팀 요새 2

나는 간단한 임무가 있다.  탄, 다리를 부러지기 없는 땅을 얻기 없이 창을 펄쩍 뛰십시오.  나가 적 교량의 밑에 수영하고 그들의 기초를 엎지르는 하수도 장치로 나의 길을 찾을 필요가 있다 후에.  지하실은 저를 죽이고 싶은 사람들의 명확하다는 것을 나가 확인한 후에 마지막으로, 나는, teleporter 방위, 분배기를 가진 상점을 및, 가장 중요하게 설치할 필요가 있다.  모두가 잘 어울리는 경우에 나는 대략 30 초에서 이것으로 행해져야 하고, 불결한 파란 기초는 나의 동포와 teeming 일 것이다.

팀 요새 2 벨브의 불가결한 부분으로 배 주황색 상자, 나는 안전하게 저것을 말하고다 TF2 혼자 입장료 가치가 있다.  나는 에 관한 한 너희 중 몇이 결코 그것을 지나서 만들지 않을 것이라는 점을 결론짓기 위하여 갈 것입니다 조차 TF2, 나가 알고 있기 때문에 그것은 있던지 그밖의 무엇이 `에 이상 2 주 나가 마지막으로 나의 고개를 대략 흔들 보기 전에 저를을 위해 꽉 쥐었다상자.  TF2 당신을 떨어져 이유하기 위하여 당신이 팀 근거한 사수를 찾은 경우에 좋은 저것은, 이고 BF2142 이것은 당신의 표이다.

모두에게 FPS gamer 사랑을 가지고 가고 무료한 중간 재료를 도랑을 파기, TF2 is multi-player gaming distilled into the purist form possible.  Throwing game types out the door, Valve stuck to the tried and true “capture and hold” game play mechanics that made the original Team Fortress an overnight success.  Players pick a side, pick a class and jump straight into capturing and defending points.  It’s a simple formula that works.

The class-based system seems to be fairly balanced.  Heavy hitting classes are less agile than their lighter brethren, and the special classes such as medics and engineers can easily turn the tide of a tug of war match.  Like many class-based titles, Team Fortress 2 provides players with a number of different playing styles to suit individual taste.  You can sneak around as a spy or zerg-rush as a scout.  Pyros, demos and heavys all pack a serious punch, and snipers can head-shot players from across the map.  Regardless of which class you select, the developers have gone to extra length to make abilities and weapons very intuitive.

Like many of the games based on Valve’s Half Life 2 engine, TF2 scales very well.  I had no problem playing the game on any of the test machines in our lab, and I was extremely pleased by the 200+ FPS I achieved on our SLI test-bed.  With a little anti-aliasing and motion blurs, the cartoonish graphics (think Incredibles) of TF2 come off as a tasty chunk of high-polished eye candy.  

Team Fortress 2’s blend of fast paced, class-based action is a shining slice of the Orange Box, and I would have happily paid full price just to play it.  Couple that with the solid gameplay of HL:E2 and the stellar, if not short, performance by Portal, and you have a collection that belongs in any gamer’s library.  I play UT3 as well, but it hasn’t stopped me from coming back to Team Fortress 2.  If you’ve got a fairly recent PC with a real video card, do yourself a favor and Steam (or buy retail, caveman) a copy of The Orange Box.  I look forward to sappin’ your dispenser!

The Orange Box: Portal

I watched Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey recently. I always thought that HAL simply wasn’t creative enough in his plans to eliminate the humans. HAL had a massive amount of control over the environment on the Discovery One and could have just turned off the heaters, or blown all the airlocks, or filled Discovery One with battery acid. Thankfully, GLaDOS (the Aperture Science, Inc. Artificial Intelligence) does not have or exercise such control.

At heart, Portal is a plot driven puzzle game where the protagonist Chell wakes in a rat maze that seems to have gotten all stylistic cues from the original smooth white iPod and iMac line. The portal gun itself would make Steve Jobs proud, both for its clean white style and intuitive usability. Styling aside, Chell needs to make her way through various courses designed to test the effectiveness of her handheld portal creation device. The portal gun is a delightfully simple device: Point at a wall, hit the left trigger, and you have a blue portal. Point at another wall, hit the right trigger, and an orange portal appears. In a twist of physics and quantum mechanics that would leave a Trekkie muttering something about Heisenberg Compensators, the two portals are connected, twisting gravity and space in their wake. Think Wiley Coyote and ACME’s portable hole. Chell can now move objects or herself from place to place via the portals while maintaining their speed. The possibilities here are endless. I’m still trying to find a way to fling myself over 300 feet across a chasm in real life. Motivated only by promises of a fantastic slice of cake and grief counseling, Chell must use her portal gun and wits to escape various deadly acid pits, flaming infernos, and crushings by weighted companion cubes.

My only complaint with the gameplay was that I couldn’t fire a new portal through an existing one. Perhaps that would have made the game too easy, but the thought of pseudo-recursive portals tickled my fancy. The levels are engaging and challenging, and the humor delightfully deadpan. For a puzzle game, a surprising amount of timing and reflex are required. A few challenges had me on the edge of my seat with an elevated heartbeat. Will I time this jump correctly? Will the energy ball make it into the door control before the blast door closes? I thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay, and I would have loved it if the rat-maze levels were about twice as long.

Valve constantly impresses me with their ability to tie in various titles to a larger world and story line. Throughout Portal, references to Black Mesa abound, and while the ending is somewhat akin to a Resident Evil climax, I was left wondering if GLaDOS would have been a helpful companion in the conflict between humanity and The Combine. I lay awake at night dreaming of the day that Gordon Freeman has the portal gun as part of his arsenal for battling The Combine. Dropping cubes on Combine troops, or even dropping troops on other troops, or building hallways of infinitely falling Zombies: Valve has me drooling at the possibilities. That, and I can’t wait for my very own Weighted Companion Cube desktop toy.