I had looked at the orange box, but it didn't seem worth it to me, I know its an amazing deal, but for the people who already have half-life and team fortress it isn't the greatest deal, but all of the value products are very well designed and made. --Mistik

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The orange box is probably the best deal on any game you'll ever get, unless you steal it i guess, but legitimately this is the best offer you can ever hope to get. It's over $100 w/o the box as buying separately. I played through HL2:Ep2 the first night I got it and i was incredibly amazed, great lighting, improved graphics, not overusing the shine effect like so many games do now, it was just incredibly awesome and the storyline was just wow. The final battle was the best i've yet to see in any game, and my favorite of course is the interactions with npcs and how things respond. TF2 while i sadly don't get much time to play it, is hands down the best online fps out there and it's incredibly beautiful to look at, i'm glad i have a good rig for it just so I can play them all on max settings without lag, TF2 isn't anything like TFC it's an entirely new game, it feels clean and perfectly executed and all classes are a joy to play like the OP said, I've never gotten the feeling i should be this class to kill everybody like i did in TFC. It's more like "this situation calls for this class" and so you go for that class, and spy is infinitely more fun I get the extreme joy of watching my wife (who is far better than me) play spy and shank multiple people in the back, there's just no more fun or joy than seeing her shanking 6 people on the other team and they have no idea how that happened, then to go see her repeat that very same task time and time again. Hands down the orange box is the best, portal is awesome while a lil short it's a great tie in with the hl2 universe and it's incredibly funny in my opinion.

 

 

 

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Have ordered the box.. yet to get one.
Waiting to play Team Fortress2.

The reviews make me mad...
But i am spending most of my time in online games nowadays.... these are small but very addictive games.

Here are some addictive flash games online....
1. Budapest Defenders
2. Puzzle Game
3. Shuffle Balls

If you are still addicted to the old games that we played when we were kids.... you have not missed them really...'You still have places where you can get them..... nowhere but here at nintendo.
http://www.nintendo8.com/

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Now that I have a bit more time to talk about the orange box I'd strongly urge anybody who played half life 2 to go out and get this, for 50 mere dollars (less than the price of most new console games) you get Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode One, Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Half Life 2 Episode 2.If you own one of the previous games you get a 'gift' if you order on steam where you can sell or give it to a friend if you want so that they can play the game for free. It is truly a shift in what I feel and think game designs will be in the future and is definitely a welcomed change in my opinion. Portal while short has immense replay value because after you beat it, you not only get a glimpse of Episode 3 (the person from portal will be in episode 3 and will interact with gordon), but you also get to replay levels with varying difficulty and i'm sure later on people will make some amazing maps for others to play, which will definitely enhance the experience. It's the first game that was a mix of first person physic puzzles, comedy, and fps-ishness.

I preordered it and saved 5$ which i'm very glad I did, and I also got to play TF2. If you've ever played TFC (i'm sure many of us have) and you hated when you spawned immediately because that same guy who would spam grenades at the spawn point was sitting there lobbing grenade after grenade, and if you killed him, he'd come right back anyways and there'd be no delay, and usually your team stalemated with the other because they couldn't get past a certain chokepoint because each team insta-respawned after death making the number on each side hardly decrease for any meaningful amount of time. At the same time if you hated how Counter-Strike put you in the death zone until the next round started and you felt you learned from your mistake but couldn't actually get to play again until the round started but by then you couldn't really learn from your mistake because everything was now different and new from a new round, you'll love the perfect balance Team Fortress 2 gives. The average respawn depending on server is around 12s, some have instant spawns for high competition high octane matches which in it's own right is highly fun, but at the same time that's not the norm in the least, and even though it's not been out long at all, there are several valve test servers which have new maps created by themselves that they're testing, and new maps from players are popping up all over the place, people are just having a field day with this game and the new editors. Saying the game is beautiful graphically would be an understatement, and even though I don't get any lag at the highest settings, I've seen the game on the lowest, and it still looks incredibly good compared to TFC, of course you lose a hell of a lot of the beautiful things, but at the same time at least you can play the game and experience the true beauty of the game - the gameplay. Each class is perfectly balanced, of course some classes are stronger in certain areas but they all have their unique advantages and not one class can get over each other's advantage entirely.

A few major notes first about Team Fortress 2 that they changed though should be mentioned. First I know it's minimal but the start screen is really cool and much more Team Fortress 2 looking, with a chalkboard that whatever server mod can write aboutt he maps they have etc on there, and for official maps there's an option to watch a video on the map to learn about it and what you should do. You're allowed to pick a team by choosing the Blu door or the Red door, and Blu isn't a typo by the way. Then you get to *see* each of the classes and see them move a bit and they're all categorized into various categories of offense, support, defense so people know what job is where and so they can better help their team. Also in the lower right hand corner you'll see the jobs your team has currently so you can better choose, see no medics but a lot of heavies? Pick a medic to help your team achieve victory and keep those hard hitting big lugs alive. See no scouts but a ton of strong offensives, yet your team never seems to have the gusto and speed to grab the intelligence (which has replaced the 'flag' in this game, much better imo, it also leaves a trail of shimmering papers when you have it which makes it easier to track people, especially faster ones who move out of sight fast) and bring it back to your base for some points. Grenades, something I really hated in team fortress classic are abolished in team fortress 2 thankfully, you'll never see one of those heavy grenades lobbed at you, and then see those annoying red balls pop out and explode killing you, nor will you see the hallucinating grenade of a spy, or the nail grenade of soldier, they're all gone, nobody can throw grenades anymore, the only explosions you'll get are from Demos and Soldiers. And the last major adjustment, nobody has armor, it's all an HP value that you can only get augmented by a medic up to 50% over your total HP, as long as the medic is healing you, you will stay at 150% which is a big boost to the huge HP of a heavy, and it also helps even if you charge somebody up, they can run away still having their high hp even though it falls over time it's good to charge an ally up rushing into combat to help them sustain a few extra hits.

The classes are much better balanced and much different really, each class has 3 weapons no more, no less. They have their speciality weapon, Soldier's get a rocket launcher, demo's get a grenade lobber, medics get their healing gun (looks like a ghost buster's thing imo), scouts get a lever action double barreled shotgun, engineers get a shotgun, heavies get a gatling gun, sniper's get their sniper rifle, and pyro's get their flamethrower, and they all have a secondary weapon which is usually some type of gun, most of the classes get a simple shotgun with the exception of the medic, the demo, the scout, the sniper, and the engineer. The medic gets a modified version of the old nail gun, into a really cool looking hypodermic needle launcher that fires rounds very fast, but they don't go very long distances and fall so you have to aim accordingly, demo's get another grenade launcher that launches sticky grenades that can explode whenever they press the alt fire key, so you can defend or set up a trap or just cause the grenade to explode whenever you want it to, you can fire up to 8 at once to be used over that number they start replacing the older ones by making the older ones explode. The scout gets a pistol that is much more accurate over long distances, but not nearly as deadly as their shotgun up close, sniper's get an automatic version of their rifle for dealing with closer foes, and the engineer gets his trusty PDA in which he can construct teleporters, dispensers, and sentry guns. The classes are also much more balanced, for example, the heavy can deal much damage up close, but far away his shots are inaccurate and much of his ammo will be wasted trying to hurt you, this gives somebody like a sniper a prime target to hit in the head and easily kill. In the same right though a scout can move up behind a sniper and shoot him easily a fwe times while they can't see and kill them before they have a chance to do anything, while a pyro just needs a few short seconds to incinerate a scout, and a soldier only needs to fire a few rockets to dismember a pyro, an engineer can setup a sentry to take down most players, and their shotgun is lethal more than the others as well. a demo man can bomb the sentry, while a spy can come up behind and shank whoever they wish in the back killing them instantly, spy's are probably the most changed imo because they can be seen as what job they are on your team so you're not thinking they're another team, and at the samet ime they can disguise themselves to look like another teammate, they take on their name and everything, it's a random name of course, because sometimes i've seen my wife's name (who plays next to me) somewhere where she isn't and i know it's a spy, or sometimes very rarely i've seen my name and it was too late to do anything about it because it was more of a shock than a realization. They can also invisble themselves for a short amount of time allowing them to sneak past the battle and ontot he enemies side so it doesn't look like a red teammember is among the blue not getting shot at or anything. Also it's very easy to trust your teammates without knowing that your teammate really plans on shanking you the moment you give an opportunity, the problem is once you shank you must have an escape plan because your disguise is taken off. Spy's can also plant sappers which drain a sentry's HP and kill it, they can do this while staying cloaked though, it's a good idea to fake being an engineer and dot his as few will suspect you, obvious some classes you don't wanna fake, like a medic because you can't use the healer gun and will be found immediately. As I was saying though it's a very complex and balanced game much more than I would have ever hoped for, with Crysis coming out soon and my previous love of FFXI and the new expansion between these three games there will be no way i'll ever be bored again.

One additional tidbit from Valve, is that they're thinking of creating another class later on, which if they do, adding onto the constant maps being created that are incredibly good, and beautiful looking, this game has significant replay value even on the same maps, just change the job you are and all of a sudden you're playing an entirely different game, very fun and I give it a perfect score, I am very glad they delayed almost a full year because it was WELL worth it, if i can i'll try to write some more about the other jobs, I just wanted to give a brief insight to the jobs that I found most different and interesting, I didn't even get to mention the uber charge ability of a medic, or the sniper rifle's charging shot that can insta-kill people, nor the critcal hits which make the game so much more dynamic.

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Wow great, just great explained here reith, and yes - I must agree in just about every term / point you made.
The graphics are sweet - I remember before i built my new rig I had a under-class computer, it was slow, 1GB of RAM, 2.2GHz Processor (no "Dual-Core" here hehe) and an ATI Radeon X1600 - Now the name is "wow", the card is "oww" Couldn't run the game stable, even at all on low (which is when i could test the lowest graphics, and NO AA etc) it still looked amazingly good for being so reduced!

Now my new rig (ok perhaps mention the specs?):
Windows XP Professional SP2
2GB RAM
Intel Duo 2.0 Ghz (That's 2.0ghz X 2)
XFX GeForce 8600GT (256MB Clock Memory)

^ With this rig you can run TF2 at max without any lag - Of course this isn't "TRUE" nor "FALSE", as any combination might work, but atleast the game doesn't crash out every 5 minute for me anymore. (Perhaps it was the "beta" too.. when I tested on my old PC.)

The game has those "Oh LA LA" effects (hehe try for yourself, experience the thrill!) and a non-stop-'perfectionized' gameplay.
It just never gets boring!
But ok I've said enough for now, let someone else come with their opinion x]

:]

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