Valve: The Orange Box

Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 11:37 am

The Orange Box has revived my interest in the long-forgotten FPS genre. I just finished the main story portion of Portal and it is like my sexual encounters: short, but satisfying. It is the first of its kind, a first person puzzle game. Like tomb raider with no combat and more ingenious puzzles and a gun that lets you fire portals around the level.

TF2 is the greatest thing in team-based FPS multi-player since...well...TF for Quake really. Its art style and simplified classes make the game accessible and fun. Plus the ghostbusters style heal gun of the medic is just awesome. Here are some shots I've taken in game: http://www.techhouse.us/gallery.php?gallery=Members/BrianW/TF2_Screens

I haven't started HL2: Episode 2 yet, since I'm only near the end of HL2 proper, but I'll let you know in a few weeks how that is after I finish HL2 and Ep 1.

And the big bonus: Steam Community. This is basically a free friend-finding service similar to xbox live that keeps a friends list to show you what your buddies are playing, allows you to hop into their games and provides some simple community features like online chat and event planning. For all of the valve games, if you hit shift+tab in game an overlay will appear allowing you to chat and check your friends' status' and then shift+tab back to your current game. It's very smooth and nifty.
On the community, I am http://steamcommunity.com/id/Mixolyde
Let the frag fest begin!

Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 3:00 pm

I'm healing my broken left index finger just so I can play this!

Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 6:19 pm

Also like your sexual encounters, Brian, woman are very rarely present during play.

Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:45 am

The main character of Portal is actually a woman. But with much less boobage than Lara Croft.

Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 4:47 pm

And for when you can't be at your gaming rig or 360: Portal the flash game.

http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/