The Haus

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Orange Box for PS3 -- 9:35 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I'm in a bit of a quandary. I've been looking forward to picking up the PS3 version of Valve's Orange Box, containing Half-Life 2, Episode 1 and 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. I bought Half-Life 2 when it first came out and managed to play through it, even though my box is right about the minimum specs for the game and I was playing it through Cedega. Even with the graphics as ugly as they could be, to describe the framerate as "puke inducing" would be charitable. Thus I was keyed to have a chance to play it in its full glory.

Unfortunately, the reviews are out. While most give it a pretty high overall score, they all note framerate issues, especially in Episode 2. Apparently Valve and EA UK didn't put much effort into optimizing the game for the PS3. This leads me to the inevitable question. Should I buy it despite the issues, knowing that even at its worst it will be 100 times better than my PC experience with it? Hopefully then by buying it I would also encourage Valve to take the PS3 more seriously. Or should I not get it and thereby not give my money to supporting a bad port?

At this point, I'm leaning towards getting it because I really want to play HL2 close to the way it was intended, to say nothing of Episodes 1 and 2. Having said that, there are other games on my radar right now. Unreal Tournament 3 just came out and by all accounts the PS3 version is awesome and will support mods. Burnout: Paradise City is coming out in January. Criterion (another EA branch) used the PS3 as their primary development system, so I'm not worried about the quality there. The demo comes out tomorrow so I'll be able to see for myself.

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