The Orange Box (Xbox 360)

Condition Orange: Valve faces the perils of porting PC games to the 360.
1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

The Orange Box is nothing if not generous. You're not likely to find so much sheer game crammed onto any other single 360 disc. You get (deep breath!) Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. Half-Life 2 is the 2004 sequel to the seminal 1998 shooter, and it's followed by Valve's two episodic add-ons. Team Fortress 2 is a stylish team-based online shooter created by the same people who made the original Team Fortress, a 1996 Quake mod. And Portal is a puzzle game that also manages to tell one of this year's most memorable videogaming stories. With so much top-notch content, how could you go wrong?

The answer has to do with some of the material being dated and some of it being poorly adapted to the Xbox 360. For instance, Half-Life 2 is well worth playing if you haven't got a PC up to the task. But since the Source engine used in the game isn't exactly pushing the technological envelope these days, you'd have to be saddled with a real dinosaur of a computer to resort to playing Half-Life 2 on your 360. If this is the case, you're in store for one of the best shooters -- of 2004. The genre has come a long way since then, and you've probably been playing things like BioShock, Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, and Medal of Honor: Airborne. Half-Life 2 and its episodic expansions will feel awfully modest and straitjacketed in comparison. The lack of wiggle room is downright oppressive as you advance from killing these three guys to this puzzle, to killing those four guys in that room, to this scripted cut scene, to killing these three guys...and so on until the end, which will be followed by two additional episodes of mostly filler.

On the plus side, Valve added Gamerscore achievement to Half-Life 2, which offers a great incentive to revisit the game, even if it means adapting to the bad controls. For instance, there's an achievement for going through the flaming, zombie-infested ruins of Ravenholm using only a gravity gun to fling saw blades and explosive barrels. This is exactly what it takes to breathe new life into a tightly scripted game like Half-Life 2. That's assuming, of course, you care about your Gamerscore. (You know you do, so don't even pretend you're not at least a little tempted.)

Visually, the level design and artwork are still great. The characters' animation and expressive faces still look great. The sound design is timeless, from the voice acting to the oomph of gunfire to the incidentals, like the familiar whack of your crowbar or the scream of a burning zombie. These are iconic bits of the Half-Life series, and they hold up even if the corridor gameplay is getting long in the tooth. As narrative, it also holds up: Half-Life 2 presents a ruined world in the aftermath of the original Half-Life's lab accident.

But trying to make your way through Half-Life 2 with a gamepad can be awkward. It seems that Valve did very little to adapt the interface to the 360's controller. When you've got headcrabs jumping past you or manhacks rushing at your face or a shambling zombie in need of a headshot, it's painfully obvious that this was a game designed for the combination of fast turning and pinpoint precision you only get with a mouse. Consider, too, the many vehicle sequences in the Half-Life 2 games. Instead of exciting chases, they're worst-case scenarios for how to combine driving and shooting with two analog sticks. It's a huge mess that draws out the driving for far too long.