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THIS IS THE REVIEW Valve DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 209 / 294
Date: October 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

HL2 was one of THE BEST games ever created - and I am not an easy customer (feel free to browse through my other reviews, including the one on HL2, you will see what I mean).
Nevertheless, the whole STEAM disaster taught me the lesson TO NEVER, EVER again get suckered by a game whose publisher:
(a) considers me a criminal - although has pocketed my $50,
(b) wants me to ask for permission EVERY BLOODY time I want to play even a single player game,
(c) installs an auto-updating, commercial-reporting and in-contact-with-the-mothership utility that retains backdoor access to my computer,
(d) lets greed dissolve any shred of shame and envision a world where gamers will be charged by the hour to play games they have already bought, and
(e) does not concede to the proven fact every "security system" eventually gets cracked and every "OnLine activation requirement" eventually gets bypassed. So, utilizing an overly inconvenient security scheme only serves in penalizing the people who actually paid good money for their product - and manage to shoot their sales in the foot at the same time.

It may seem unbelievable, yet it is True: "STEAM-secured" HL2 barely sold HALF the units that unprotected HL1 did! (Source: The Washington Post - link provided in comments).
You would think some bright MBA (who could not tell the difference between a FPS game and an RPG) was sent home with no bonus? Guess again. Here come the Episodes!

After underselling HL2, VALVE then tried to catch up with short Episodes sold as...expansions. Well, a couple of hours of gameplay and some polished surfaces an expansion do not make. So, when Episode1 sales missed their projections by far, the geniuses accountants jettisoned the BLACK BOX release (which were to contain just the NEW games) and came up with this...ORANGE BOX idea.

This release contains, of course, Episode2 and - in order to sweeten the deal - the original HL2, Episode1 as well as a short maze game and a multiplayer platform (all based on the HL2 engine). I do remember Episode1 being so short that, even back then, I was sure it was only PART of the expansion under developement: these parts were eventually to be sold as separate...Episodes 1 & 2 (& maybe 3).
Now, let's see how good a deal the ORANGE BOX actually is. This is what it contains: HL2 (an excellent 2004 game not really showing its age), Episode1 (a very short expansion), Episode2 (the rest of the expansion, also short), PORTAL (a 2-hour FP maze runner) and the multiplayer game TEAM FORTRESS 2.
So, are the accountants actually doing us a favor when pricing all these games for 50$? Not unless this is your first experience with HL2.
If you do NOT own either HL2 or Episode1, then, yes, this is a GOOD DEAL. If, however, you already own HL2 and Episode1, I would suggest waiting for the individually sold components. When was the last time we paid 50$ for another short expansion?

Now, since I do have to connect to a server in order to play a multiplayer game, it makes no difference to me whether that be STEAM or any other server. Validate away my genuine copy to your hearts content!
However, I REFUSE to ask permission every time I wish to play a Single Player or LAN game FOR A TITLE I HAVE ALREADY PAID AND BOUGHT!
I REFUSE to ever again submit to the whims of STEAM - only to fall victim to busy, unstable and fickle servers!

VALVE has to learn eventually that respect is a two-way street. The intrusiveness and inconvenience of STEAM created a huge debt with its original HL2 customers - and, since the market correction of the affect of STEAM failed to sink in, the ORANGE BOX will now inevitably pay that debt - with interest.
Episode2 may be a fine expansion and TEAM FORTRESS the new CS. Nevertheless, they are still STEAMed up by accountants posing as game designers. They fooled my once...

I am NOT going through that again!

PS:
WESTWOOD was once a mighty company riding the cutting edge of creativity (the COMMAND & CONQUER series was their innovative idea, starting with the classic DUNE that introduced the RTS genre). In 1997 they released an online RTS game named COMMAND & CONQUER: SOLE SURVIVOR. In 2003 (just 6 years later) WESTWOOD was bought by EA GAMES which (true to its mega-corporation mentality) pulled the plug on the existing servers. Whoever had bought SOLE SURVIVOR now had a piece of worthless reflective plastic.

Now, what makes you think this cannot happen to VALVE?
(and what will the value of all these STEAMed games be then?)

Fun for the short time I was able to play it.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 27 / 35
Date: October 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I purchased the orange box retail (not Amazon), installed with the DVD, and successfully activated my key though Steam. Everything was fine and dandy for a few days but then I went to play some Portal one night and all the games associated with the Orange Box were removed from my account for no apparent reason. When I try the launch the games from my desktop, I get a 'Territory Error' and I'm forced to quit. Valve has not been helpful in this regard and I still can not figure out why the removed the games from my account without warning, and I'm a paying customer. Valve claims that you can install and play any game associated with you Steam account on any computer in the world. However, my experience so far has taught me that I can't even play them on my own computer! I urge you to stay away from Valves products until you can be guaranteed that you won't be locked out of your Steam account. As of right now I'm out $4X.XX and have no games to show for it. Valve will never see a dime from me again.

Worst Company Ever

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 33 / 48
Date: October 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I was in Thailand for a business trip when I saw the Orange Box sitting in a name brand store at a great price. I purchased the item as I was planning on purchasing it anyway. It is a legitimate product, not a bootleg. This is name brand store, not a back street vendor.

When I get home to the states I install the game with no problems. Over the course of a week I played Portal which is a good but short game. I then go on to episode 2 and play until I have 1 mission left to beat. I log off and then log back on a few hours later. To my surprise I cannot play any of the games. I get a message that the games are not available in my territory.

I head over to the Steam website but there is nothing about the issue. I look up a phone number for tech support but there isn't one. You have to put in a ticket which can take a minimum of 3-5 business days.

So here I am not able to play any of my games, I can't get any help at all from Steam. Steam is the most intrusive DRM program I have seen. If it has problems you can't play your game even though you have the disc in hand. And the companies wonder why people pirate things. Although I don't condone then I can understand some of their reasoning.

I've got my support ticket in and I doubt I will hear anytime soon. I hope those of you who purchase this never have any problems with Steam. You will be left with an unusable product and little to no support.

Great package for those who are new to HL2

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 36 / 56
Date: December 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Okay, so I'll admit to being one of the five people that hasn't even touched Half Life 2 until now. I did play through the original Half Life, and its difficulty (especially in the later stages) was a bit of a turn-off. Personally, I think that when the game practically necessitates cheating to complete it, it's a bit too much. That said, seeing this bundle on the store shelf was a bit too good of a deal to pass up, so I picked it up.

First impressions on the game design- the physics is more heavily involved in gameplay than in any other shooter before or since. In fact, in many cases the gameplay seems to FOCUS on the physics, not on killing enemies. To underscore this, you can actually finish most of the game with only the gravity gun, which (except in rare cases) can't kill anything directly but can pick up objects to throw at enemies. This is an interesting departure from the norm, but there are times when I think they took it a bit too far. Typically, you'll start off killing enemies and will have the normal frantic bursts of action, but you'll eventually run into a puzzle. These are usually something as simple as a locked door or elevator, and you simply (or not) have to open it or turn it on. Most of the puzzles can be figured out given a reasonable amount of effort on the player's part, but there are a few that will undoubtedly frustrate to the point where you simply look it up. I guess this is fine, so long as you aren't highly averse to cheating in such a fashion. I will say, when you do get where you're going, you do feel a sense of accomplishment at having figured it out.

The game's graphics are pretty good even for now, and voice acting is well done. The environments are well made and look realistic in a sort of grim alien/post-apocalyptic style. It's nothing that will blow you away after seeing next-gen titles, but it's none too shabby either. Additionally, the episodes feature graphic improvements. If you have bought a machine anytime in the last 3-4 years, chances are it'll run smoothly at max settings. The game is quite stable as well, though it doesn't seem to like being minimized. One thing to note is that the game does take quite a while to start up and has occasional- and sometimes rather jarring- load pauses. These usually take place in a featureless corridor, and I found that after a while I could tell when it was about to stop to load.

The original HL2 is generally a good story and great pace, save for one glaring thing. There are two sequences where you're driving a vehicle around, and it's my opinion (and most I've mentioned it to agree) that these are just WAY too long. It's almost as if the developers were justifying the time they spent making the vehicles work by stretching out these sequences to a ridiculous length. Some other interesting notes are that allies are somewhat useful now, and the variety of enemies is enough that they don't get overly repetitive. Particularly, there is a point where you get to command an endless horde of weak critters to overwhelm a horde of enemies (fortunately, not endless), which is one of the highlights of the game.

The episodes (1 and 2) more or less follow the same style of the original. You lose all your weapons at the start of each one, which is rather irritating, and they aren't especially long installments. They largely serve to drive the plot along, which is actually getting interesting enough that I'm looking forward to the finale. You spend most of your time with Alyx backing you up, which is good if you hate being lonely, but somewhat of a shift in gears from the core game where you're largely solo. There are a few surprises and new enemies along the way, and enough new environments to make things fun.

Additionally, this package comes with Team Fortress and Portal, which are a multiplay shooter and puzzle game respectively. I haven't looked into either extensively since I largely bought this pack to get the Half Life content, but it's a nice bonus.

The only big gripe I have about the Orange Box is something that a lot of other people have complained about- specifically, Steam and the Valve DRM. If you don't have a live internet connection you CANNOT play any of the games since it needs to connect to Steam to authenticate you. Steam also performs updates whenever you launch, so patching is not optional and can eat into your game time when you don't particularly want it to. There were times when I was playing some online game, my internet died, and I figured to just play some HL2 instead... and after a few minutes sitting on the 'Now loading...' prompt I remembered it wasn't going to work either. This, like many other aspects of Half Life 2, is different from any other shooter out there- but not in a pleasant way. Personally, I don't see why it can't authenticate once in 3 launches, or even every other launch. Even that would be preferable to the way it is now.

All in all, the Orange Box is a great value if you haven't already bought HL2 or Episode 1. I'd hesitate to say it's a 'great' value for Episode 2 alone, but this is also available separately on Steam if you already have the rest. For those who haven't tried the core game, it's a lot of fun and good game time for the price, and unlike most new shooter releases you probably won't have to upgrade your PC to run it.

WARNING: Massively Region Locked

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 44 / 73
Date: October 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Orange Box is region locked like no other game before. If you buy this game in one country and bring your laptop to another country, there's a good chance Steam won't let you play it. This isn't mentioned anywhere on the box or in the license agreement, it's just a nasty surprise you get. So if you buy this game in the USA and take a trip to Japan with your laptop chances are you won't be able to play the game because Steam will detect you're using a Japanese IP address.

Right now Valve is locking this game down by country but next they may lock it down by state or even city. Sorry, you bought the game in Los Angeles, you can't play it in San Diego.

Negative five stars for a defective product. Valve stole my money.

Great game ruined by DRM.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 51 / 93
Date: October 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I am in college right now, and am often very busy. I do most of my gaming when I return to my mom's house for winter break and summer break. My mom's house has no internet connection. This game cannot be played without an internet connection, due to draconian DRM policies.

Remember: When you buy a game with DRM, you're not buying a game, you're buying...well, nothing at all really.

Nothing rhymes with Orange...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 19 / 26
Date: October 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

They say nothing rhymes with Orange... but what about PWNage!? I guess that doesn't either. But it should! This game rocks!

Team Fortress 2 is worth the price of admission for this instant classic collection. The team play is deep and instant. You really find people pairing up as medic and heavy to mow down a field of scouts and engineer turrets. Or people switching classes to fill in a defensive gap. THe healer class is greta fun as is the support engineer. They game is very well balanced with each class able to counter another.

The voice acting is hilarious and the charater models are gorgeous. This game will be played years to come, as the graphics are so highly stylized they will age with grace. The depth of each player class and the differing play modes make for a truly engrossing experience. Mix in some achievements, point capturing, Steam's new robust online community, in-game VOIP and you have a stellar game experience worth $50 alone. But wait theres more!

The price is simply amazing. Easily the best deal in gaming available out there! Half Life 2 was great and episode 1 continued that excitement. Portal proves to be great and a fresh take on puzzles, this time in 3D. Episode 2 will be great as well.

I am happy i purchased this game and have been able to play Team Fortress 2 for the Steam beta period. I will not stop playing for a long long time! Great work Valve!

region locked

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 24 / 36
Date: October 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

According to Valve, their games are region locked so make sure you purchase from the same area that you will play in, otherwise your games will be disabled. A copy of the orange box bought in one country will not work in another country since all valve games are verified through steam.

My biggest complaint is that no information regarding the region lock is listed on the box itself or on Steam's website. After purchasing a legitimate copy of the orange box while i was in asia, my games disappeared a few days after i had installed and played when i got back to the U.S. Theres no official statement from Valve as of yet and no word from their customer service.

Worst Amazon purchase I've ever made.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 105 / 244
Date: January 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I've been shopping on Amazon since the late 1990s. I've been playing video games since the early 1980s. Between the two, I've probably bought over 100 different video games through Amazon for a dozen different game systems and computers. The Orange Box is, without a doubt, the WORST game purchase I have ever made here. Not only do I feel completely cheated, not only do I feel as if I am in fact owed several hundred dollars in frustration fees, I actually think my overall interest in video games has been damaged by this monstrous piece of marketing vomit masquerading as a playful gamer utopia. That is how ridiculous this piece of Trojan Horsed garbage is.

The culprit is a smarmy little ferret of a program called "Steam". I don't know who came up with this, but I hope they get hit by a bus and buried in a fire ant den. Simply put, "Steam" is an Orwellian nanny program that requires you to basically convert your computer into an Internet-enabled marketing survey to even access the games you "own" (but that Steam controls). Once upon a golden time, when you bought a game you could put the CD in your computer and simply play it, perhaps with an activation key. But with Steam, you have to set up an entire account larded with nefarious third party vendors just to have a fighting chance of even downloading the games that are supposedly just included in the Orange Box. Fantastic.

And guess what - there is no mention of Steam anywhere in The Orange Box. NONE. The entire instruction manual for the Orange Box consists of a single two-sided set of control instructions for the actual games. I guess they just forgot to print the "Oh, By the Way, You Need Officially Licensed Steam Spyware To Install or Play Any Of These Games, Suckers" liner.

I have never been more disgusted and embarrassed by a purchase before, and I've been to Amsterdam. I strongly encourage everyone to give deep and abiding thought to whether they really want to pay $40+ a pop for the privilege of having customized spyware run roughshod over their computer. I guess this "5 game* --- *if you manage to navigate 15 layers of watchdog control" game "deal" really is too good to be true.

steam is a nightmare

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: December 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

You would think that if valve implemented something that was able to register and verify their product online, they would make a system that would work. If it doesn't work, then why not just do it the way that everyone else does it? I mean if you are going to make users go through all the trouble of having to verify the game over the internet, then shouldn't the process of playing the game after validation be hassle free? After all, we paid for it. We should be able to play it.
I'm having nightmares trying to get anything to play except for peggle. I have been able to play a little bit of portal. The problem is that the local .gcf files are corrupted and the support page tells you nothing about them. So you're left with downloading GCFScape and verifying each .gcf file is not corrupted and deleting them if they are, and then opening up steam again to download. Except that the next download is corrupt too, so you have to start the process all over again (which takes hours). Meanwhile, you can't play anything.
They need to make the process of downloading and extraction more foolproof, or they need to make steam a little bit more verbose when there is a hang-up or both. Controlling the verification of authenticity over the internet is fine by me. But if you are going to go that route - be sure that process is as hassle free as possible.

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