Customer Reviews

Half-Life 2 (Orange Box): Prima Official Game Guide

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As is to be expected with any review guide, Prima's Half-Life 2 Strategy Guide contains **alot** of spoilers. In fact, most every plot detail is outlined within these pages. If you are still playing Half-Life 2, have a look at the first several chapters (detailing your adversaries and how to dispatch them) and then put it aside, referring to it only when you are hopelessly stuck on a puzzle or an action sequence.

However, once you've gone through Half-Life 2, you should read to your hearts content. Prima does an exhaustive job of detailing every nook and cranny of the game - from each appearance of the G-Man to each public service announcement made by Dr. Breen, from each ammo cache to each interesting newspaper clipping tacked to a wall. Its a fount of information and one of the few FPS strategy guides worth owning. This will help you get your money's worth out of Half-Life 2.

First let me say that the HL2 Guide does have tons of spoilers in it. So if you really want to be surprised don't look at it until you get stuck. But having said that it is a great guide. Also it is in glorious full color.

The HL2 Guide is broken into five sections:

First is an overview of all the weapons in the game. Full color illustartions and good info.

The second is an overview of all the characters you will encounter. Again, full color illustrations and good info.

The third section is the real meat of the book and contains the walkthroughs of each mission. What makes this section so nice is that a great map of the level is provided, which is better than the ones they did for Doom3, and full color screen shots that take you step by step through each mission. In addition, great tips and other goodies are highlighted for each level. If you get stuck on a level this is the place to look. Also, it is a great read AFTER you finish a level to pick up some tips and maybe see a few things you might have missed. It also narrates the story so you can actually read through this section almost like a book.

The fourth section of the guide covers Counter-Strike.

Lastly the book includes all the cheat codes you could ever want.

Overall it is a very well done guide that will help you through a few tricky levels and has excellent production values.

As I stated in earlier posts, I'm in an early phase of teaching myself FPS games. The Orange Box was one of the games I bought to educate myself in the fine art of shooters. I got this along with Bioshock from someone on my AF base used.

All my friends have played Half Life 2 and portal. Most of my friends back in California are science and math nerds, so the physics behind the game made them giddy. They also liked portal because of the physics used. When I was home last August one of my friends showed me Team fortress 2. I had seen all these games before, but didn't pay any attention because they were FPS games. The Orange box comes with 5 full games. Half life 2, Half life 2: Episode 1, Half Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. What better deal can you get on 1 disk?

I started with Half life 2. I read a synopsis of the first game, so i could understand what was going on with the storyline. The game starts out fast paced and action packed, and continues throughout the rest of the game. The weapons, the vehicles, the dialogue, it's all good. The graphics were astounding. I should have played this before Halo 3. The game seems like a typical FPS until the vehicle travel came into play. I have to admit the controls to vehicles in Half Life 2 are tricky to get a hang of. One thing that Halo got right is vehicle travel controls. Once you start driving around it seems like the game is endless. The maps are huge, and it takes hours to get through different sections. There are a multitude of blocks in the road you have to dismount and figure out how to move. The storyline progresses and zombies, robots, snipers, epic boss fights show up. The last boss is about ten times easier than the first boss. Overall the game is amazing. The physics added really make the game. The physics make the game eerily real, and able to have degrees of puzzle solving where mindless shooting would have been. Great game, a must play.

Episode 1 is mostly just a small addition to the game. It barely has any story line besides, you beat the game now get the hell out of the place. This expansion seems to be lacking any original concepts, besides at the end. At the end there is a mission to protect civilians to get on a train to escape. This take a bit of skill, and to get the achievement to save all the civilians is painstaking. The final boss is in such an odd area that it took me about 5 tries to figure out how to kill him. I think this expansion could have been orchestrated with a 10 minute cut scene before episode 2.

Episode 2 however is like a whole new game. There is a deep, well thought out storyline. There is even a bit of drama and suspense. This episode even introduces some new characters, new monsters, and new concepts. You fight a lot of new bugs. There is a huge bug boss battle that is so challenging you'll have to be a pro with the gravity gun to get by. The is a Left 4 Dead like survival scene against never ending attacks of bugs, where you will have to be a pro at turret management. There are new robot battles, and long vehicle drives. So long I got lost. The final battle is better than any boss fight in the original. This expansion is so worth playing. I almost suggest reading a synopsis of Episode 1 and skipping it. Then go straight to Episode 2 and have fun.

Portal is one of those games that looks dumb, but them you start playing it and you can't stop. I've never been very good at puzzle games, or had much interest in them. Though Portal is a FPS view puzzle game. It's really strange walking around in a camera view where you want to pull a trigger and kill some digital people, and you don't. You walk through portals you make in the walls with a portal making gun. You use the portals to make ball, cubes, yourself fall on things and change with the environment. I assume that the guys over at valve made the physics engine and ran some tests. They found a mass array of crazy instances to show to their management for beta testing. Then someone decided to take all the crazy instances and work a puzzle game around it. I don't know if that is true or not, I'm to lazy to research. Though, it feel like Portal would be born from an instance like that. The game is full of humor. I laughed my ass off at all the crazy stuff the computer says to you. It's like working somewhere and the walls start to insult you. The enging of the game is really funny, I'm not going to spoil anything for anyone, it's a must to finish the whole game. Portal has great re-playability. After you beat the game you can try the advanced levels, and then try challenges to the advanced levels. I'm borderline retarded, and it took me days to beat the advanced levels. Portal is totally worth playing.

Team Fortress 2 is only for people that have X-box live. It's a multi-player online FPS that is run off the Half Life 2 Engine, kind of like Left 4 Dead. I watched a friend play this a couple times and tried it out. It was love at first sight. It's not like any other Online FPS. There are different classes with a lot of special abilities. The game is set in kind of a cartoony cloak and dagger cold war spy movie. You can play a soldier, with a large bazooka. A engineer, building turrets and portals. A Scout, running around fast and double jumping. A Big, with a freak'in Gatling gun. A medic, healing others and getting assisted kills. A spy, sneaking around invisible or cloaking the other team. Or a ballistics guy, with a grenade gun. All these different classes makes it easy to not get bored. New comers can easily play a medic and just help out until they figure out the game, or play an engineer and build turrets and hide. I understand the computer version of this has more maps, weapons, and players. If you want to really play TF2 get it for the computer. But, if you don't have a good enough computer, or just prefer console gaming play it on X-bow. I prefer the controls on the x-box over the keyboard, because my fingers get cramped easier on the keyboard. It's nice to lounge om my couch and play TF2 over sitting at a computer desk. This online game is really fun, and the achievements with take you weeks to get.

This box set is an amazing value. The set is easily found on E-bay, Amazon, the bargain bin at most retailers. Go pick it up for around $20. It will keep you busy for a long time.

*****

Game Play: 10/10
Graphics: 10/10
Music/Sound Effects: 7/10
Storyline: 8/10
Re-playability: 10/10
Overall: 9/10

*****

Had I not purchased this along with my copy of The Orange Box, I would be in the same dilemma as every single one of my friends is: confounded by the maze-like levels, and frustrated at my inability to solve what eventually turns out to be a simple puzzle. This book helped to pull me out of mental ruts where I simply had no idea how to move on, especially in Portal. The guide doesn't spoon-feed you everything however, it leaves the lucky jumps and guesses to you, and thus I have yet to defeat the third to last level of portal. Overall, it is a fantastic guide, and along with the helpful walkthroughs are well-written descriptions of the characters and enemies in each game.

First off, if you don't want to have the ending to the game ruined, stop reading these reviews because J. Boden ruins it for everyone. Also, don't buy the Prima Guide because there are spoilers in there as well. I made the mistake of getting this book when I was half-way through the game thinking it would help me, but I've pretty much figured everything out already on my own. The game Half-Life 2 is built around gently guiding you in the direction it wants you to go. The only purpose this book would serve is if you are absolutely stuck on a level and can't figure out what to do or where to go, then you could consult this guide for tips. But that hasn't happened for me yet and I'm playing on Normal difficulty. The weapons list and enemies list in this book for better or for worse has been copied on the Internet many times, so you can do a quick Google search and find most of the tips for free. This book only taught me one useful thing I couldn't figure out on my own: the machine gun has a grenade launcher (I forgot about the secondary fire option on most weapons). That's about it. I could see this book being useful for people having trouble completing a level, people who really like the colorful maps, or people who want to know what's going to happen ahead of time. If you're already into the game and don't need help, there isn't much here.

This is a must have for anyone that needs occasional help to get thru the tough spots. The guide is detailed on each scenario, threats, rewards and provides suggestions on how to get thru it. I started playing this game without it and was slowly struggling thru it. This guide made a major difference on moving thru the scenarios.

This item is a decent guide ot an excellent game :-) This is a start, the best part is to play the game through and find things which possibly no guide can comprehend.

This is very well written and helpful if you get stuck while playing all the games in the Orange Box.

This is a great guide. It is over 300 pages thick with detailed information about every location. It covers Half Life 2 as well as Counter Strike - Source. The entire guide is in full color and printed on heavy paper.

In addition to explaining gameplay details, the guide also covers some basic information that would normally be in a manual. Since HL2 does not come with a manual, this is very nice. It is not something I would normally expect from a strategy guide, but I appreciate that they went the extra mile there.

This is also the kind of game that makes a strategy guide important. HL2 is not a mindless shooter, so you are likely to get stuck at some point. This guide is a great tool and will help you out when you need it.

Note that this guide is not the same is the "Official Hint Book" that ships with the collector's edition. In fact, the booklet that ships with the collector's edition is really just an advertisement for this book. Get the real thing and ignore the collector's edition.

With all this chatter about the guide providing all the wonderous help, i wonder how it can be helpful if the game HAS YET TO BE RELEASED? I mean when it comes out in APRIL it may be helpful to some, but parents dont waste money on this for your kids until the game is out. Look for HL2 in april, before then buy them some shakespear or something. Just an attempt by whoever made the book to get some quick XMAS cash from some unsuspecting customers.