Getting it won't make you feel remorse nor excitement
This game pack is a bit difficult to review because of its contents. There should be a main area of focus to consider above all the others and for me it is Half-Life 2.
Half-Life didn't interest me the first time I played it since I got bored of going forwards opening doors and shooting alien crabs. I got so bored that I never finished it. Half-Life 2 doesn't fall too far away from the first game's tree either. There are hundreds of doors to be opened and hundreds of alien-crabs to shoot. However, all games are repetitive because the core gameplay must be present at all times which makes repetition a matter diversity in its contents rather than a matter of repetition in itself. The problem with Half-Life 2's repetition is its repetitive flatness that falls into Gordon Freeman, the main character. We play as Gordon Freeman and that's it. We don't know how old he is, neither if he has a family, friends, pets , what he likes or why he is doing all of this. It is completely uninteresting, there's no character development in any sense beyond getting weapon upgrades —weapons that have a far more interesting weaponality than Freeman's personality— and this leaves us, players, moving a soulless virtual doll through several areas with no personal purpose rather than moving forward. The worst thing about Gordon Freeman is that everyone seems to know him but ourselves, the ones portraying him.
Fortunately, there's some small variety in the gameplay materialized in the vehicle-driving portions of the game: a weaponless hovercraft, later upgraded to a weponed hovercraft and finally a weaponless quatricycle later upgraded to a weaponed quatricycle.
Controls are fine with the exception of the crouch button, which is placed under one of the analog sticks [the right one], this was a bad call since you'll crouch when accidentally pressing the stick during the heat of any battle instead of moving the camera to shoot properly, which is what you wanted to do in the first place.
Graphics are really nice, I love the water effects. Coastal environments are beautiful and the technology art design is fairly interesting.
Sound quality is quite good too. Dialogues are nicely performed and the melodies fit the ongoing action accordingly.
Luckily, not all of The Orange Box is Half-life 2 related: PORTAL.
Portal is the best thing in this pack: it is a very interesting puzzle concept which includes FPS elements. We are given a portal gun that is capable of opening space-foldings between to designated points. We shoot one beam to any point in space and then we shoot another beam making both hits connect each other leading to a space-fold window. This concept has been so well thought that we can even see ourselves through the portal before crossing; I'm really amazed by how cleverly they have come up with this. We can use portals to do everything we need or dream of and the good thing about them is that they keep your momentum leaving to wonderful puzzle solutions. I finished Portal before Half-Life 2 because unlike the latter, Portal has a soul, one that is very interesting, compelling and addictive.
Team Fortress entails the on-line gaming portion of the package and I don't do that. I'f you like playing on-line then you'll probably enjoy it, I don't. The good thing about it is that it is there for you to take advantage of it if you are into on-line gaming.
The Orange Box must be regarded as a pure Half-Life 2 product since it is its main component and weakness due to its uninteresting story, flat character development and unoriginal gameplay and this is why I rated it 6.5 (3.5/5 stars). Fortunately, Half-Life 2 is not all that there is to this package since Portal is a fantastic puzzle game with really well thought physics concepts and an addictive gameplay —there's also a light plot to it. Finally, we have Team Fortress that is an on-line multi-player game, only appealing to whom are interested in such feature.
Should any one buy The Orange Box? Yes, they should because they'll get a so-so game with two expansions —which is better than nothing—, a wonderful, clever and addictive puzzle game in the form of Portal and the possibility to play on-line with Team Fortress thrown into the mix for a bargain price.
