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Orange Box Turns Gold
Dr. Eggman writes "GameDaily.com announces that at long last, Half-Life: The Orange Box has gone gold. The release date has been set for October 10th. Although Valve recently announced that the company shall reevaluate episodic content, Newell has spoken to CVG, reassuringly stating that there is lots of Half-Life left at Valve. Expect more interesting stories like Portal to come out of Valve as they trickle out what they refer internally to as 'The [Half-Life] Bible.'"
I thought this was announcing that it was released today. I was about to call in sick.
For those of us that pre-ordered, at least we've had the pleasure of Team Fortress 2. Its not perfect, but I'm quite happy with it. Of course I haven't had the crashes that a lot of people have been having. That being said, I can't wait to try Portal. Episode 2 I'm sure will be interesting, but for me, won't be more than a passing bit of entertainment when I grow bored of TF2 and Portal.
From TFA:
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Team Fortress 2
Portal
Yeah, but as far as I understand, it's the same engine with a side game (Team Fortress) and a mini-game (Portal) and a few nwe chapters (Episode Two). I'm a huge Half Life fan, but . . . I'm entirely undecided as to whether I should be excited about this or not. I'm moving a lot of my gaming off of the PC and onto the consoles these days (after two decades of PC-only gaming), so maybe I'll wait and see how people enjoy the console-treatment of this title before dishing out the cash.
The Orange Box launches on October 5th in Europe.
It launches in North America on October 9th, and October 10th on Steam.
It looks like digital distribution hasn't changed a thing when it comes to arbitrary launch dates that have nothing to do with a products readiness.
This really only works for Canadians, but you can purchase it online for the American price (~$45?) instead of buying it in store for ~$70
Somehow I doubt you played Portal, TF2, and Ep2 a few years ago, since those are 3 new games. You talk about price, but what I'm seeing is three new games for the price of one (I paid $45), plus a decent engine (Source SDK has new shader improvements) with plenty of mods. Peggle is also a great addition, since I'm a fan of pachinko and have played the demo version before.
You may think you're getting ripped off because HL2 and Ep1 is packaged with it. That's a bonus, not what you're paying for.
I would wager that Portal is going to be way more of a time-sink to be considered simply a "mini-game" I also know that there are some people out there (who were probably not breastfed) that don't even want Portal... sucks to be them!
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
Oh no! I already pre-ordered the Orange box, will I still get it? Will a Gold Box cost more?
Hey, you're forgetting localization. It takes a few days to re-record all voice track references to the "torch" as the North American language "flashlight". They also have to remove all the crumpets!
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Monkey Doodles!
If there is a reason for the PS3 being delayed (and who says it is?), it might have something to do with the fact that the Source engine was written against DirectX. The PS3 uses OpenGL for graphics and has other APIs for things such as sound, controllers etc. Consequently the engine needs a virtual rewrite irrespective. And who says they need SPUs, or that even if they did that they'd be utilised significantly in a game engine which has been predominantly single threaded throughout most of its life?
Perhaps Valve should have the foresight to make their engine more portable to begin with rather than bitch that a system (be it Linux, Mac, PS3, Wii or whatever) DARES to not use Microsoft proprietary APIs.
Development for PS1 and PS2 were a goddamn nightmare too. Why should PS3 be any different?