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The Orange Box

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For other uses, see The Orange Box (disambiguation).
The Orange Box
Developer(s)Valve Corporation
EA London (PS3 version)
Publisher(s)Valve Corporation
EngineSource engine
Platform(s)Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
ReleaseMicrosoft Windows
& Xbox 360 (retail):
[1]





Microsoft Windows (online):


PlayStation 3 (retail):


[2]

Genre(s)First-person shooter, Compilation
Mode(s)Single player, Multiplayer

The Orange Box is a video game compilation produced and published by the Valve Corporation. The package contains five games: Half-Life 2 and its first two expansions, Episode One and Episode Two, the puzzle game Portal and the long-awaited multiplayer game Team Fortress 2. All five games are powered by Valve's Source engine. The package has received critical acclaim and has been nominated for several awards. The Windows version was released on October 10 2007 as both a boxed retail copy and as a download available through Valve's Steam service. The Xbox 360 version was also released on October 10 2007.[1] A PlayStation 3 version was released on December 11 2007 in North America and in Europe.[2][4]

Overview

The Orange Box features five complete games compiled into one retail unit. It is the first of Valve's products to use in-depth player statistics and achievement awards through the Steam system.[5] In addition, The Orange Box is the first Xbox 360 product to have 99 achievements, exceeding the 50 achievement limit that Microsoft maintains, though the achievement points still add up to 1000 Gamerscore, which is the typical maximum for an Xbox 360 retail game.[6] The achievements are focused on Half-Life 2 but are spread through all five games.[7]

Half-Life 2

Main article: Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 is a science fiction first-person shooter game that is the sequel to Half-Life. Originally released for Windows in 2004, Half-Life 2 received critical acclaim, including thirty-five Game of the Year awards,[8] and as of June 8 2006, over four million copies of Half-Life 2 have been sold.[9] Taking place in and around the fictional City 17, Half-Life 2 follows the scientist Gordon Freeman. Dr. Freeman is thrust into a dystopian environment in which the aftermath of the Black Mesa Incident has come to bear fully upon human society. Freeman 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: Episode One

Main article: Half-Life 2: Episode One

Half-Life 2: Episode One is the first of a trilogy of episodes continuing from the events of Half-Life 2. Episode One was originally released in 2006 for Windows as a standalone game. The game takes place immediately after the end of Half-Life 2, in and around the war-torn City 17. Episode One continues to follow scientist Gordon Freeman and his companion Alyx Vance as they deal with the events of Half-Life 2 and humanity's continuing struggle against the Combine. The game was well-received,[10] although it was criticised for its short length and lack of new features.[11][12]

Half-Life 2: Episode Two

Main article: Half-Life 2: Episode Two

Half-Life 2: Episode Two is the second of a trilogy of episodes continuing from the events of Half-Life 2. First made available as part of the The Orange Box, Episode Two focuses on expansive environments, travel, and less linear play. Gordon Freeman and the series' other major characters move away from City 17 to the surrounding wilderness following the closing events of Episode One.[13] The game was well-received by critics,[14] being praised for its new environments and features.

Portal

Main article: Portal (video game)

Portal is a single-player first-person action/puzzle game that was first made available as part of The Orange Box. The game consists primarily of a series of puzzles which must be solved by teleporting the player's character and other 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[15][16] and several Game of the Year awards.[17][18]

Team Fortress 2

Main article: Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer team-based first-person shooter that is a sequel to the original Team Fortress mod for Quake. First made available as part of The Orange Box, Team Fortress 2 is built around two opposing teams competing for an objective. These two teams are meant to represent construction companies: Reliable Excavation & Demolition (RED) and Builders League United (BLU). Players can choose to play as one of nine classes in these teams, each with its own unique strengths and weaknesses.[19][20] Team Fortress 2 was very well received by both critics and consumers alike,[21] with praise for the unique settings and characters not seen before in a multiplayer game.[22][23]

Development

The Black Box

Valve planned on releasing an additional compilation entitled The Black Box, which would have contained only the new material (Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2), exclusively for Windows, but was later canceled for retail and is now only available through Steam to owners of certain ATI graphics cards. These owners receive a voucher for a free copy of The Black Box through Steam which can only be transferred along with the graphics card.[24]

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."[25] But after first discontinuing The Black Box, Valve released all the new material for individual download via Steam.

The Black Box was priced $10 lower than The Orange Box.[26] Anticipating that a number of consumers already own the previous games and in order to compensate for the cancellation of The Black Box, Valve offered gift subscriptions to Steam users who previously purchased Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2: Episode One and then purchased The Orange Box so that they can give them as a gift to another person added to their Steam Friends list.[27] Still, this sparked complaints from game critics and consumers alike that they were obliged to pay for games they already owned.[28][29] 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 cancelled.[30] While Valve never expressed its reasons for this decision, industry writers speculated that it may be to increase profits on retail copies or to avoid customer confusion between similar game packages and their availability across the platforms.[28][31]

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. Gabe Newell explained, "I think the PS3 is a waste of everybody’s time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There’s nothing there that you’re going to apply to anything else. You’re not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they’ve created." Despite this he noted that Valve will probably handle PlayStation 3 versions of its products in the future. Although he expressed confidence that "the people who have The Orange Box on the PS3 are going to be happy with their game experience," he also mentioned that he feels "it’s harder to get it to the same standard as the 360 and PC versions."[32]

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".[33] 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".[34]

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, which caused speculation that a patch is 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.[35]

Promotions

Pre-purchasing of the Windows version on Steam began on September 11 2007. Those who pre-purchased via this method received a 10% discount on the purchase and were able to play in the Team Fortress 2 beta starting on Monday, September 17 2007.

The Windows version of The Orange Box also comes with Peggle Extreme, a ten-level playable demo of Peggle Deluxe with graphical themes from The Orange Box. Peggle, published by PopCap Games, is a puzzle game combining elements of pinball and pachinko.[36]

Reception

Since its release, The Orange Box has met with universal acclaim from reviewers. According to the review aggregator site Metacritic, both the Xbox 360 and Windows versions of The Orange Box have an average review score of 96%, tying them for the highest rated game on both platforms.[39][50] IGN declared that "The Orange Box is the package which could legitimately be called the deal of the century" and awarded both the Windows and Xbox 360 versions with an Editors' Choice Award.[47] All three versions won GameSpot's Editors' Choice Award. The Orange Box won the "Breakthrough Technology Award" and the "Best PC Game Award", and was additionally nominated in the "Game of the Year", "Best Shooter", "Best Xbox 360 Game", and "Best Multiplayer Game" categories at the 2007 Spike Video Game Awards.[55][56] It was also named the second-best video game of 2007 by Time Magazine,[57] and the PlayStation 3 version was nominated in the category of Action and Adventure at the BAFTA Video Games Awards.[58]

The Orange Box is currently nominated for nine awards at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The compilation is nominated in the categories of Overall Game of the Year, Computer Game of the Year, Action Game of the Year, and Outstanding Innovation in Gaming; Portal is nominated in the categories of Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering, and Outstanding Character Performance; and Team Fortress 2 is nominated in the categories of Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction and Outstanding Achievement in Animation.[59]

Portal has been singled out for praise from reviewers. Official Xbox Magazine admired its unique puzzle gameplay mechanics stating, "Portal is the first major advance in puzzle gaming since Russians started dropping blocks."[49] The Escapist's normally acerbic-tongued Ben Croshaw admitted in his review on Zero Punctuation that he "can't think of any criticism for it," remarking that it possesses "some of the funniest pitch-black humour I've ever heard in a game" and concluding that it is "absolutely sublime from start to finish ... Portal's great and if you don't think so, you must be stupid."[60]

The PlayStation 3 version's critical review scores suffered for the technical issues first uncovered by 1UP.com. While discussing the retail version on a podcast, 1UP.com staff members stated, "They did overcome a significant number of the frame rate problems that the code that they sent us prior to that [had] but not all of them," concluding that the PlayStation 3 version was "slightly, perceptibly, not quite as smooth as the 360 version, which seems to be locked in at 30 [frames per second]." Their recommendation was that "if you own both [consoles], you should do the 360 [version] but if you have PS3 there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't get this; it's still too good of an experience not to play it."[61] Kotaku's Michael McWhertor echoed that recommendation, writing, "Those with a choice, who for some reason may have waited until now to pick up the collection, should look to the non-PlayStation 3 editions of the game if they can, but those who only have a PS3 should still look at The Orange Box as a worthwhile purchase."[62]

The PlayStation 3 version was also criticised for unreliable voice chat and excessive lag in Team Fortress 2,[40][45][48] for long load times,[48][43] and for running at 720p instead of 1080p like the Xbox 360 version.[45] It was, however, praised for featuring anti-aliasing like the Windows version, unlike the Xbox 360 version.[40]

Region-specific versions

In order to maintain the integrity of region specific licensing, Valve has been deactivating accounts with CD keys that were purchased outside of the consumer's territory, prompting complaints from North American customers who tried to circumvent their Steam EULA by purchasing international versions of The Orange Box through Asian retailers.[63][64] Some customers who purchased the game a second time from a local vendor have experienced difficulty adding it to their accounts and communicating with Valve's customer service about this problem.[65] 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."[66]

To comply with German laws prohibiting the sale of violent video games, the German version is set to a low violence mode; when characters are dismembered in Team Fortress 2, they explode into assorted objects like coils and hamburgers. In Episode Two, opponents disappear after they are killed.[67]

Soundtrack

There are two versions of The Orange Box soundtrack. The worldwide version includes music composed by Kelly Bailey and Mike Morasky[68] for Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and also includes an exclusive remix of "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton. It was released on December 21, 2007 and is sold from the official Valve Store and Amazon.com and is also due to be sold on iTunes, Napster, eMusic and other digital music services.[69]

Another version is included in the Russian edition of The Orange Box. This version comprised of Kelly Bailey's entire soundtracks to Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two, with the exception of the track "Crawl Yard".[70]

References

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