Topic: Orange Box and Quake Wars = $38 @ CC (Starts 10/7/2007)

[idolminds]

According to slickdeals.

Orange Box and Quake Wars will both be $37.99 for the week they are released (thats next week). I'll be picking up Orange Box for sure...I hate having miss out on QW.

[MysterD]

*shrugs my shoulders*
Since I already own HL2 and HL2 Ep One....
I can wait for The Orange Box to drop further in price.

As for Quake Wars, eh....I'll wait for it to be cheaper...

[Pugnate]

For a moment I thought it was a deal where both were for $38 together haha.

[MysterD]

For a moment I thought it was a deal where both were for $38 together haha.

Now, THAT DEAL is one I would jump on!

[Quemaqua]

I wish I had money.

[scottws]

Yep, glad I didn't plunk down on a pre-order for ET:QW.  I knew something like this would happen.

[MysterD]

I saw an actual ad from Valve on TV for The Orange Box.

[scottws]

I just saw the ad too.  Portal is way cooler looking than the concept sounds.

Oh, and BTW, ET:QW is $32.90 at Gogamer.com.

[Quemaqua]

Portal looks cool enough.  I'm mildly interested in it, but not until I hear how well it actually turned out.

[idolminds]

I'll let you know. I am completely hyped for Portal right now and will be playing it first out of the new games.

[MysterD]

Portal does look pretty cool.

I wonder how long or how short it'll actually be. I don't think we heard a projection of that, in previews, even -- that or I forgot! hehe.

Is it gonna be like a Episode length or something?

Really though -- I wish they were still releasing The Black Box.

[MysterD]

All IGN Reviews in this post

Entire Orange Box
-------------------
Orange Box reviewed by IGN -- with a 9.5.

New Games In The Orange Box
---------------------------------------------------
HL2: Ep Two gets a 9.4
Portal gets an 8.2
Team Fortress 2 gets an 8.9


Older Games In The Orange Box
-----------------------------------------
HL2 got a 9.7
HL2: Ep One got a 8.5

[MysterD]

Orange Box gets a 9.5 from GameSpot

[PyroMenace]

Awesome, I just got back from picking it up too

[Ghandi]

Were you able to price match it?

[PyroMenace]

Couldn't find an ad so I just said fuck it.

[PyroMenace]

Finished portal, short but damn good. Especially the ending, the ending was just gold. You guys really need to play this.

The cake is a lie!!!!

The only problem is that the portal effect did hell to my system, my framerate gets murdered when I get close to one. I find that odd since in Prey it seemed to be handled just fine.

[scottws]

Well, two different engines...

I played about 20 minutes of Portal.  It is pretty neat so far.  I would have played longer but it was after 2:00am and I had to get up at 5:15am.  It wasn't too challenging from what I played so far, but still fun.

[Pugnate]

I bought it!!!

They had the FULL version of the game (fully legit) as a special promotion in India for $27. I bought it. Release date is Oct 16 though. Yay for me.

Playing through all three Half-Life 2 games in succession makes Episode One stand out as a relatively weak link.

Seriously, why are people taking this long to figure it out? Ep1 was a disappointment.

[Cobra951]

Finished portal, short but damn good. Especially the ending, the ending was just gold. You guys really need to play this.

The cake is a lie!!!!

The only problem is that the portal effect did hell to my system, my framerate gets murdered when I get close to one. I find that odd since in Prey it seemed to be handled just fine.

That sounds like the problems my NVidia FX (5th-gen) has with Shader 2.0 (and up).  There must be some effect getting mishandled, and hopefully a driver update will fix it eventually.

I wonder how this would play on the 360.  HL-2 runs fine on my PC, but I imagine the expansions need more power.  Plus I won't deal with Steam at all.

[Pugnate]

I just read the IGN review and then the Gamespot review. How the hell is that IGN writer employed, is beyond me completely. I think maybe 40% of that review is relevant while the rest is fluff. The review looks like it wasn't edited at all, doesn't get to the point, and is totally disorganized. The sentences are too long, filled with double negatives and a lot of thoughts and observations that just seem unnecessary. Reading the review doesn't make me want to play the game in the least, partially because it doesn't tell me anything.

The gamespot review is far better. In fact I am pretty sure I'll have a better idea of Ep2 after one of you plays and talks about it.

[MysterD]

Seriously, why are people taking this long to figure it out? Ep1 was a disappointment.

It was basically a repeat/rehash of HL2: Episode Zero, but w/out the vehicles. There was nothing really much new, except for a little bit of story and Alyx tagging w/ you for just about the entire time.

Hell, in Ep 1, even some of the same sniper and physics puzzles were repeated from HL2: Episode Zero.

[Pugnate]

I was so intensely bored and annoyed with ep1, that even its ridiculously short five hours felt like fifty. They took ages to make the first episode, and did a piss poor job. They gave no answers to the questions asked previously, told very little in terms of story, and the gameplay felt like it was going backwards. The worst of it was the annoying sound effects. It is extremely annoying to hear the same effects from a game developed in 1998.

What was worse was to see IGN, Gamespot and PCG give Ep1 glowing reviews. Interesting how only after Ep2 turns out to be a quality title, that those very writers are pointing out the weaknesses of Ep1.

[MysterD]

Valve paid 'em all off.

[Cobra951]

I seem to recall a discussion about hype corrupting review scores, somewhere around here.   Some game having to do with saints, or, something.

[Quemaqua]

I think it's a load of bullshit that they're even "reviewing" a pack of games in the first place.  That infuriates me.  You don't review a fucking pack of games, especially not the way GSpot is doing it with the awards and stuff.  It's entirely nonsensical and I'll say it again: Gerstmann needs to go.

Journalism my ass.

[MysterD]

I think it's a load of bullshit that they're even "reviewing" a pack of games in the first place.  That infuriates me.  You don't review a fucking pack of games, especially not the way GSpot is doing it with the awards and stuff.  It's entirely nonsensical and I'll say it again: Gerstmann needs to go.

Journalism my ass.

I think IGN reviewed it in the right way.

They reviewed each game separately and scored that.
Then, they scored it as a compilation, too.

EDIT:
GameSpy did the same thing IGN did, as well.

GameSpot dropped the ball, reviewing it as a total pack only. They forgot to review each game, individually.

[Jedi]

I think IGN reviewed it in the right way.

They reviewed each game separately and scored that.
Then, they scored it as a compilation, too.

EDIT:
GameSpy did the same thing IGN did, as well.

GameSpot dropped the ball, reviewing it as a total pack only. They forgot to review each game, individually.

I agree with D, it makes sense the way IGN did it.

[Pugnate]

Yea while I really disliked the actual review of Ep2, I thought the review made a lot of sense.

Gspot's method didn't... what next? You take a gold edition and review every expansion and every mod?

[MysterD]

Yea while I really disliked the actual review of Ep2, I thought the review made a lot of sense.

Gspot's method didn't... what next? You take a gold edition and review every expansion and every mod?

I'm waiting for G-Spot to review all of Sam & Max Season 1 in its "Season 1 Retail Box" now.

[Cobra951]

I think it's a load of bullshit that they're even "reviewing" a pack of games in the first place.  That infuriates me.  You don't review a fucking pack of games, especially not the way GSpot is doing it with the awards and stuff.  It's entirely nonsensical and I'll say it again: Gerstmann needs to go.

Journalism my ass.

How would you do it then?  It has to be done somehow.  People are going to want to know what to expect if they spend the money on it.  I don't know a thing past the original game myself.  Are you saying that each game and expansion should get its own independent review?  That would work for me, if they're all presented together.

The quality of the reviewer is another thing.  I don't know who to trust anymore.  What I've seen out of Gamespot recently has made me lose a lot of confidence.

[idolminds]

I am so pissed at this install process right now. Valve is going to get a nice letter over it.

*UPDATE*

Just so you have some idea: I started installing the games at 9pm last night. It is now 1:30pm the next day, and they are now installed. Now they need to update.

[scottws]

I got it off of Steam.  What's the retail box like?

[idolminds]

Its one of those "double" sized DVD cases, the plastic is that neon hunter orange. Inside are two DVDs to install the games, and a single sheet of paper. One side has one registration key plus install instructions. The other side has the basic keybinds for the games. Thats it.

[Pugnate]

I'll post pics when I get mine. I've asked the seller to send me the activation codes while I wait.

[scottws]

Its one of those "double" sized DVD cases, the plastic is that neon hunter orange. Inside are two DVDs to install the games, and a single sheet of paper. One side has one registration key plus install instructions. The other side has the basic keybinds for the games. Thats it.

I meant the install process, sorry.

[idolminds]

Well, theres whats supposed to happen and then what happened to me, I suppose.

You toss the disc in, run setup. Window pops up, what do you want to do, click install.

Steam starts (or the steam installer starts if its not already installed). You're presented with a window to type in the CD key. That registers, another window asks which of the games you want to install. Last night I selected all of them (I had uninstalled HL2/EP1 before, but kinda want to replay them. Plus EP1 is required for me to play the updated Minerva mod). Then Steam is supposed to create the cache files. This step happens even when you download directly from Steam. This is the step that hated me, because it just never finished after 14 hours. I had to go back and install one by one and it eventually worked. Then instead of downloading everything it pulled data off the DVDs, and now the games are installed...but still updating.

God damn, its only been 3 days since launch, whats been updated? How much is left to download? Why won't steam tell me this shit? Like Portal, it jumped to 85% complete and I'm thinking "Oh, small update...cool, I'll be playing in 5 minutes." Nope, these last 15% has been downloading for about 3 hours now. Still have 2% to go.

[Quemaqua]

This is why I hate Steam from a non-ideological standpoint.  Even though I don't like online distribution (or at least the way Steam does it), I also think the program is just fucking horrific.  I've had nothing but trouble every time I used it, from HL2 to The Ship.  Something always goes wrong, takes too long, whatever... and I'm far from the only one.  Wasn't it Ghandi who was having a bitch of a time getting Quake 2 just like a few days ago?

[idolminds]

I will say this right now. Keeping in mind the problems I had installing and how aggravated it made me, I still dont have EP2 and TF2 updated yet so I haven't touched them.

Portal was completely 100% worth it. No joke, must play, amazing.

[Quemaqua]

So I've heard, and I have to say... it's tempting.  Because for something to be that fucking short yet that amazingly good, it really must be amazingly good.  I'm curious, but I just can't justify dropping $20 on it, and I don't want the OBox.  So I'm out of luck until the price drops.

EDIT - I wonder how many years that's going to take, though.  It isn't available in retail, and prices stay high with digital distribution (yet another shitty aspect of it) because they have no product that they have to move.  It's there - buy it or don't, it doesn't bother them overmuch because they're getting the cash from users worldwide and none of it takes up shelf space.