Orange Box offers juicy gaming

Bill Hutchens, for the Northwest Guardian

The Orange Box, a collection of five amazing games from Valve Software in Redmond, is so full of good gaming, you might not know where to begin.

The main piece of The Orange Box is Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the latest installment in the long-running and intensely fascinating sci-fi adventures of Gordon Freeman. Episode Two is an exhilarating first-person shooter, but we’ll get to that.

Hidden among the tried-and-true titles is Portal, a first-person puzzle game. It’s an impressive feat of clever programming, level design and humor.

Sometimes the simplest concepts can lead to the most innovative games. In Portal, you have to place connected portals on walls, floors, ceilings – wherever you need to in order to escape from “test chambers,” puzzling rooms that successively increase in complexity.

In the beginning of Portal, you wake up inside a transparent cell. A gentle and yet somehow sinister computerized voice explains that you need to learn to manipulate portals in order to escape first from your cell and then from the test chambers.

There are about 20 test chambers and some additional bonus areas. After learning the basics of portal placement in the first few chambers, you’ll get a portal gun. The portal gun can shoot two types of portals: blue and orange. They’re called, respectively, “entrance” and “exit” portals, but they work in reverse order, too.

Since only one blue and one orange portal can exist at a time, you’ll have to get creative about where you place them. If you’re facing a large gap, for instance, shoot the blue portal onto a wall near you and an orange portal onto a wall above a ledge on the other side of the gap. Walking into the blue portal makes you exit the orange one. Now you’re on the other side of the gap.

That’s one of the simplest portal puzzles you’ll encounter. Others have you dropping into portals you’ve placed on the ground in order to shoot out of portals you’ve placed on a wall. The momentum will carry you over barriers. If you need to build more speed, try falling through the sequence of portals more than once.

Portal is maddening, the way those infinity mirrors are maddening, but it’s almost impossible to stop playing. The condescending voice of the computer will compel you to beat the tests. And then there’s the fact that, in certain test chambers, the facade is falling apart and you can get a look behind the walls at some of the machinery that runs the rooms and what other test subjects have done before you. That will give you some clues before you try to “break” the test chambers. Perhaps you can use your newfound knowledge of portals to escape the facility altogether?

Even though it’s only one-fifth of The Orange Box, Portal alone earns the package five stars. Also included are the original Half-Life 2 game, its first sequel (Half-Life 2: Episode One), the aforementioned Episode Two and Team Fortress 2 (a new take on Valve’s classic online multiplayer game).

I did play through Episode Two and loved every minute of it. Valve’s writers, artists and sound technicians are among the best in the industry, providing the perfect dialogue, settings and story lines to match the exquisite work of the company’s ace programmers and level designers. There’s plenty of great action and dialogue for new players and some great inside jokes about the “Black Mesa incident” for longtime fans. If you pay attention, you might even hear some references to Aperture Labs, the company behind the Portal facility.

The only thing that’s missing is a sneak peek at Half-Life 2: Episode Three, which should wrap up Freeman’s fight against the fiendish Combine forces who are trying to syphon the life out of Earth. But a game trailer as a reward for finishing the game (the way it was done in Episode One) probably would sit in stark contrast to the shocking, cliffhanger ending of Episode Two, so all is forgiven.

Valve’s experiment in delivering episodic gaming content has been a tremendous success, at least from a player’s standpoint. They give us just enough compelling Half-Life action to keep us hooked, and they leave us begging for more. The extra content that comes with Episode Two makes the package a bargain that might just keep us busy until the final chapter makes its debut next year.

The Orange Box * * * * *

System: PC and Xbox 360

Publisher: Valve

Web site: www.half-life2.com

Price: $49.95-$59.95

Rating: T (Teen) through M (Mature) for animated violence, blood and gore.