Orange Box For The PS3: Possibly "Unplayable"
The Orange Box for PCs? Awesome. Truly. So fun and addictive that it's stupid. The Orange Box on the 360? Fun, but not as enjoyable for a lot of us who would rather play FPS titles on our computers. The Orange Box on the PS3? Delayed, so I can't pass judgment yet. However, over at 1up, they've gotten to spend a lot of time with a near-final build of the game and it apparently blows chunks. This could possibly be due to the fact that Valve hasn't actually been working on that particular port of the game; it's instead being developed by some internal team over at Electronic Arts.
After spending a significant amount of time with a near final version of the PS3 game, it's apparent that this version suffers from a number of technical flaws, which at best merely hinder game play and at worst make the experience downright unplayable. Framerate is a consistent issue throughout the Half-Life series of games included in The Orange Box. One moment you'll be cruising through the game at 30 frames per second and the next you'll be enjoying a slideshow of series protagonist Gordon Freeman cruising down the river. However, Portal suffers from no such technical hiccups and is on its way to being a pitch-perfect port of the spatial reasoning exercise. Due to a server connection issue, we were unable to get any time with Team Fortress 2.
Oy. Remember when EA was actually associated with good games? What was that, ten years ago?
Previews: Half-Life 2: OB [1up]
[via Joystiq]
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to on 26 November 2007
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: electronic arts, half life 2 orange box, orange box, portal, ps3, team fortress 2, unplayable, valve
I can't tell who to blame more - Valve, for letting their crown jewel consumed by EA and sold as crap in a box, or EA, for not taking the time and effort to take what should be a fine game and doing it right.
If Call of Duty 4 can look as good as it does, or Drake's Fortune, or others, there's no reason why a 3 year old game can't. Yes, it will take a lot of effort to take the DirectX API calls, and remake the game from scratch so it works right on the PS3.
But you look at "Ninja Gaiden Sigma", and that's exactly what Team Ninja did, and it was great. It called work, and pride in your art, EA.
Still, I blame Valve more in the end. They should have seen what was happening, and refused to let them ship it if this is how the game is. I'm going to hope they fixed the problems between when 1UP tried it and now - but knowing EA, I'm not hopeful.
"Remember when EA was actually associated with good games? What was that, ten years ago?"
I think it was more like when their hit games weren't named "Madden" and "Need for Speed", but "Archon" and the still-never-duplicated "M.U.L.E.".
EA was associated with good games? When did this happen? I don't remember that ever happening...