When the makers of Half-Life 2 began their “episodic”
approach to games, they weren’t talking about episodes you and I see on
TV. On Valve Software’s planet, people wait two years between episodes
of their favorite series—and pay $20 a pop. Or so last year’s
Half-Life 2: Episode One would’ve had you believe. Back on
earth, though, fans weren’t hot on the brief episode, so the Bellevue
studio has responded with The Orange Box, a five-game bundle that turns
last year’s rip-off into this year’s ridiculous bargain.
Half-Life 2‘s story continues with Episode Two,
the latest six-hour semigame centered on scientist Gordon Freeman.
After watching a convenient “previously on Half-Life“
video—that’s episodic, right?—players resume escaping an
alien stronghold. The series’ level of immersion remains incredibly
high, but years after HL2‘s reign, the competition has caught
up. Episode Two is among the smarter PC action games this year,
loaded with well-acted characters and plenty to do, but it still looks
and plays like the 2004 original.
The rest of The Orange Box picks up the slack, and
Portal is the package’s surprise hit. In this
first-person puzzler, you’re trapped in a lab with one tool: a gun that
creates doors. For example, if you can’t jump across a chasm, create an
entrance portal on one side, then aim to make an exit portal on the
opposite wall. Walk through and whammo—you’ve warped.
Door-creating puzzles quickly amp up in difficulty, and making sense of
momentum, physics, and mirror tricks with the gun will have you smiling
too much to mind the brain-busting levels. Even better, the game’s
robotic narrator borrows heavily from the nerdy snark of series like
Futurama, and the resulting humor is among the most refreshing
I’ve encountered in a game. This genre-buster’s only fault, sadly, is
its four-hour length.
Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One are
also included as a bonus—and if you’ve already bought ’em, you
can send the extra passes to a friend, no charge. Eat that, stingy
RIAA. But wait—there’s more! After hours of solo pleasure,
get your group on with Team Fortress 2, a squad-based
shooter that finally injects personality and accessibility into the
tired team-battle genre. Pick from nine classes—the
costume-wearing spy, the flame-throwin’ pyro, or even the healing-gun
medic—to wage online war in a stylized, propaganda-cartoon
world.
Episodic gaming? Pssh. Long live the quintuple feature. 