You can now pre-purchase The Orange Box from Valve Software via Steam. The Orange Box is a bit of a bargain as it contains 5 whole games to play:

• Half-Life 2
• Half-Life 2 - Episode One
• Half-Life 2 - Episode Two
• Portal
• Team Fortress 2

The Orange Box costs £22.36 ($44.95) via Steam. However, I actually paid £26.28 ($52.82) after the UK sales tax was added. Also Steam only accepts credit cards. However, I did find a retail (boxed) version advertised for £26.99 (inc. p+p). So I’ve only saved myself a few pennies by buying off Steam. But wait, there’s more to come!
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Popularity: 14% [?]

What makes games fun? With all the money being spent on game development and the obsession over framerates, HDR lighting, ridiculously expensive hardware requirements and all that other stuff, you’d expect that games these days are better and brighter that ever, wouldn’t you? Then how come they’re not? Look at Black and White 2 and Perfect Dark Zero’s single-player campaign. Years of development but would anyone call them legendary games? Hardly.

So what makes a good game? Is it story? Characters? Explosions? AI? Competition? Emotion? Graphics? Boobie physics? You’d think so with the amount of work that goes into them, wouldn’t you?

No, the answer is much simpler than that.

It is fun gameplay. Duh!

To be more specific, it comes down to low learning curve mechanics (see Why Don’t People Play Games - Interface), variation and a good challenge:reward ratio. Nothing more, nothing less. Look at the original Mario Bros - still a fun game after all these years. I wonder how many designers take those three variables into consideration - they’re the staples of gaming so you’d think they all would but let’s look at some examples: Continue Reading

Popularity: 3% [?]

BEWARE - SMALL SPOILERS - skip the italicised text if you don’t want to know!

Age rating: 12+

What is it?

Adventure, action, but not really enough puzzles.

Is it fun?

Yes, for the most part.

Is it worth the money? £29.99 (from Play.com)

Yes, but the game is a little short (…I am seeing a theme recurring here)

Why?

Now Tomb Raider Legend has been released, the first Tomb Raider game in a long time. I heard Angel of Darkness (the most recent TR title before this) was utter pants, and was even blamed for the poor box office showing of the second film (which was a tad harsh, I wasn’t keen on either of the films) - I never played it though, having mostly given up on the franchise after playing TR3 (too much mucking about with flares for my liking).

I was really keen to see the new game regain the franchise’s former glory, and have just played through the PS2 version. How does it fare then? Continue Reading

Popularity: 18% [?]

Age Rating:

15+

What is it?

It’s a tech demo with bad guys from Half Life 2 (HL2) to keep you entertained whilst you’re gawping around the latest instalment in the line of free content from Valve.

Is it fun?

Err, yes, briefly.

[Or see a second opinion from Tikipod here]

Is it worth the money?

(Free! With pre-requisites)

Yes.
But you have to buy HL2 first (US$39.95 and requires a credit card), install Steam, play HL2, then download The Lost Coast and then you can start dribbling my friends, start dribbling indeed!

Why?

It’s very, very, very pretty (HL2 was no munter in the first place!), short (15 minutes game time without the Valve commentary) and it will melt your PC. Continue Reading

Popularity: 14% [?]