
- The Orange Box Review
- The Orange Box
- The Orange Box
- 1UP Yours — Podcast
- The Orange Box (PS3) Impressions: Volume Three
- A Letter to Valve Regarding The Orange Box PS3 Edition (Page 1)
- A Letter to Valve Regarding The Orange Box PS3 Edition (Page 2)
- [PS3] Orange Box Suggestions / Tweaks
- 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards
- Spike TV Announces 2007 'Video Game Awards' Winners
- Spike TV Video Game Awards: Winners, Losers and Boozers
- TIME Announces Top Ten Video Games of 2007
- Video Games Award Winners 2007
- IGN Best of 2007: Xbox 360 - Best Developer
- IGN Best of 2007: PC - Best Developer
- The Orange Box - 5 Games. One Box.
- IGN Best of 2007: Overall - Most Innovative Design
- GameSpot's Best of 2007: Best Original Game Mechanic Special Achievement
- OXM's 2007 Game of the Year Awards
- IGN Best of 2007: Xbox 360 - Best End Credit Song
- GameSpot's Best of 2007: Funniest Game Special Achievement
- IGN Best of 2007: PC - Best Artistic Design
- GameSpy's Game of the Year 2007: Special Awards
- GameSpy's Game of the Year 2007: Multiplayer