The Orange Box
Encyclopedia
The Orange Box is a video game compilation for Microsoft Windows
, Xbox 360
, Mac OS X
and PlayStation 3
. The Windows and Xbox 360 versions were produced and published by Valve Corporation
and released on October 10, 2007 as a boxed retail copy. A Windows-only download through Valve's Steam service was released the previous day.
The PlayStation 3 version was produced by Electronic Arts
and released on December 11, 2007 in North America and in Europe. Valve has also released a soundtrack
containing music from the games within the compilation.
The compilation contains five games, all powered by Valve's Source engine
. Two of the games included, Half-Life 2
and its first stand-alone expansion, Episode One
, had previously been released as separate products. Three new games were also included in the compilation: the second stand-alone expansion, Half-Life 2: Episode Two
, the puzzle game Portal, and Team Fortress 2
(which is now a free game to play on Valve's program Steam), the multiplayer game sequel to the original mod
based on the Quake engine
, Team Fortress
. A separate product entitled The Black Box was planned, which would have included only the new games, but was canceled.
The Orange Box has received critical acclaim and Portal was recognized as a surprise favorite of the package. The PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box has been noted for several technical shortcomings that were not present in the other versions, only a few of which were fixed through a single patch
.
The Orange Box features five complete games compiled into one retail unit: Half-Life 2 and its two continuations, Episode One and Episode Two; Portal; and Team Fortress 2. All of these games use Valve's Source engine
.
Through the Steam platform for the Windows
version, the games can collect and report in-depth data such as where the player's character died, completion time, and total victories in multiplayer modes. This data is compiled to generate gameplay statistics for Episode One, Episode Two, and Team Fortress 2.
Although Half-Life 2 has the largest proportion of Achievements, there are 99 spread across all five games, exceeding the 50-achievement limit that Microsoft maintains to feature the most Achievements of any Xbox 360 product. These Achievements include killing a certain number of monsters, finding hidden weapon caches, or other tasks specific to each game.
All the games except Half-Life 2 contain in-game commentary that can be enabled, allowing the player to listen to the developers discuss the creation and purpose of particular sections and components of each game. This has been a feature of every Valve game since Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
due to the commentary's popularity in that game, according to Erik Wolpaw, lead writer for Portal.
first-person shooter
game and the sequel to Half-Life. While remaining similar in style to the original, Half-Life 2 introduces new concepts to the series such as physics-based puzzles and vehicle sections. The game takes place in the fictional City 17 and surrounding areas as the player takes on the role of scientist Gordon Freeman
. Freeman is thrust into a dystopia
n environment in which the aftermath of the events of Half-Life have come to bear fully upon human society, and he is forced to fight against increasingly unfavorable odds in order to survive. In his struggle, he is joined by various acquaintances, including former Black Mesa colleagues, oppressed citizens of City 17, and the Vortigaunt
s, all of whom later prove to be valuable allies. Half-Life 2 received critical acclaim, including 35 Game of the Year
awards, when it was originally released for Windows in 2004. As of December 3, 2008, over 6.5 million copies of Half-Life 2 have been sold at retail. Although Steam sales figures are unknown, their rate surpassed retail's in mid-2008 and they are significantly more profitable per-unit.
from the events of Half-Life 2. Episode One builds on the original, adding cooperative play with friendly non-player character
s such as Alyx Vance
, whose new abilities complement Freeman's abilities and allow her to comprehend and respond to the player's actions by lending help.
It is set immediately after the end of Half-Life 2 in the war-torn City 17 and nearby areas. Episode One follows scientist Gordon Freeman and his companion Alyx Vance as they continue to cope with the events chronicled in Half-Life 2 and humanity's continuing struggle against the Combine
. The game was originally released in 2006 for Windows as a standalone game and was generally well received, although it was criticized for its short length and lack of new features.
action
/puzzle game that was first available as part of The Orange Box. The game consists primarily of a series of puzzles that are solved by creating portals through which the player and simple objects can use the portals in order to reach an exit point, all the while being ordered by an AI
named GLaDOS. The portal system and the unusual physics it creates are the emphasis of this game. Portal was a surprise favorite of The Orange Box, receiving widespread praise and several Game of the Year awards.
Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer team-based first-person shooter
that was first available as part of The Orange Box. The game is a sequel to the original Quake
modification
, Team Fortress
, and Valve's Half-Life modification, Team Fortress Classic
. Its focus is on two competing teams that attack each other in order to achieve varying objectives, including capturing command points or defending them from attack, or capturing a flag
. Players can choose to play as one of nine classes in these teams, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Unlike most other Source
-powered games, Team Fortress 2 features a cartoon art style and non-realistic graphics. Team Fortress 2 was very well received by critics and consumers alike; it was particularly praised for its unique artistic direction and graphics.
", both by Jonathan Coulton
. It was released on December 21, 2007 and is sold by the official Valve Store, Amazon.com
, and digital music services such as iTunes
, Napster
, and eMusic
. A more-complete version of this soundtrack that also includes music files from Half-Life and Half-Life 2 was released on Steam as part of the Audiosurf
package. "Still Alive" was subsequently released as a free downloadable song for the music video game
Rock Band on March 31, 2008.
graphics cards, who received a voucher for a free copy of The Black Box.
During development, the simultaneous release of two game compilation packages with different content combinations was touted by Valve as a new direction for the game industry. Gabe Newell
, co-founder of Valve, said, "The Black Box and The Orange Box represent a new approach to publishing multiple products on multiple platforms." After first discontinuing The Black Box, however, Valve released all the new material for individual download via Steam.
The Black Box was to be priced US$10 lower than The Orange Box. To compensate for the cancellation of The Black Box, Valve offered gift subscriptions to Steam users who had previously purchased Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2: Episode One and then purchased The Orange Box so that they could give their second copies of those two games as gifts to people added to their Steam Friends list. Still, the cancellation of The Black Box sparked complaints from game critics and consumers alike, unhappy that they were obliged to pay for games that they already owned. It also raised concerns among those who had bought the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card, which came with a voucher for The Black Box, but Valve clarified that only the retail version of The Black Box had been cancelled. While Valve never expressed its reasons for this decision, industry writers speculated that it might have been to increase profits on retail copies or to avoid customer confusion between similar game packages and their availability across the platforms.
port
was outsourced to Electronic Arts
. In an interview with Edge
magazine before the game's release, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell commented, "I think the people who have The Orange Box on the PS3 are going to be happy with their game experience. We've done the PC and 360 versions here and EA has a team doing the PS3 version – and they'll make the PS3 version a good product; EA got the job done in putting a lot of people with PS3 experience on the project. But I think it's harder to get it to the same standard as the 360 and PC versions". Despite this, he noted that Valve will probably handle PlayStation 3 versions of its products in the future.
In a preview of The Orange Box in November 2007, 1UP.com
revealed numerous problems with the late beta build of EA's PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box, citing pervasive frame rate
issues which, they claimed, "at best merely hinder gameplay and at worst make the experience downright unplayable." IGN
's Hilary Goldstein disagreed, writing that although EA "is one of the worst offenders when it comes to porting games to the PS3," the frame rate issues were not bad enough "to make me throw my controller in disgust."
On January 3, 2008, IGN reported that Valve employees had created a thread on Valve's website forums
for players to list the problems they had encountered and to suggest fixes, which caused speculation that a patch
was being planned to address the issues in the PlayStation 3 version, such as the frame rate issues, the connection problems in Team Fortress 2, and the slow loading times in Portal. A patch for the PlayStation 3 version was later released in North America on March 19, 2008 and Europe a short while after that; however, it made no mention of fixing frame rate issues or slow loading times.
. This generated complaints from North American customers who had circumvented their Steam end-user license agreement by purchasing The Orange Box through cheaper, Asian retailers. Some customers who then purchased the game a second time from a local vendor experienced difficulty adding the new CD key to their accounts in order to activate their newly-purchased games and also had trouble communicating with Steam's customer support team about this problem. Doug Lombardi of Valve stated, "Some of these users have subsequently purchased a legal copy after realizing the issue and were having difficulty removing the illegitimate keys from their Steam accounts. Anyone having this problem should contact Steam Support to have the Thai key removed from their Steam account."
The German version of The Orange Box is set to a low violence mode in order to comply with German laws regulating the sale of violent video games. Blood effects are replaced by sparks and bullet wounds are replaced with dents as if the characters were metal robots. Additionally in Team Fortess 2, instead of body parts being scattered after a player's character is blown apart, various items such as hamburgers, coils, rubber ducks, and Chattery Teeth
appear. Characters from different classes leave different items and different ratios of these items when killed by explosives. In the Half-Life games, bodies fade away after the death of non-player character
s and the blood has been altered to a gray color.
that is only available for PC, with graphical themes from The Orange Box. Peggle, published by PopCap Games
, is a puzzle game combining elements of pinball
and pachinko
.
Since its release, The Orange Box has been met with universal acclaim from reviewers. The averaging website GameRankings cites both the Xbox 360 version and the PC version as the highest-rated game of their respective platforms. IGN
described The Orange Box as "the best deal in video game history." and awarded both the Windows and Xbox 360 versions with an Editors' Choice Award. All three versions won GameSpot's
Editors' Choice Award. Approximately 3 million copies of The Orange Box have been sold by the end of November 2008.
Portal has been singled out for praise by reviewers. Official Xbox Magazine
admired its unique puzzle gameplay mechanics, stating that it was the first major advance in puzzle gaming "since Russians started dropping blocks
." Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw
, The Escapist
's usually acerbically critical reviewer, stated in his Zero Punctuation
review that he couldn't think of any criticism for Portal, which has "some of the funniest pitch-black humor [he had] ever heard in a game" and concluded that it is "absolutely sublime from start to finish, and I will jam forks into my eyes if I ever use those words to describe anything else, ever again."
The PlayStation 3 version's critical review scores suffered because of the technical issues first uncovered by 1UP.com. While discussing the retail version on a podcast
, 1UP.com staff members agreed that a significant number of the frame rate problems had been resolved, but not all of them. They concluded that the PlayStation 3 version was not quite as smooth as the Xbox 360 version and recommended that "if you own both [consoles], you should do the 360" version. Kotaku's
Michael McWhertor echoed that recommendation, though stated that those who only have a PlayStation 3 should still consider The Orange Box.
While frame rate
issues were the main complaint, the PlayStation 3 version was also criticized for unreliable voice chat
and excessive network delay or lag
in Team Fortress 2, as well as long load times generally. It was, however, praised for featuring anti-aliasing
and a quick-save feature, neither of which were present in the Xbox 360 version (but were present in the PC version). After release, the game received further criticism from fans for the lack of surround sound support when using an optical cable. An open letter to Valve, asking them to put pressure on EA to release a fix was posted to the Steam forum. A response was posted by a Valve employee going by the name of "BurtonJ", directing disappointed customers to a dedicated thread on the subject.
' 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards and was nominated in the "Overall Game of the Year", "Action Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming" categories. The Orange Box won the "Breakthrough Technology Award" and the "Best PC Game Award" at the 2007 Spike Video Game Awards, and was additionally nominated in the "Game of the Year", "Best Shooter", "Best Xbox 360 Game", and "Best Multiplayer Game" categories. It was also named the second-best video game of 2007 by Time Magazine, while the PlayStation 3 version was nominated in the category of Action and Adventure at the BAFTA Video Games Awards. Valve also received developer awards for their work on The Orange Box. The Orange Box received 17 Game of the Year awards and over 100 awards in total. The Orange Box was placed as the 22nd most influential video game in history by the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition, 2009.
Portal won "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design", "Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering", and "Outstanding Character Performance" at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The game won 76 awards, including 37 Game of the Year awards, and was recognized for innovative design and game mechanics. The dark humor of Portal and the ending music track Still Alive were also singled out for awards.
Team Fortress 2 was nominated in the categories of "Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction" and "Outstanding Achievement in Animation" at the 11th Interactive Achievement Awards. Although unsuccessful at the IAA, the game did receive 10 awards, including five Game of the Year awards, and other awards for its artistic direction and multiplayer gameplay.
Half-Life 2: Episode Two won four awards, including one Game of the Year award, and was recognized for excellent NPC
AI
, level design, and story.
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
and PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
. The Windows and Xbox 360 versions were produced and published by Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
and released on October 10, 2007 as a boxed retail copy. A Windows-only download through Valve's Steam service was released the previous day.
The PlayStation 3 version was produced by Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
and released on December 11, 2007 in North America and in Europe. Valve has also released a soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
containing music from the games within the compilation.
The compilation contains five games, all powered by Valve's Source engine
Source engine
Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve Corporation. It debuted in June 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source and shortly thereafter Half-Life 2, and has been in active development ever since...
. Two of the games included, Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 , the sequel to Half-Life, is a first-person shooter video game and a signature title in the Half-Life series. It is singleplayer, story-driven, science fiction, and linear...
and its first stand-alone expansion, Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode One is the first in a series of episodes that serve as the sequel for the 2004 first-person shooter video game Half-Life 2. It was developed by Valve Corporation and released on June 1, 2006. Originally called Half-Life 2: Aftermath, the game was later renamed to Episode One...
, had previously been released as separate products. Three new games were also included in the compilation: the second stand-alone expansion, Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Half-Life 2: Episode Two is the second episode in a series of sequels to the 2004 first-person shooter video game Half-Life 2. It was developed by Valve Corporation in tandem with Episode One, the first game in the series, and released in Q4 2007 via Valve's Steam content distribution platform...
, the puzzle game Portal, and Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2 is a free-to-play team-based first-person shooter multiplayer video game developed by Valve Corporation. A sequel to the original mod Team Fortress based on the Quake engine, it was first released as part of the video game compilation The Orange Box on October 10, 2007 for Windows...
(which is now a free game to play on Valve's program Steam), the multiplayer game sequel to the original mod
Mod (computer gaming)
Mod or modification is a term generally applied to personal computer games , especially first-person shooters, role-playing games and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not standalone software and...
based on the Quake engine
Quake engine
The Quake engine is the game engine that was written to power 1996's Quake, written by id Software. It featured true 3D real-time rendering and is now licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License ....
, Team Fortress
Team Fortress
Team Fortress is a team- and class-based online multiplayer video game mod based on id Software's Quake. Team Fortress was designed and written by Robin Walker, John Cook and Ian Caughley in 1996. The mod's gameplay has caught on with a large following of fans, which has spurred many developers to...
. A separate product entitled The Black Box was planned, which would have included only the new games, but was canceled.
The Orange Box has received critical acclaim and Portal was recognized as a surprise favorite of the package. The PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box has been noted for several technical shortcomings that were not present in the other versions, only a few of which were fixed through a single patch
Patch (computing)
A patch is a piece of software designed to fix problems with, or update a computer program or its supporting data. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, and improving the usability or performance...
.
Overview
Source engine
Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve Corporation. It debuted in June 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source and shortly thereafter Half-Life 2, and has been in active development ever since...
.
Through the Steam platform for the Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
version, the games can collect and report in-depth data such as where the player's character died, completion time, and total victories in multiplayer modes. This data is compiled to generate gameplay statistics for Episode One, Episode Two, and Team Fortress 2.
Although Half-Life 2 has the largest proportion of Achievements, there are 99 spread across all five games, exceeding the 50-achievement limit that Microsoft maintains to feature the most Achievements of any Xbox 360 product. These Achievements include killing a certain number of monsters, finding hidden weapon caches, or other tasks specific to each game.
All the games except Half-Life 2 contain in-game commentary that can be enabled, allowing the player to listen to the developers discuss the creation and purpose of particular sections and components of each game. This has been a feature of every Valve game since Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast is a small additional level for the 2004 first-person shooter video game Half-Life 2. Developed by Valve Software, it was released on October 27, 2005, through the Steam content delivery service as a free download to owners of the Microsoft Windows version of Half-Life 2...
due to the commentary's popularity in that game, according to Erik Wolpaw, lead writer for Portal.
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 is a science fictionScience fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
game and the sequel to Half-Life. While remaining similar in style to the original, Half-Life 2 introduces new concepts to the series such as physics-based puzzles and vehicle sections. The game takes place in the fictional City 17 and surrounding areas as the player takes on the role of scientist Gordon Freeman
Gordon Freeman
Gordon Freeman is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the Half-Life video game series. He is a theoretical physicist who finds himself thrust into a battle for survival against both alien and human forces. Throughout the series, Gordon must prevail in hostile situations despite...
. Freeman is thrust into a dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n environment in which the aftermath of the events of Half-Life have come to bear fully upon human society, and he is forced to fight against increasingly unfavorable odds in order to survive. In his struggle, he is joined by various acquaintances, including former Black Mesa colleagues, oppressed citizens of City 17, and the Vortigaunt
Vortigaunt
Vortigaunts are a fictional extra-dimensional species in the Half-Life series by Valve Corporation. In Half-Life and its three expansions, Vortigaunts are frequently encountered by the player as hostile non-player characters...
s, all of whom later prove to be valuable allies. Half-Life 2 received critical acclaim, including 35 Game of the Year
Game of the Year
Game of the Year is a title awarded by various magazines, websites, and shows to a deserving game. Many are only for PC or console video games...
awards, when it was originally released for Windows in 2004. As of December 3, 2008, over 6.5 million copies of Half-Life 2 have been sold at retail. Although Steam sales figures are unknown, their rate surpassed retail's in mid-2008 and they are significantly more profitable per-unit.
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode One continuesEpisodic games
An episodic video game is a video game of a shorter length that is commercially released as an installment to a continuous and larger series. Episodic games differ from conventional video games in that they often contain less content but are developed on a more frequent basis.Such a series may or...
from the events of Half-Life 2. Episode One builds on the original, adding cooperative play with friendly non-player character
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
s such as Alyx Vance
Alyx Vance
Alyx Vance is a non-player character in Valve's 2004 first-person shooter computer game Half-Life 2, and its following episodes: Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two...
, whose new abilities complement Freeman's abilities and allow her to comprehend and respond to the player's actions by lending help.
It is set immediately after the end of Half-Life 2 in the war-torn City 17 and nearby areas. Episode One follows scientist Gordon Freeman and his companion Alyx Vance as they continue to cope with the events chronicled in Half-Life 2 and humanity's continuing struggle against the Combine
Combine (Half-Life 2)
The Combine, also referred to as the Universal Union, is a multidimensional empire, which serves as the primary antagonistic force in the Half-Life video game series, developed by Valve Corporation. The Combine consist of alien, synthetic, and human elements and dominate Earth...
. The game was originally released in 2006 for Windows as a standalone game and was generally well received, although it was criticized for its short length and lack of new features.
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Half-Life 2: Episode Two was first available as part of The Orange Box and focuses on expansive environments, travel, and less linear play. In the game, Gordon Freeman and the series' other major characters move away from City 17 to the surrounding wilderness following the closing events of Episode One. The game was praised for its new environments and features and was well received by critics.Portal
Portal is a single-player first-personFirst-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
action
Action game
Action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes diverse subgenres such as fighting games, shooter games, and platform games, which are widely considered the most important action games, though some...
/puzzle game that was first available as part of The Orange Box. The game consists primarily of a series of puzzles that are solved by creating portals through which the player and simple objects can use the portals in order to reach an exit point, all the while being ordered by an AI
Ai
AI, A.I., Ai, or ai may refer to:- Computers :* Artificial intelligence, a branch of computer science* Ad impression, in online advertising* .ai, the ISO Internet 2-letter country code for Anguilla...
named GLaDOS. The portal system and the unusual physics it creates are the emphasis of this game. Portal was a surprise favorite of The Orange Box, receiving widespread praise and several Game of the Year awards.
Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer team-based first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
that was first available as part of The Orange Box. The game is a sequel to the original Quake
Quake (series)
The Quake series is a line of first-person shooter video games produced by id Software.-Overview:The Quake series is somewhat unusual in that its focus changes frequently; the story of Quake II has nothing to do with Quake, and Quake III Arena has little to do with either of its predecessors...
modification
Mod (computer gaming)
Mod or modification is a term generally applied to personal computer games , especially first-person shooters, role-playing games and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not standalone software and...
, Team Fortress
Team Fortress
Team Fortress is a team- and class-based online multiplayer video game mod based on id Software's Quake. Team Fortress was designed and written by Robin Walker, John Cook and Ian Caughley in 1996. The mod's gameplay has caught on with a large following of fans, which has spurred many developers to...
, and Valve's Half-Life modification, Team Fortress Classic
Team Fortress Classic
Team Fortress Classic, also known as Team Fortress 1.5 or simply TFC, is a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Valve Corporation. It is a remake of the Team Fortress modification for Quake. Team Fortress Classic was originally released for Windows on April 7, 1999 as...
. Its focus is on two competing teams that attack each other in order to achieve varying objectives, including capturing command points or defending them from attack, or capturing a flag
Capture the flag
Capture the Flag is a traditional outdoor sport generally played by children, where two teams each have a flag and the objective is to capture the other team's flag, located at the team's "base," and bring it safely back to their own base...
. Players can choose to play as one of nine classes in these teams, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Unlike most other Source
Source engine
Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve Corporation. It debuted in June 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source and shortly thereafter Half-Life 2, and has been in active development ever since...
-powered games, Team Fortress 2 features a cartoon art style and non-realistic graphics. Team Fortress 2 was very well received by critics and consumers alike; it was particularly praised for its unique artistic direction and graphics.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for The Orange Box consists of music that Valve employees composed for Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. It also includes the original version and an exclusive remix of "Still AliveStill Alive
Still Alive may refer to:* Still Alive , the closing credits song from the Portal video game* Still Alive – the Remixes, the theme song from the video game Mirror's Edge...
", both by Jonathan Coulton
Jonathan Coulton
Jonathan Coulton is an American singer-songwriter, known for his songs about geek culture and his use of the Internet to draw fans...
. It was released on December 21, 2007 and is sold by the official Valve Store, Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
, and digital music services such as iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
, Napster
Napster
Napster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
, and eMusic
EMusic
eMusic is an online music and audiobook store that operates by subscription. It is headquartered in New York City with an office in London and owned by Dimensional Associates. As of September 2008 eMusic has over 400,000 subscribers....
. A more-complete version of this soundtrack that also includes music files from Half-Life and Half-Life 2 was released on Steam as part of the Audiosurf
Audiosurf
Audiosurf is a puzzle/rhythm hybrid game created by Invisible Handlebar, a personal company created by Dylan Fitterer. Its track-like stages visually mimic the music the player chooses, while the player races across several lanes collecting colored blocks that appear in sync with the music...
package. "Still Alive" was subsequently released as a free downloadable song for the music video game
Music video game
A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs...
Rock Band on March 31, 2008.
The Black Box
Valve planned on releasing an additional compilation for Windows entitled The Black Box, which would have contained only the new material—Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. The Black Box was later cancelled for retail and is now only available through Steam exclusively to owners of certain ATIAti
As a word, Ati may refer to:* Ati, a town in Chad* Ati, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines* Ati-Atihan Festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines* Ati, a queen of the fabled Land of Punt in Africa...
graphics cards, who received a voucher for a free copy of The Black Box.
During development, the simultaneous release of two game compilation packages with different content combinations was touted by Valve as a new direction for the game industry. Gabe Newell
Gabe Newell
Gabe Logan Newell is the co-founder and managing director of video game development and online distribution company Valve Corporation.-Work:...
, co-founder of Valve, said, "The Black Box and The Orange Box represent a new approach to publishing multiple products on multiple platforms." After first discontinuing The Black Box, however, Valve released all the new material for individual download via Steam.
The Black Box was to be priced US$10 lower than The Orange Box. To compensate for the cancellation of The Black Box, Valve offered gift subscriptions to Steam users who had previously purchased Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2: Episode One and then purchased The Orange Box so that they could give their second copies of those two games as gifts to people added to their Steam Friends list. Still, the cancellation of The Black Box sparked complaints from game critics and consumers alike, unhappy that they were obliged to pay for games that they already owned. It also raised concerns among those who had bought the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card, which came with a voucher for The Black Box, but Valve clarified that only the retail version of The Black Box had been cancelled. While Valve never expressed its reasons for this decision, industry writers speculated that it might have been to increase profits on retail copies or to avoid customer confusion between similar game packages and their availability across the platforms.
PlayStation 3 version
While the Windows and Xbox 360 versions of The Orange Box were developed and published by Valve, the development of the PlayStation 3PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
port
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
was outsourced to Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
. In an interview with Edge
Edge (magazine)
Edge is a multi-format computer and video game magazine published by Future Publishing in the United Kingdom. It is known for its industry contacts, editorial stance, distinctive anonymous third-person writing style, yearly awards and longevity....
magazine before the game's release, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell commented, "I think the people who have The Orange Box on the PS3 are going to be happy with their game experience. We've done the PC and 360 versions here and EA has a team doing the PS3 version – and they'll make the PS3 version a good product; EA got the job done in putting a lot of people with PS3 experience on the project. But I think it's harder to get it to the same standard as the 360 and PC versions". Despite this, he noted that Valve will probably handle PlayStation 3 versions of its products in the future.
In a preview of The Orange Box in November 2007, 1UP.com
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
revealed numerous problems with the late beta build of EA's PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box, citing pervasive frame rate
Frame rate
Frame rate is the frequency at which an imaging device produces unique consecutive images called frames. The term applies equally well to computer graphics, video cameras, film cameras, and motion capture systems...
issues which, they claimed, "at best merely hinder gameplay and at worst make the experience downright unplayable." IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
's Hilary Goldstein disagreed, writing that although EA "is one of the worst offenders when it comes to porting games to the PS3," the frame rate issues were not bad enough "to make me throw my controller in disgust."
On January 3, 2008, IGN reported that Valve employees had created a thread on Valve's website forums
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
for players to list the problems they had encountered and to suggest fixes, which caused speculation that a patch
Patch (computing)
A patch is a piece of software designed to fix problems with, or update a computer program or its supporting data. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, and improving the usability or performance...
was being planned to address the issues in the PlayStation 3 version, such as the frame rate issues, the connection problems in Team Fortress 2, and the slow loading times in Portal. A patch for the PlayStation 3 version was later released in North America on March 19, 2008 and Europe a short while after that; however, it made no mention of fixing frame rate issues or slow loading times.
Region-specific versions
Valve deactivated accounts with CD keys that were purchased outside of the consumer's territory in order to maintain the integrity of region-specific licensingRegional lockout
Regional lockout is the programming practice, code, chip, or physical barrier used to prevent the playing of media designed for a device from the country where it is marketed on the version of the same device marketed in another country.-Video games:...
. This generated complaints from North American customers who had circumvented their Steam end-user license agreement by purchasing The Orange Box through cheaper, Asian retailers. Some customers who then purchased the game a second time from a local vendor experienced difficulty adding the new CD key to their accounts in order to activate their newly-purchased games and also had trouble communicating with Steam's customer support team about this problem. Doug Lombardi of Valve stated, "Some of these users have subsequently purchased a legal copy after realizing the issue and were having difficulty removing the illegitimate keys from their Steam accounts. Anyone having this problem should contact Steam Support to have the Thai key removed from their Steam account."
The German version of The Orange Box is set to a low violence mode in order to comply with German laws regulating the sale of violent video games. Blood effects are replaced by sparks and bullet wounds are replaced with dents as if the characters were metal robots. Additionally in Team Fortess 2, instead of body parts being scattered after a player's character is blown apart, various items such as hamburgers, coils, rubber ducks, and Chattery Teeth
Chattery Teeth
Chattery Teeth are a children's wind-up toy designed by Eddy Goldfarb for design company Marvin Glass and Associates. Originally called "Yakkity Yak Talking Teeth" upon release in 1949 by novelty company H. Fishlove & Co., a pair of mechanized teeth are wound up at the back, and the teeth clatter...
appear. Characters from different classes leave different items and different ratios of these items when killed by explosives. In the Half-Life games, bodies fade away after the death of non-player character
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
s and the blood has been altered to a gray color.
Promotions
Pre-purchasing of the Windows version on Steam began on September 11, 2007. Those who pre-purchased via this method received a ten-percent discount and were able to play the Team Fortress 2 beta starting on September 17, 2007. The Orange Box comes with Peggle Extreme, a ten-level playable demo of Peggle DeluxePeggle
Peggle is a casual puzzle video game developed by Sukhbir Sidhu and Brian Rothstein of PopCap Games. Initially released for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X systems in 2007, it has since had versions released for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, the Nintendo DS , Windows Mobile, the iPod, the...
that is only available for PC, with graphical themes from The Orange Box. Peggle, published by PopCap Games
PopCap Games
PopCap Games is an American video game developer and publisher, based in Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 2000 by John Vechey, Brian Fiete and Jason Kapalka, and currently employs about 400 people...
, is a puzzle game combining elements of pinball
Pinball
Pinball is a type of arcade game, usually coin-operated, where a player attempts to score points by manipulating one or more metal balls on a playfield inside a glass-covered case called a pinball machine. The primary objective of the game is to score as many points as possible...
and pachinko
Pachinko
is a type of game originating in Japan, and used as both a form of recreational arcade game and much more frequently as a gambling device, filling a niche in gambling in Japan comparable to that of the slot machine in Western gambling. A pachinko machine resembles a vertical pinball machine, but...
.
Reception
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
described The Orange Box as "the best deal in video game history." and awarded both the Windows and Xbox 360 versions with an Editors' Choice Award. All three versions won GameSpot's
GameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
Editors' Choice Award. Approximately 3 million copies of The Orange Box have been sold by the end of November 2008.
Portal has been singled out for praise by reviewers. Official Xbox Magazine
Official Xbox Magazine
Official Xbox Magazine is a monthly video game magazine which started in November 2001 around the launch of the original Xbox. A preview issue was released for E3 2001, with another preview issue for November 2001. The magazine is bundled with a disc that includes game demos, preview videos and...
admired its unique puzzle gameplay mechanics, stating that it was the first major advance in puzzle gaming "since Russians started dropping blocks
Tetris
Tetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic...
." Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw
Ben Croshaw
Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw is an English comedic writer, video game journalist and author of adventure games created using Adventure Game Studio software. He writes articles for Australia's Hyper magazine, a major games publication...
, The Escapist
The Escapist (magazine)
The Escapist is an online magazine covering video games, gamers, the gaming industry, and gaming culture. Published by the Themis Group, it was edited by Julianne Greer up to June 30, 2009, then by Russ Pitts through September 2011, and is currently edited by Steve Butts. The Escapist was first...
's usually acerbically critical reviewer, stated in his Zero Punctuation
Zero Punctuation
Zero Punctuation is an ongoing video game review series created by comedy writer and video game journalist Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw and published by the online magazine The Escapist.-Background:...
review that he couldn't think of any criticism for Portal, which has "some of the funniest pitch-black humor [he had] ever heard in a game" and concluded that it is "absolutely sublime from start to finish, and I will jam forks into my eyes if I ever use those words to describe anything else, ever again."
The PlayStation 3 version's critical review scores suffered because of the technical issues first uncovered by 1UP.com. While discussing the retail version on a podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
, 1UP.com staff members agreed that a significant number of the frame rate problems had been resolved, but not all of them. They concluded that the PlayStation 3 version was not quite as smooth as the Xbox 360 version and recommended that "if you own both [consoles], you should do the 360" version. Kotaku's
Kotaku
Kotaku is a video games-focused blog. It is part of Gawker Media's "Gawker" network of sites, which also includes Gizmodo, Deadspin, Lifehacker, io9 and Jezebel. Named to CNET News' Blog 100, Kotaku is consistently listed in the top 40 of Technorati's Top 100...
Michael McWhertor echoed that recommendation, though stated that those who only have a PlayStation 3 should still consider The Orange Box.
While frame rate
Frame rate
Frame rate is the frequency at which an imaging device produces unique consecutive images called frames. The term applies equally well to computer graphics, video cameras, film cameras, and motion capture systems...
issues were the main complaint, the PlayStation 3 version was also criticized for unreliable voice chat
Voice chat
Voice chat is a modern form of communication used on the Internet. The means of communicating with voice chat is through any of the messengers, mainly Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, inSpeak Communicator or Windows Live Messenger...
and excessive network delay or lag
Lag
Lag is a common word meaning to fail to keep up or to fall behind. In real-time applications, the term is used when the application fails to respond in a timely fashion to inputs...
in Team Fortress 2, as well as long load times generally. It was, however, praised for featuring anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
and a quick-save feature, neither of which were present in the Xbox 360 version (but were present in the PC version). After release, the game received further criticism from fans for the lack of surround sound support when using an optical cable. An open letter to Valve, asking them to put pressure on EA to release a fix was posted to the Steam forum. A response was posted by a Valve employee going by the name of "BurtonJ", directing disappointed customers to a dedicated thread on the subject.
Awards
The Orange Box has won a number of awards for its overall high standard and use of technology. The compilation won "Computer Game of the Year" at the Academy of Interactive Arts & SciencesAcademy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences , founded in 1996, is a non-profit organization that promotes computer and video game entertainment with the annual D.I.C.E. Summit event, where its Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony has been held annually since 1998...
' 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards and was nominated in the "Overall Game of the Year", "Action Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming" categories. The Orange Box won the "Breakthrough Technology Award" and the "Best PC Game Award" at the 2007 Spike Video Game Awards, and was additionally nominated in the "Game of the Year", "Best Shooter", "Best Xbox 360 Game", and "Best Multiplayer Game" categories. It was also named the second-best video game of 2007 by Time Magazine, while the PlayStation 3 version was nominated in the category of Action and Adventure at the BAFTA Video Games Awards. Valve also received developer awards for their work on The Orange Box. The Orange Box received 17 Game of the Year awards and over 100 awards in total. The Orange Box was placed as the 22nd most influential video game in history by the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition, 2009.
Portal won "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design", "Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering", and "Outstanding Character Performance" at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The game won 76 awards, including 37 Game of the Year awards, and was recognized for innovative design and game mechanics. The dark humor of Portal and the ending music track Still Alive were also singled out for awards.
Team Fortress 2 was nominated in the categories of "Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction" and "Outstanding Achievement in Animation" at the 11th Interactive Achievement Awards. Although unsuccessful at the IAA, the game did receive 10 awards, including five Game of the Year awards, and other awards for its artistic direction and multiplayer gameplay.
Half-Life 2: Episode Two won four awards, including one Game of the Year award, and was recognized for excellent NPC
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
AI
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, level design, and story.
External links
- The Orange Box official website
- The Orange Box at Electronic ArtsElectronic ArtsElectronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...