Customer Reviews for The Orange Box

The Orange Box
by Electronic Arts

	Our Price: $68.89 Availability: Usually ships in 4-5 business days Buy Used: from $24.00 (click here) Category: Video Games See more product details

Video Game Reviews of The Orange Box

Customer Review: graphics are not the best
Summary: 3 Stars

The graphics in this games collection are not the best, the team fortress game is very annoying and you always die too fast.

Customer Review: Manifesto on Half-Life 2
Summary: 5 Stars

I love my Playstation 3! It's such a versatile system: games, DVDs, Blue Rays, internet, etc. If it cooked steak, it would be the best thing in my life, right before my wife. But I digress. I select my games very carefully; no need to waste the dollars. For me, storyline is the most important aspect of gaming. Half-Life 2 doesn't only deliver a great plot, but also beautiful graphics and intense gameplay. Let me elaborate.

The graphics is simply awesome. Considering that this is a first-person shooter, and the frame is in constant shifting, the graphics is best of a kind. Some people whine about tedious loading times, but it happens so rarely that it's negligible. The facial impressions and bodily movements are lifelike. The surrounding environments are crisp and detailed. Shooting, wounding an enemy, being wounded, explosions, fires, are all exquisitely vivid. Most of the time Dr. Freeman (the character that you embody) travels through abandoned cities, deserted apartment buildings, an occasional forest, and desert, which all look great. Some places are spooky, but it's a good kind of adrenaline. The video is 720p, not 1080p, but is still impressive.

What about the gameplay? Well, it is very addictive. When you start playing, it progresses so smoothly and comfortably that it's hard to stop. (You can choose different difficulty levels, which comes handy sometimes.) One of the reasons this game is so famous is it has puzzles. Every so often you have to solve an in-game puzzle in order to continue. They're not particularly difficult, but add much spice to the overall experience.

Now we come to the storyline, the most interesting part of any game; my favorite is Final Fantasy VII. In this one a totalitarian government has taken over the country and turned it into a police state. The dictator imposes his principles and beliefs on the whole electorate. Everything is strict and disobedience carries severe repercussions. Your goal as Dr. Freeman is to topple the whole diabolical structure.

If you like good games, this one will be an engaging piece of entertainment.

Customer Review: The Orange Box from perspective of a new PS3 owner
Summary: 5 Stars

As said in many other reviews, The Orange Box is an outstanding value for the amount of material you get. Half Life 2 is tremendously fun, and the reported glitch with the PS3 port is overplayed: on first play, a patch is downloaded automatically to fix it, and with the fix, I've only experienced one frame-rate drop so far that did not interfere with gameplay.

Customer Review: No glitches here only ultimate value
Summary: 4 Stars

Valve's Gabe Newell has never been shy about his feelings toward the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 gaming consoles. Needless to say, he has not been kind, but with the complexity of modern game design accross multiple platforms, his frustration can be understandable. But it is great PS 3 owners get to see a classic PC series with some extras at a great price on their console. Much has been said about the supposed inferior performance of this PS3 port, but upon launching the game for the first time, a 128mb patch downloaded and installed. And aside from the frequent loading times, which is to be expected in a PC based game, I have found little or no hitches in gameplay. Whatever glitches EA or Valve had in this PS3 edition when the game shipped, I think they have mostly been addressed.

I'm not much of a PC gamer, I've got COD4, Gears of War and the like. But the hoopla with the Half-Life series passed me by when it came out. What I found here was a decent, but obviously dated game that has been one-upped many times since its release in 2004. What else would you expect in a 5 year-old game?

The controls work, but it is obvious, this is one of those FPS games that shine better with a keyboard and a mouse. Dual Analog is not a first language for this package. Half-Life 2 and the included expansions here aren't going to set the world on fire in 2009, but they can warrant your attention at least for awhile. The pacing is a bit slow and some of the design bland. Half-Life is a nice addition for those who don't know the series, but its not going to win any converts at this point in time.

The best part of the Orange Box is easily Portal. The game is a very interesting mix of puzzles and physics. It feels almost like an FPS version of Echochrome, another great time burning puzzle game. Portal is very cool, but once you get the idea down after the first couple of challenges, the rest of the game passes quite fast. You can sense there is more to this type of concept left to be mined out in the future.

Team Fortress 2 is good fun..for awhile. Valve has brandished the game with a unique visual style and accessible controls. There are a good variety of play modes and great diversity in character classes. The spy and engineer are stand outs for sure. Unfortunately, despite this variety, there aren't many maps to choose from and I would say you can forget any DLC maps or mods every coming out to compliment what is there. TF2 can be fun and a good break from the Prestige quests of Call fo Duty 4, but there simply isn't enough here to warrant too much of your time.

For $20 you get four good games, which is an absolute steal. And I say good, because the dated appeal of Half-Life, or limited aspects with TF2 and Portal, leave you satisfied but not awed. However there is definite replay value here to be had. Unlike most of the games out these days that can be finished in a few hours, the Orange Box offers up a few dozen hours of fun for a price nobody can match.

While The Orange Box doesn't have a single game worth more than 3 stars, for me, the four stars is a no-brainer recommendation to buy for the price alone.