Half-Life 2: The Orange Box Hands-On - Episode Two and Team Fortress 2

When Half-Life 2: The Orange Box ships later this year, it promises to deliver an impressively wide range of gameplay. First, there's Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the second part of the trilogy follow-up to 2004's blockbuster Half-Life 2. (The Orange Box will also include Half-Life 2 as well as Episode One to get newcomers up to speed.) Next is Team Fortress 2, the stylized, team-based multiplayer action game that's been in development off and on over the past decade. Finally, The Orange Box will also include Portal, the innovative first-person action puzzle game. While we've had a chance to play Portal, we hadn't seen Episode Two or Team Fortress 2 in action. Well, things have changed, and we got some hands-on time with both for our first impressions on the games.
First, let's cover Episode Two. The middle part of any trilogy tends to be the most challenging to make, since it has to serve as a bridge between the beginning and the end. The challenge is to make sure that the middle episode has its own energy and narrative, and Valve has thought this out. As programmer and project lead David Speyrer and designer Gautam Babbar explained to us, Episode Two is all about variety and throwing new challenges and experiences at the player. There will also be significant story revelations, as you'll finally learn more about the mysterious G-Man who's been dogging you since the original Half-Life, as well as those mysterious Combine advisors who have appeared only on video screens thus far. And yes, a main character will die.
You get a muscle car in Episode Two, and Alyx is riding shotgun.
An early scene in the episode has you (playing as Gordon) waking up in the middle of a train wreck, trapped inside one of the cars. Thankfully, your companion and ally Alyx Vance is outside and is able to free you with use of the trusty gravity gun, which is able to manipulate and throw around large, physical objects. As soon as you emerge from the wreckage, you realize that you're no longer in City 17, the setting of Half-Life 2 and Episode One. Instead, you're surrounded by wilderness and forest--specifically, the White Forest. With City 17 and its Citadel destroyed, a giant dimensional portal has begun to form over the ruins of the city. That portal links to the Combine's alien home, and if it opens, the Combine will rush reinforcements to Earth, dooming humanity. Thankfully, one of the things that Alyx stole from the Citadel in Episode One are important Combine portal codes--but to be useful they must be delivered to the scientists, led by Dr. Eli Vance and the new character, Dr. Magnusson, in their secret lab. And to do that, you've got to get through the White Forest with Combine forces in pursuit.
Episode Two is one, big high-speed chase, and it promises to be epic. We got to play through different sections of the episode, and there's going to be a lot to see. For instance, early on you'll travel through the underground tunnel network used by the antlions, those vicious alien insects from Half-Life 2. There are new species of antlions to encounter, such as workers that spit toxic venom at you. This underground also sports some of the new graphical enhancements made to the Source engine, such as bioluminescent shaders that make the antlions glow in the dark. The caverns themselves look spectacular, with glistening rock walls and deep pools of water, which are useful since antlions apparently can't swim.
What's the deal with the G-Man? We'll find out in Episode Two.
Next up was a dash through an antlion-infested valley alongside Alyx and one of the new vortigaunt allies introduced in the episode. The vortigaunts were one of the alien opponents in the original Half-Life, but in Half-Life 2 they became friends. This battle was pretty large-scale, with a seemingly endless stream of antlions rushing Gordon and his allies. The good news is that those giant Combine thumpers, designed to keep antlions away, are scattered throughout the valley, and it's possible to resupply at crates found next to them. There are also plenty of explosive barrels scattered about, and they can be picked up and thrown using the gravity gun. This sequence ended, though, with a queen antlion appearing, and she didn't look too happy.
Valve then introduced us to the muscle car, the key new vehicle in Episode Two. The muscle car was developed in response to the sense that the buggy from Half-Life 2 was underpowered. The same can't be said of the muscle car, which has wicked turbo acceleration as well as a meaty engine noise. Even better, Alyx can and will ride shotgun from the passenger seat, as well as provide commentary on your driving skills. The sequences that we saw were similar to the vehicle sequences in Half-Life 2, as you'll follow a fairly linear path, though it's mainly off-road this time. The most intense driving sequence involved a breakneck pursuit by Combine forces, including a helicopter. You'll run over a lot of zombies and hit a lot of jumps during this sequence.
Beware the powerful new hunters.
The action in Episode Two is about two parts combat and one part puzzle-solving, as you usually have to figure out a way to navigate through the level. This can involve using the gravity gun to manipulate electrical cables to get current to a radio, or figuring out how to use the environment against opponents. A good example of the latter involves the hunter, which is one of the new enemies introduced in Episode Two and one of the toughest we've seen in a Half-Life game. The hunter is a Combine synth, so it's in the same family as the dreaded strider. And in many ways, the hunter is like a strider, only much smaller so it can chase you indoors. Like striders, hunters can absorb massive amounts of damage, which makes them difficult to take down. Meanwhile, they're armed with explosive plasma darts that can knock down your health and armor in a hurry. Even worse, hunters have a nasty habit of charging at you like a bull, and if they hit you they'll deal a lot of damage and send you hurling through the air--which is more proof that Valve is having fun with physics. A single hunter is tough enough, but we encountered them in packs, which makes them a lot tougher. The most brutal encounter we saw involved a Combine ambush of Gordon and Alyx, with multiple hunters backed up by a squad of Combine soldiers. You'll have to hole up inside a large house (that's thankfully stocked with those helpful resupply crates) and will have to survive the onslaught. One hint: Hunters don't deal well with being knocked around, so put that gravity gun to use and grab things that are large and made of metal.
Episode Two comes off as challenging, which is good considering you've probably gotten used to waxing those pushover Combine soldiers by now. We're also impressed by how good the episode looks. Valve continues to enhance the Source engine, adding better high dynamic range lighting, support for multicore processors, a revamped particle system, large-scale cinematic physics, and more. The good news is that it is also longer than Episode One, as the designers said that their play-tests showed six to eight hours of gameplay, as compared to four to six hours for Episode One. And Episode Two is just one part of the Orange Box package. Next, we'll go over Team Fortress 2.