[Metallicorphan is an Ass]

so,the orange box has had some of the best review scores since...well,since last month,lol

lets get things straight first of all,in this package you get

Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2:episode 1
Half-Life 2:episode 2
Portal
Team Fortress 2


before i begin this little review,let me tell you that i will not be mentioning HL2ep1 and 2...as i havent got up to them yet,all i can tell you is that if you have already played through half life 2 on either the PC or even the xbox 1 version,then you can jump straight to episode 1 or 2,you dont have to go through the whole thing again

okay,lets start

half life 2...wait....lets start at the beginning,last week i played a PS2 copy of half life 1,on my PS3(thankyou 60gig backwards compatible)...and yes i finished it,even though really,the story was lacking.....but anyway,you play Gordon Freeman,a scientist who works at a black mesa lab in new mexico,after an experiment goes wrong,you...yes you,unwittingly,let another dimensions creatures into our world,and for the rest of the game you have to shoot and smash your way through the black mesa lab base...to your freedom,along the way you come across enemies as the alien wierdos from the other dimension and even black mesa soldiers,who have been ordered to kill anyone on site,even you...as you wade through all the levels,there is one man who keeps popping up,but you cant interact with him,he looks a lot like cancerman from the x-files,and has the same reputation really..well,mysterious...at the end of the game******spoiler coming up***>>he gives you a choice,to work with him,as you dont really know anything about him,he still has better odds than if you didnt choose to work with him(trust me,i tried both endings)....and thats more or less how HL1 ends



so,okay,lets really start

Half-Life 2

half-life 2 begins on a train with G-man talking too you,it seems that the planet has been taken over by the 'aliens'


and you have been transported to city 17 the few human cities left governed by the black mesa,with alien tripods walking in the background just like war of the worlds


so you have to first escape from there meet up with scientists from the first game and plan your attack okay,first off the graphics are a great improvement to the xbox 1 version,if you ever played that,most faces are all mapped on,so they look like real people and when people are talking in front of you or on giant video screens,their lips move in synch,water physics are a lot better as well,and also detail like rust on the metal drums or stains or bullet holes in windows are a great touch

controls-they are a lot better than half life 1,but the way you pick things up(they float in the air in front of you)makes the game feel very much like a PC game,not that that can be a bad thing,and the sprint button isnt in the best of places(LB)but all the controls and buttons can be moved about to where you want them

gameplay-although for most of the game it has you walking/running through the normal mazes of the city and backstreets,you never seem to get lost,you always seem to go the right way,and if you do come across a puzzzle of sorts,it usually clicks with you afer a few....there are a lot of loading screens inbetween the running and the walking,these come every few minutes,especially if you are running everywhere,they last for about 10-20 seconds..so it can get a bit annoying that the whole level cant be loaded at the beginning,but its something you have to put up with

if anyone played DEUS EX on the xbox will know what to expect,this feels like the exact game(or a sequel),but without the pointless running back and forth completeing favoursit isnt just walking or running,but you also get airboats and buggy's to go about in(thats all i have seen up to now)


there are rumours that Half- Life 2:episode 3 will be downloadable soon from xbox live marketplace,before the typical 3-4 year wait for Half-life 3(hopefully it will be sooner)

there is a cool part later in the game when you get to control the Antilons(the wierd creatures at the botom of this picture)

they become like your bitches,and you can make them attack all the black mesa soldiers(in the same picture )

so,any bad points
apart from the loading screens cropping up while playing....well,again your character says jack shit,it just doesnt seem natural,he meets a lot of new friends and also some old ones pop up,who are very excited to see him yet Gordon doesnt say anything...and their reply is,'oh you're a bit quiet,eh?'....i hate that,would it of hurt to give GF a voice,anything just saying hello would do

repeditve-some mazes(and i am talking sewers or viaducts etc)can be the same thing over and over,find a way out,turn a valve,kill some cops,swim under a gate in the water...repeat,only through the vehicles are the on foot parts not totally boring,but then after just playing through the air boat levels,i felt as that had outstayed its welcome by the end at the moment,its always the same weather etc...i could do with a change of weather to enhance the scene....maybe then the on foot parts wouldnt feel as the same as the earlier on foot parts,i am hoping that some weather changes happen later in the game,i have already played through a night level


but,despite all that,i am enjoying it,will it last until the end?,or will i get bored and go towards something else?...only time will tell,but for now i am gonna give it 8and a half metal orphans out of 10


Portal

so,what are you expecting with this title?...i think everything that happens in this game is exactly how i pictured it was going to happen...in other words,it does what it says on the tin......not much of a story,you are imprisoned and forced to do a series of mind numbing puzzles with your portal gun....the only little explaination to your situation has been known that you came to the company when it was a 'bring your daughter to work day'(yes you are a woman)...and things happened around then






you must know what this is all about really,you enter a room and you have to exit it,only there are situations that make the latter quite hard,but with the help of your portal gun,you can create exits.....press RT to create a portal,and later on in the game you get it upgraded,where you press LT for one part of a portal and RT for the other half(another enter and exit if you like),there are puzzles that look very hard at first but you will be very satisfied when you come across the answer and do it....

for instance,a locked room has a big button on the floor that when pressed opens an exit...in the other room you and a cube await,the cube is needed to hold the button down...at first things are very easy....later on
they can get downright annoying



the computer generated voice that accompanies you does show a lot of interesting sides to the 'voice'.....slightly going mad...she sometimes tells you that the current room you are in,is impossible to complete and you should just give up
the game can be finished in about 3 hrs,maybe a few more if you want to go through some of the same rooms but harder difficulties,for the achievements...but still,its good to play,and good to have in the box

8 metal orphans out of 10#



EDIT:apparently its not the black mesa soldiers this time,its the Combine,super soldiers from the other dimension,i must of missed that explaination

[Metallicorphan is an Ass]

Team Fortress 2



forgive me for this,but i have hardly played it...why?...because the game has been in development for 9 years yet,they cant test the damn lag!!.....some of the worse lag i have known is while playing this game,there is a patch on the way very soon,and hopefully i can get more out of it then..so i have tried to stay away until its released

for the meantime,i will tell you the bits and bobs

graphics are cel shaded,and give it a great atmosphere,maps are quite big and roomy,with a few winding corridors and secret tunnels etc

there are 6 maps
gravel pit-attack/defend map
dustbowl-attack/defend map
granary-capture control point map
well-capture control map
2fort-capture the flag map
hydro-territoral control point map


okay,the characters

offense classes

Scout
whos plus side is that he is very fast,and has a scattergun for his main weapon and 125 health

soldier
his plus side 200 health,rocket launcher and a shotgun,but is slow

pyro
175 health,has normal speed and uses a flamethrower and shotgun



from left to right:
Pyro,Engineer,Sniper,Spy,Heavy,Demoman,doc,scout,and soldier



defense classes

demoman
grenade launcher,175 health and has normal speed

heavy
massive health at 300,uses a mini gun and shotgun but is very slow

engineer
125 health,this guy can construct turrets(sentry guns),he uses a shotgun and pistol and has normal speed

support classes

medic
this guys main weapons are syringegun and medigun,which cure people on your team,his movement is fast and has 150 health

sniper
125 health,normal speed,main weapon is a goat.....LOL,okay,no,its a sniper rifle and also has a submachine gun

spy
last but not least is the spy,this guy if you can get to grips with,is very useful,he is fast only has 125 health though and has a revolver..however he can disguise himself as one of the other team,and kill them from within if you like,he can also fool their medics into curing him




from what i have seen it could be great online once you get used to it,and of course once that lag has been sorted out,hopefully it will!!..and then i can tell you more about,so for now i wont give it a score


EDIT:finally got into a lag free room the other night,and had a lot of fun,maps are a very nice size,and if i can keep getting into lag free rooms,i can easilly see this becoming a favourite for me

also fixed changed some pictures

[Metallicorphan is an Ass]

finished Half-life 2 now,enjoyed it very much,may even boost it to a 9...achievements are quite easy to get if anyone cares for them,i only missed out on 1.....looking forward now to playing episode 1

[FantasyBarb130]

I was thinking about getting this one. Never played Half life and the portal games sounds cool. I also heard they worked a lot on balancing the classes in tf2... so anyone else getting this?

[Nubs McCracken]

I remember playing team fortress in college back when it first came out. Boy was that fun. We used to have the computer lab computers linked up lan and we would have like 6 people or so just duking it out every friday. We also had a few of the mods as well I forgot what it was called something like ice in it was a cool mod with awesome weapons.

[Metallicorphan is an Ass]

i have the first team fortress game on the PC version of half life 1,but never got round to playing it



apparently the patch for team fortress 2s lag is coming either tomorrow or the day after,its near the end of MS checking it out

[FantasyBarb130]

Yeah I heard that they were getting a patch ready for this too. They said they are always tweaking the game and probably will continue too and that you can always improve the network performance

[Metallicorphan is an Ass]

as i have said before,i wish they would invent the next best thing after Broadband...dial up,broadband...now superduperline or something,so lag can be a thing of the past

[Sir Mobeye the Vaporblasted]

Bit off topic I know, but with the broadband thing, how come I can have 20m download speed but a shitty upload of less than 1m?

[Nubs McCracken]

mobeye, on Oct 25 2007, 04:03 PM, said:

Bit off topic I know, but with the broadband thing, how come I can have 20m download speed but a shitty upload of less than 1m?

I'd say broadband is like a woman its easier to get her to go down on you than for you to go down on her. Well in most cases. I know that's a bad anology

[Tier is a Blind Mofo]

To answer your question Mobeye, it's because most residential broadband is asymmetrical, meaning you don't get the same for ul (upload) and dl (download). Dial-up is symmetrical, meaning you get the same rate for ul and dl. When you get DSL, it usually tells you what type they are offering by naming them ADSL or SDSL. I know you aren't in the USA but still here is some info for you to look at http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/broadband.html if you want to know a little more. The main reason companies say they don't offer symmetrical connection is because people tend to dl more than they ul. On a side note though, not offering the same ratio saves the companies money since they have less traffic. Also, many powerful companies out there don't want people sharing large files (like torrents) so they limit the speed for ul to other people. Just look at Hong Kong when they got 1Gb/s dl and 256 Mb/s ul, the rate of people dl copyrighted stuff went up over 150%. It basically put the bootleggers from Hong Kong out of business since people were just getting movies/music they wanted from home. It would be nice though to have a better ratio between dl and ul, like 5:1 but I don't think that is going to happen unless companies start pushing more symmetrical connections for residents at a cheap price.

[FantasyBarb130]

I jeard verizon was offering 20M/20M plan in the NYC area. It's a FIOS plan and it's like $65 a month... Not too much diiifernt than what I pay for 12M/768K

It would make my upload connection more than 20 times faster than it is now. I would be everyone favorite host (LOL). Unfortunately FIOS isn't available in my area yet. It should be soon though...most of the surrounding areas have it.

[Tier is a Blind Mofo]

I wanted FiOS but I was told they don't do apartments, so I'm stuck with Time Warner Cable. Hell, I'd be happy if TWC upped my ul by 2 Mb/s more. The 15Mb/s dl I have really never gets pushed that far. Usually the max I do with dl is around 8Mb/s when updating my software from like Microsoft and Sony. There really needs to be more competition out there so prices can go down and faster speeds can flourish.

[Sir Mobeye the Vaporblasted]

OK thanks, it's just a bit annoying when the bigger isp are pushing the fact that their service is "gamer friendly" when really there are no difference in speeds. I mean I'm with Virgin media (I said virgin lol) and all there services 4m, 8m, 10m and 20m all have the same upload speed, seems crazy. I would gladly lose some download speed for more upload. I look forward to the day I can enter a room and not here those fatal words "hey who's lagging us out?"

[Tier is a Blind Mofo]

Hehe, yeah, I tried once to get TWC to give me the reverse of what I was getting, meaning having only 2Mb/s dl and 15Mb/s ul. It's basically the same traffic I'm allowed but TWC said no. If I wanted that I would have to get a Business Class account and it would be around $350 a month for that amount of ul speed.

The lagging, though, doesn't have to do with the ISP you have, but with the satellites they use. Data gets transmitted from your computer/xbox to your ISP, then sent up to a satellite, which bounces that signal down to a country an ocean away, then to the proper recipient. It's that time it takes to send from earth to the satellite back down to earth that makes the lag. I'm sure when you play people in your own country there is hardly any lag from your end. Online video games don't send that much information; in fact we as developers have guidelines as to how much data the game can send. Usually it falls between 128kb/s and 384kb/s as the max but usually it's less than 128kb/s. For a service to be considered "gamer friendly" they have to be able to ul those numbers, which almost all are now. Of course we are talking about DSL and Cable, because satellite ISP have shitty pings so they aren't "gamer friendly".

[FantasyBarb130]

I think there will always be a certain amount of lag. No matter how high the bandwidth we will always find ways to use it. and will alway be pushing the limits. It's just like your computer... Is it ever fast enough?

[Tier is a Blind Mofo]

Only way I can see there being no or little lag is if we have fiber optic cables from country to county with repeaters every 10 miles and servers able to process all information in a matter of 1 billionth of a nanosecond. Beaming data from earth to satellite and back to earth takes too many milliseconds and then you have the ISPs with their crappy servers and cheap fiber optic lines. Companies just aren't going to invest that much money to refresh the infrastructure when what we have now people are happy with.

[wnchstr96]

FantasyBarb130, on Oct 26 2007, 12:45 PM, said:

It's just like your computer... Is it ever fast enough?

You know sometimes it isn't good to be fast............................................You could get a speeding ticket. Got one from my wife once. HAHAHAHA

[FantasyBarb130]

Wnchstr... started drinking already.... Very funny... but won't make you very popular with the ladies!

[wnchstr96]

FantasyBarb130, on Oct 26 2007, 07:00 PM, said:

Wnchstr... started drinking already.... Very funny... but won't make you very popular with the ladies!

BUSTED, yes Jack and I have began to bond, and by the way, only have to impress one lady. (Let's hope she reads this and gives me knookie points.)Anywho, just trying to catch up before some xbox time.