Valve’s moment of glory.

(Prenote: I hate spoilers as much as any of you who haven’t finished the games. I can assure you that I will keep everything I say spoiler free to the best of my abilities, and even more if I can manage it.)

My hiatus lately is to blame for the very same reason why I’m posting this entry.

The Orange Box.

More specifically, it was Team Fortress 2 that kept me occupied for so long (seeing as the other games were only released just yesterday). I just finished the other games included in the package mere moments ago, having dealt with Portal yesterday and Episode 2 right after that. People will inevitably gripe about how short they both are, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. Why? Because making the game any longer, the sheer brilliance of both of them would have been diluted; the efforts of all those talented developers wasted on quantity as opposed to quality. Even in the off chance that that didn’t happen, it would have gotten tiring instead. Eventually ideas would have run out and things would have gotten somewhat stale in the long run, leaving you doing the same things over and over again until the fun gets sapped away.

(Note: There is very little I can say without hinting at the high points and essentially ruining the surprises and the shocks of the entire story in both of these games. I have a lot more to say, but as I promised I will keep this spoiler free)

Sure, I did think that Portal was just a tad on the short side, but I like to think of games as books; nobody likes having to wade through unnecessary pages of fluff that has little to no bearing on the experience. In any case, Portal just begs for user created content. No way in hell is the Portal experience going to stop there; I can bet on it. Short as it may have been, Valve set out to achieve something at the end of all of it, and they did. They really did.

Episode 2 was, I feel, one of the greatest and most emotional experiences I’ve had in a game in a long, long time. By that I don’t just mean sadness, but also a bunch of other emotions besides. All I’ll say is that the final climax before the story’s end was immaculately timed, and leaves you really satisfied with yourself that you actually completed the game after all you’ve been through.

Now, while I don’t really spend much time thinking about the whole “Are Games Art?” debacle, these games (including TF2) really brought it up in my head. They have given me an experience that is comparable, if not superior to any visit I’ve had to a film theatre. To be perfectly fair, I’m not much of a film junkie, but hear me out on this one. The experiences last longer than your usual serving of hollywood gourmet, with Portal (being the shortest game in the bundle) having taken me a good two to three hours to complete. As well as that, both games provided amounts of excitement and amusement far greater than any film has managed to give me. The reason why I’m comparing these games to films this way isn’t to prove that they’re superior – but considering the fact that films are greatly considered as an artform, then why not these games, that provide an experience that is comparable to those of films?

The purpose of all this praise I’m showering Valve in is simply to highlight that they’ve surpassed my every expectation, even given the amount of hype that has been built up over the past few weeks. I also spent a lot of time going through their development commentaries, which serve to give a strong insight into what made them make the decisions they did make in various parts of the game. Unfortunately, Portal’s commentary is a lot more tedious to go through than that of TF2, which doesn’t require you to go through any gameplay a second time round to actually get to the commentary bubbles. In any case, while a large part of it consists of the developers going on about what they thought and what they did and so on and so forth (making it sound like a bit of an ego trip to those people who don’t quite like the game), it really serves to give any would-be developers that little extra bit of insight into the developmental process involved with their games, possibly inspiring some ideas of their own.

Valve timed their release somewhat badly, considering the release of Halo3, UT3 being just around the corner, and god knows how many other hit titles on the way. In spite of this, I think that the Orange Box is in so many ways a teriffic success and no discerning gamer should be without it. I really cannot stress this enough. Get a copy of it and see for yourself why I think Valve has really outdone themselves this time. The only question remains is if fantastic success is to be succeeded by another, or if it’s just a flash in the pan. Needless to say, Valve are now one of my favourite game developers and I hope they manage to do it all over again, but better.