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The Orange Box


Labeled With  the orange box xbox360 ea valve
Written by Vividbreeze on Thursday, October 25 2007

Episode two also strikes a great balance between action, exploration, and strategy. Not only is the game filled with enemies, but you also have at least two different sects of allies that help you along the way. Believe me, you are lucky they are there, for without their help there would be no way to achieve your goal. Those of you familiar with the Half-life story will instantly recognize the Vortigaunts, an alien race from another dimension that Dr. Freeman accidentally freed from a Combine prison in the original Half-life game. Ever since then these enigmatic creatures have been stuck on Earth, and they freely offer all their knowledge and abilities to help in the fight against the Combine. At times, the Vorts will even join the human resistance on the front lines, and use their naturally generated energy beams (which emanate from their hands) to defeat enemy soldiers. You are not alone in this fight to save Earth, and the human race.

One of the drawbacks that the Half-life games have always suffered from is the lack of diversity in the enemies. Episode two aims to remedy this, at least to some degree, with the addition of a few new enemies. The most significant of which, are the Hunters. A Hunter is basically an 8 foot tall, three legged Combine robot that is designed to seek out prey and annihilate it. Hunters are truly a fearsome enemy, and luckily you only meet these nimble killers a few times in Episode two. Hunters will even follow you into a house, upstairs, out a second floor window, and into a cave, until one of you is dead. It sounds scary, because it is.




As I said, Valve's Source Engine is one of the best looking graphical engines around. To this end, Valve it seems, has added a few bits of new lighting technology. If you want to see the difference for yourself, boot up Episode one, and you will notice that there are not many times that you see lighting effects like those on the Hunters and Grubs in Episode two. One would think that Valve would simply use the most updated version of their engine for all the games that are included with The Orange Box, but that is apparently not the case. All in all though, all the games still look fantastic.

The gameplay in Episode two is the culmination of three previous Half-life games, and it shows. You will not find a better playing FPS on the Xbox 360, especially if we are just talking about single player games. The weapons, map layouts, game mechanics, and enemy placements and frequency, are all dead on. In fact, I can say quite interestingly that my interest in the Half-life games increases exponentially every time a new incarnation is released. Episode two gets almost everything right, and it is only one out of five games that are included on the disc.

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The Orange Box


 
 
> rating

9.7
   GR Rating
 
> media
> game information

Player Support (1-16)

Local
Co-op multiplayer
Head to head multiplayer

System Link
Co-op multiplayer
Head to head multiplayer

Online
Co-op multiplayer
Head to head multiplayer

Options
Fully configurable control scheme
480p
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1080i
Dolby Digital 5.1
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Vividbreeze

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