The Orange Box has finally released as most of you probably already know. I, like many others, bought the title a few weeks ago so I could start playing the Team Fortress 2 beta and get my skills back. I was a fan of the original Team Fortress back in my Quake days although I was never an exclusive player of it. I tended to play the standard deathmatch or rocketwars but I did enjoy getting shot to hell by a sentry gun now and then. After Valve bought out the rights to the mod I never played it again even though I heard that Team Fortress Classic was a lot of fun. I guess I was just busy with other stuff.
Seeing as The Orange Box is actually three separate games (more depending on how you count episodic content) I am going to review them as such. I will also be counting them as more than three separate titles because I think it makes sense to review the episodes outside the main game to see if they would be worth buying. Lucky for me I am one of the people who is getting the absolute most bang for the buck out of The Orange Box. You see back when Half-Life 2 came out I was a bit strapped for cash and made the decision to only get Doom III instead of grabbing both FPSs. What a bad choice...anyways after sitting on my thumbs for awhile I grabbed Day of Defeat Source shortly after its release because I loved the original (as in before it went retail). The thing is I hated Steam so much back then that I refused to buy anything else on it until all its problems (I had crashing issues, login issues, the promised friends system was no where to be found, etc.) were fixed. Well just weeks before The Orange Box was set to drop Valve decided to finally admit defeat to me and fix EVERYTHING I asked for, so I figured I owed them the money. Onto the reviews...
Team Fortress 2
Overview
As I stated a few ramblings above I have been playing Team Fortress 2 for almost as long as its been offered, and seeing as its a multiplayer game and I have been at the top few players of most servers, even after only play ~20hours, I feel this qualifies me to write a review. First off I would suggest that anyone who plans on playing the game should head over to Destrcutoid's 10-Part Team Fortress 2 article series. The articles go over each class individually, there are nine, and then wrap-ups with a general tips article, which is the one I linked to. Each class-based article gives an in-depth view to the class and points out strengths, weaknesses and even good strategies on how to beat them. Even after playing for a few weeks I manged to pick-up a few things from the article or the corresponding comments section although I was amazed that the article failed to mentioned the chance for an 'early-uber' on maps with 'setup time' in the Medic section ORIGINALLY (its be added post-publishing). To the review!
Some of my decent scores for Team Fortress 2
Visuals
The game's visual design is certainly not what I remembered from the original Quake-based mod but of course back then everyone was trying desperately to be REAL. Valve decided that that didn't really matter anymore and instead switched gears to the more cartoony cel-shaded approach. Oddly enough this decision has gone off with no flak. I guess we can thank
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for soaking up all the criticism for cel-shaded games in 'unusual genres.' I certainly know that
Jet Grind Radio didn't take any flak for its use of the art sytle, but I that could be written off to it being the first game of its kind, oh and they didn't show us a gorgeous normal 3D approach only to change it later, but I digress. The cel-shaded choice certainly seems to be put to good use. Not only does it give the title a bit of a lighthearted feel, in direct contrast to its heavily violent aspect, complete with
gibbing, but Valve uses the style for the same reason Nintendo selected it for Wind Waker, to show facial expressions and emotions. Get lit on fire, you're avatar will change to a screaming face, kill a whole lot of people with the Heavy Weapons avatar? He will get a big scary grin on his face and with each additional kill the smile becomes wider, more menacing and more Joker like. Some very nice, subtle touches if I do say so myself.
Game Balance
Of course the visual are just visual, eye candy and all. What really makes a difference in a multiplayer game like this is the class balance & level design. Seeing as the game just went live I feel that the class balance is superb especially with the classes being so vastly different. Certainly there are classes that you don't want to mess with alone, or need to adapt certain strategies for, but they are all killable with any class. I just wouldn't try taking on a Heavy Weapons man with a Scout unless you are fairly decent with bunny hopping and shooting. There are two minor problems I see with the balance as of right now. First off, I don't feel that the Sniper's scope ability makes any sense or is fair. After you scope in you have to wait a few seconds to get the most powerful shot that you can deliver, that being 100%. Why should you have to wait to get the full effect of your bullet? Wouldn't it make more sense if once scoped it was 100% and it would increase to say 120% after a few seconds? The gun would still suck un-scoped but at least you can do some real damage as soon as you scope in. Secondly is the range of the Pyro's flamethrower. From what I read (one of the few things I learned in the Destrcutoid's articles) the flamethrower's range is lowered by the player moving forward. How does that make any sense? Why would it shorten due to forward momentum? Is the wind or force of the air shortening it because you are moving? It makes chasing certain classes almost pointless, since as soon as you begin to move at them your range shrinks, possibly putting them OUT of your very limited range. Someone is probably reading this and going “learn to shotgun, newb," but whatever.
Rolling as my favorite and currently best class, the Soldier
Level Design
The next big thing would be level design. I have already played a slue of custom maps and holy mother of all that is unjust in the world do a lot of those maps blow chunks. The one good thing about that is the crappy custom maps really make you appreciate the solid first-party maps. The only complaints I have heard are against 2fort which I think is largely because it is your standard mirror map with confusing pathways and corridors until you memorize them. All the other maps are far more interesting and have distinct sections so its very hard to get lost in. And on top of that some of the other maps have progression points, so once you capture one area the teams will be repositioned so now the objective is completely different, one team will try to reclaim the lost ground, while the other continues to advance to the goal. For the maps without the progression points and aren't mirror images Valve just has the teams switch objectives (and thus sides of the map) so no one can complain about one side having some sort of unfair advantage.
Overall each level seems to be laid out so each class has an obvious role, in 2fort snipers can cover the bridge area while pyros can cover the sewers, engineers can place their weaponry behind any blind corner as scout make a break for the intelligence. Valve really did manage to build the levels with each class in mind, although I do feel that Snipers get the short end of the stick in many maps. Despite that one beef, which affects what is generally my favorite class, the level design overall is above excellent and I hope it continues in future map releases, and possibly even some solid custom maps.
A well placed Sentry/Dispenser combo behind two blind corners.
Wrap-Up
Put simply if you enjoy squad based gameplay this is where you should be. The only thing that could be holding you back is if you go for the more realistic approach of
Counter-Strike or one of the many Tom Clancy properties. If you do prefer them I would at least give this title a shot, its just so well polished and balanced at this point in time that it can only get better and better as people come up with more interesting maps and scenarios. If you are a mutliplayer gamer then this would certainly be worth buying stand-alone if you don't already have
The Orange Box, the class differentiation puts it far and above
Enemy Territory Quake Wars and is why I decided against buying ETQW.
This just got to damned long so I am splitting the review into two pieces for everyone's sake.
Here is the promised review of
Portal!