For those who can’t let go, I have some advice- Let go. Where I work, people regularly use their PC’s to play multiplayer games at lunch and after work at the end of the week. Because the place is so big and stuffed with geeks there are several different games going on around the building. There’s the WoW fraternity, TF2 players (whose ranks have been thinned recently), Left 4 Dead and CoD4 Modern Warfare. Yesterday we had some interesting conversations on our private CoD4 mailing list and it highlights a problem when you play a good multiplayer game for a long time and tire of, but have no immediate successor lined up.
So these guys have basically played Call of Duty modern Warfare at lunchtimes for over a year. They don’t like CS or TF2 or LEft 4 Dead, they love CoD4. They are very good at it and most are ranked level 55. They also play a mod, so they’ve levelled up using this bot mod only with the bots turned off so they’re basically playing standard CoD4 but one where they can only play against each other if they want to preserve their rankings). This is why its hard to tear away the TF2 guys from their game or WoW players to a new MMO. They’ve invested so much time in the game but are so sick of it but they’ve invested so much time in it but they are so sick of it but, well, you can guess the rest.
So back to this group of CoD lovers. One guy, who’s one of the better players, and the one who wrote the bot mod we played, has basically had enough. I know because I’ve played him on the 360 version as well as the PC- He’s spent more time on that one game than I have on sleeping in the past year by the looks of things. you know the type, complaining about others using the grenade launcher (the n00b tube) So he’s trying to rally the troops into playing something else. So what about Call of Duty World at War? Nope- WWII, buggy, yada yada. Which is funny because he hasn’t played it. Ok, then what?
Operation flashpoint was suggested. The group was all excited but apparently was a colossal let down. I could have told them that. Then Codename:Eagle, apparently a pre EA DICE made this before BF1942. Apparently buggy too so that went down in flames. Its funny, but I’m sure many games have this same dilemma. What do you play when you’re sick of something. I recall years ago, when we played Medal of Honor Allied Assault multiplayer, we moved straight onto Call of Duty (the original). When that grew stale, there was no immediate successor until the UT2004 demo came out. Battlefield Vietnam came out and filled the void for a while but that didn’t last. Eventually someone suggested the original Counterstrike and they went back to that (without me for the most part since CS has never gelled for me). WoW kind of killed the LAN gaming network for a few years (that and some other loopholes being closed by the IT department). Counterstrike source came and went a few times, lots of RTSes and MMo’s and then new FPSes becoming fashionable again amongst theses fairly PC-centric types with CoD4 and TF2 (and then Left 4 Dead).
But the habits are hard to kick. Left 4 Dead took away some of the TF2 players (not all), but CoD WaW has not pulled the CoD4 guys away. I’m guessing that either these dudes will be bringing in CoD2 next week or Battlefield 1942 or BF2. And it won’t last. I reckon give it a month before thy come back to Modern Warfare.
I myself played Left 4 Dead but i found the online wasn’t more fun than SP for me and I kind of lost interest after writing the review. Then I saw on steam my Day of Defeat Source needed an update so I patched it and tried it having not played it since CoD2 came out in late 2005. Well, you can see the TF2/influence now. Film grain effect and killcams straight out of TF2 (same sound effects) but that aside, this is still one of the better fast paced shooters. It has changed so little that I can’t help wondering if these guyus will ever get bored with playing these same maps over and over.
What makes guys play this sort of game over and over so much, even years later? CoD WaW has come out and sold very well, but I find the PC community to be quite small. My ISP is one of the larger server providers and there are only two normal TDM servers for CoD WaW compared to about six to eight for Modern Warfare. Hey, people are still playing Quake III somewhere.
Its hard to let go.
Reviewed on PC. Also on Xbox 360. Developed by Valve. Retail versions published by EA
Left 4 Dead is Valve’s latest First Person shooter, based mainly around online cooperative play. L4D has also managed to at least partially bury the meme-cow (a cash cow for memes) that was TF2, at least in the short term. So what is it about this game that’s got everyone excited?
So the conceit is that each of the four stories are their own survival horror movie. Four survivors- Francis- the tough biker, Louis the office worker, Zoe the spunky chick and Bill, the old fart ex marine. Those are my descriptions based on playing the game so forgive me if they misrepresent the ‘canon.’ The four of you basically go from point A to point B Starting and ending each level in a new safehouse. And along the way there are zombies. Like everywhere. There are the common or garden zombies who just move towards you, sometimes slowly, other times rushing at you, often in numbers. And there are the specials.
There’s Boomer, a giant fat bile factory, who, if you get too close, will vomit on you and have hordes of zombies rushing you. Then there’s smoker, with his enormous tongue; Hunters who’ll jump you and pound the crap out of you; and tanks, who are basically big motherfuckers. There’s also the witch, but DON’T DISTURB THE WITCH YOU TARD!
That makes it sound simplistic but its actually a blast to play, easily the best Valve MP game in ages. You can play either by yourself which is underrated and an enormous amount of fun, and are able to select any chapter in any of the campaigns (of course there are no checkpoints within any of the chapters, so if you die you start again). Or you can play with three others, each of you taking on one of the four characters (one of each BTW). You need to work together, if someone runs off and gets cornered, they will need to be rescued. You can of course heal yourself or heal you teammates and they can of course heal you if they feel like it. But Multiplayer does highlight one thing, the AI in this game is very good (even on single player).
This is down to the much vaunted AI director. This will spawn enemies at just the right time and in just the right places. No two playthroughs of this game will ever bee the same and for that reason I recommend playing the single player through by yourself at some point. When you play with people, they’re selfish with health packs, shoot you by mistake and run off by themselves and get killed- which is a pain since that leaves more infected for you to deal with. There’s also a versus mode where four humans can go against four players on the zombie team. The zombies are weak but respawn and can choose exactly where they will lie in wait for their human opponents.
The graphics are pretty decent for a source based game. It doesn’t look ugly per se, it just looks a little underwhelming compared to even some the best console games, let alone high end PC’s. Sound is fantastic, from the music, the voiceover work to the punchy effects.
Left 4 Dead looks like a poor value proposition when you compare it to Team Fortress 2, but it actually offers so much more, not least is a very good single player mode. It’s memes are also not as moronic and insular meaning this is a fun game for everyone to get right into. Everyone loves zombies right?
Controller1.com rating 3/3
Reviewed on Xbox 360 and PC. Also on PS3
Developed by Valve (PS3 version by EA). Published by Valve (PC via Steam) and EA (Xbox 360, PS3)
Half Life 2
Working my way through The Orange Box, as you do, I thought I would collect some thoughts on HL2′s campaign, which is the only part of the Orange Box I had played previously. It’s also the longest part of the
Orange Box, unless for some strange reason you’re still playing Team Fortress 2.
Half Life 2 tells the story of Gordon Freeman when he arrives in City 17. Between Half Life 1 and 2, there have been a fair few unexplained events happening off-screen. Earth has now been taken over by the
Combine, who exert their control through a traitorous human. Gordon takes charge of the resistance, get a girlfriend and shows Bioshock (Bioshock? Bioshock?!) still has a way to go in unseating Half Life 2.
It’s funny that in an industry where every successful and original game is copied relentlessly that no one has really tried to do the type of story and varied gameplay, and really no one who’s tried has
got it right, with the exception of Bioshock (Bioshock? Bioshock?!). This thing just doesn’t feel all that dated.
Graphics hold up very well on 360 and the sterling audio work carries over with nary a glitch. The game runs smoothly on 360, load times aren’t excessive and the controller works well. It took me about 14-15
hours to play though the second time, maybe a bit longer – its hard to estimate re-tries, and even on its own would have been worth the price of admission.
The weapons are all interesting takes on the standard FPS fare, though you have some oddities such as the crossbow being the only long range weapon and the Combine rifle. Sometimes it feels as though your
character is a bit too large for the corridors he’s traversing but on the whole, a very entertaining experience.
Half Life 2 is one of those games you have to have in your collection, either on PC or on Xbox 360. There’s also an Xbox 1 version from a few years back, but like the frame-rate optional PS3 version of Orange box, this is best avoided.
C1 Rating: 3/3
Episode One
Well, almost through the Orange Box, Meh-pisode One is the least interesting single player element in the Orange Box.
I finished it in about 3 hours (probably 4 with restarts) so its not a very long experience, but it really is ho-hum compared to the brilliance in evidence throughout the rest of The Orange Box.
Meh-pisode One carries on from the rather unusual ending of HL2. You and Alyx Vance have to RE-ENTER the Citadel (which has all these things that weren’t there before). At least here you get to spend alot more time with Alyx Vance, who clearly has the hots for Gordon Freeman. It is an expansion pack since there are all of two new character models (one of which, the Stalker does almost nothing thataffects gameplay) So Gordon and Alyx go through an underground car park, Gordon and Alyx go through a disused Hospital, yada, yada, yada. Nothing to see here. Move along. So why play it?
Well, I hear Episode Two is the dogs balls. It’s supposed to be fantastic, even more fantastic than HL2. So even through I read that Meh-pisode One was ordinary, I knew I’d have to sit through it in order to ‘get’ Ep 2.
So it wasn’t bad, but I had never played it, I would never had missed
it. It’s like most PC expansions packs, you really can’t see the point.
C1 Rating 1/3
Episode Two
Well, I have finally finished going though everything in the Orange Box, and believe me by the time you’ve played through all of Portal, TF2, Half Life 2, Episode and Episode Two, you certainly feel as if
you’ve gotten your money’s worth…
So Episode Two is about 4-5 hours of gameplay continuing on from the end of the rather ordinary Episode One. Episode Two is much better, with the sense of deja vu you get playing through some sorta familiar level types is less than Ep 1.You have a level in a mine infested by Ant Lions, with a new variant
that spits acid at you and luminescent Ant Lion Grubs which restore one point of health everytime you step on one. Then there’s a new car to drive and the Magnusson devices at the climax. So its more of the
same with some tweaks but there’s enough of an improvement over Episode One that playing through this if you have Orange Box is a must.
Graphics are still decent, slightly better than the earlier installments and framerate never misses a beat. Sound is still great with the voice acting being a particular highlight. The ending battle is somewhat more intense than anything outside of TF2, and it almost goes on for too long but once you have a stratgey
in place, it’s not as daunting as it appears at the start of the battle. I found the difficulty levels throughout to be better than Half Life 2 or Episode One so it wasn’t too easy or too hard, just
right.
So, would I play Episode Three? Well, that depends on how is made available to 360 or PS3 users since I don’t want to end up buying the game on Orange Box again (I have already bought Half Life 2 when it
came out and TF2 on PC as well). If I can just buy one part at a reasonable price (by reasonable I don’t mean the ridiculous prices on Steam where all of Orange Box on PC is $50 but TF2 on its own is $30)
and on console, I might give it ago. At the moment, I am a bit Sourced out and will take a long break from HL2-based games for quite a while (unless Day of Defeat for Xbox LIVE is announced).
C1 Rating: 3/3
PORTAL
Portal started off as a HL2 mod that become a phenomenon in its own right. a short 306 hour puzzle game played in first person mode, Portal has several things going for it. Unique gameplay that’s going to be hard to replicate without being so obviously a clone; a presentation that will never be matched for originality, humour and creepiness- a veritable meme factory; and that song.
The 360 version of Portal as part of the Orange Box is great. Its a short review for a short game. You just need to play Portal. rent orange box, or just by the PC version on its own but go out and get this now.
Team Fortress 2
Lastly, my least favourite part of the Orange Box. Its my least favouite but its not bad, it just doesn’t click with me like it does for so many who believe it to be Jesus’ son. TF2 is a class based team game based around capturing control points(battlefield), or collecting intelligence (capture the flag) and similar gameplay types (since this review was originally written in late 2007, other modes have been added and are not reviewed here).
Its one of the games you either get it or you don’t. The ones that do love this to the point where WoW was just a footnote in videogaming history. Its obviously a very well put together and quality game that I totally don’t get despite owning the PC and 360 version (the 360 version of TF2 is the only unplayable part of orange box on 360,)
C1 Rating: 1/3
overall Orange Box: rating 3/3
