Because Left 4 Dead is so centrally focused on four-player co-op, you'll need to coordinate to get the best of the ever-changing AI. Far from just another mindless shooter, L4D encourages you to stick close to your team, patch each other up when wounded, and cover all of the angles when someone mistakenly sets off a car alarm, thus summoning a stunning amount of enemies. Ideally, each play-through is completely different from the last, but you'll start to notice familiar patterns as you continue to complete the nearly story-free missions. For example, upgraded weapons appear in spot A or spot B, and the Tank spikes intensify once you cross a certain threshold. Nevertheless, there's enough variety to add longevity to the experience with the mixing up of enemy spawn points, grenade locations and med-pack cabinets.

If you find yourself exhausted from surviving as the four endearing characters – Bill the grumpy war-vet, Louis the nervous nerd, Zoey the fearless college kid, and Francis the vitriolic biker – you can switch gears to competitive multiplayer in Versus. With two teams of four, your squad alternates between Survivors and Infected, giving you control over the aforementioned special zombies as you try to foil your opponents' escape. The Infected team requires precision cooperation, perhaps more so than the rifle/shotgun/machine-gun toting humans, as you're quite vulnerable as a zombie. Lengthy respawn times might turn some away from the mode, and impatient people will find themselves staring at that countdown a lot if they're not willing to wait for the perfect opportunity to strike. Acting alone will earn you a shotgun blast to the face, so cooperation is crucial.

Sadly, only two of the four possible campaigns are available in Versus. The multiplayer mode adds excellent legs to a shooter that you might otherwise tire of after a couple completions, but after extended play you'll certainly start to become bored of looping the same stages. Even so, it is without a doubt addictive and fun to blast your way to the next safe house as you flee from the horde, protect your friends, avoid the lethal one-hit-kill "Witch," and make smart use of multiple tactics. L4D slowly becomes more formulaic than frenetic, which doesn't play well in to the themes of the game. Moments that previously haunted you, such as rooms filled with shredded corpses, eerily silent sewers, and the trumpeting crescendo that signals an incoming swarm become routine rather than emotionally evocative.

Still, it's impossible to resist the urge to fight off the attacking mass of bloodthirsty Infected in a desperate struggle to survive. More campaigns would definitely have been appreciated, because you'll breeze through the entire game in six to eight hours. Because the AI is constantly changing, if only slightly, every match does manage to feel different. With a breadth of witty character dialogue exchanges to listen to, the dread of death can briefly be alleviated with a whimsical comment or ironic joke, too. And with the addition of Versus multiplayer, you'll have plenty of horror to experience as you strangle, shred and smack human players around. So, it's not for a lack of things to see and do that Left 4 Dead feels slightly limited; it's the limited places to experience these moments that hurts.

Left 4 Dead is a fantastic twist on an established (and played out) theme. With very little story to speak of beyond scribbles on walls, there isn't very much depth to anything but the combat, which is endlessly entertaining regardless of how long you play. It's just a shame that many players will become bored once they've finished the campaigns, especially if they're not into the competitive mode.

For the rest of us, there is no end. Only survival. And we'll contentedly shoot our way to whatever boat, chopper or plane wants to take us to our next terrifying co-op adventure.

great.

Clocking in at only four hours long, Portal is nevertheless an experience that cannot be ignored. Its combination of stunningly unique gameplay and surprisingly witty writing make for an incredibly fun piece of game design. When you first walk into a portal, the concept of these scientific marvels will blow you away. But don't get excited yet! The game takes portals beyond the simple mechanic of walking through them, as you are challenged to use the portals in increasingly brilliant ways.

In one level, you must place a portal above you on a wall, and another far below you on the floor. By jumping down into the floor-bound portal, you utilize your downward momentum to "fling" yourself across the room and onto a new platform. Sometimes you are even forced to use a portal to jump into the air, and then shoot another portal before hitting the ground in order to fling yourself to a new location.

All of this sounds great in theory, but it all comes together when you finally get your hands on the game. Similarly to games like Super Mario Galaxy or Echochrome, Portal forces you to completely shift your preconceived notions about how you world works, and subject yourself to its world. And this may be Portal's greatest strength, for a truly great game immerses you so well that you forget the world around you, and your mind falls into a new realm.

As you find your way through Aperture Science's testing chambers, you will constantly be congratulated and encouraged by GLaDOS, who keeps a close eye on you using cameras scattered across the facility. But as you will soon find, GLaDOS is not all that she seems. The often-twisted jokes and remarks of this passive-aggressive computer are so full of character and quotability that she easily makes the top spot in gaming's best characters of the year. Spoiling any of her brilliant lines would ruin their incredibly funny impact, so let me just say that this is the funniest writing I have ever heard in a game. Don't let the Internet ruin it for you.

The end of the game combines everything that made the previous three and a half hours so much fun, and creates something that is definitely the best gaming ending of the year. The boss "fight" is action-packed (while still playing like one big puzzle), and GLaDOS's continued remarks are so funny that you may want to risk getting killed just to hear her next scathing comment. Finally, when you complete the game, you'll be treated to a memorable credits screen that will surely leave you touched (and uncontrollably laughing). I will not spoil the brilliant ending, because experiencing it for the first time will create such a powerful impression in the player.

Valve's Steam engine is put to good use in Portal, rendering some pretty—if a tad simple—visuals. The whitewashed walls, gun turrets, and other objects of Aperture's Labs have a polished cleanness, but the engine really shines when it handles the portals. Objects move through the portals with near-realistic physics (though sometimes they seem a little weightless), and the particle and flame effects are beautiful as always.

Once you are finished with the short, four-hour Portal game, there is sadly little else to do. But this is the strength of Portal! Since there is no filler or extra time added, you will never become bored with the game. Even so, you can choose the option of playing the game over again either on a harder difficultly, or while listening to scattered developer commentary tracks. These additions are enlightening looks at the design process of the game, and should be listened to by anyone desiring to get into game design or anyone even remotely interested in the topic. I wish that more developers added these commentary tracks, as it would really be a great way to replay your favorite game.

Portal is a wonderful example of the potential of small-scale, unique games. Not all games nowadays have to be first-person shooters. There is still room for a brilliant little first-person puzzle. Portal is a game, nay a collaborative work of art and storytelling, which defies all expectations set for it. It delivers the most satisfying, memorable video game experience in many, many years, and I expect that none will top it for years to come.

Graphics/Sound:		3.5		Average: (3.6 stars)
Gameplay:		2.0
Design/Story:		4.0
Lasting Appeal:		2.5
Overall:		4.0

Dystopia
The first one covered is Dystopia. Think of this as Counter Strike meets Ghost in the Shell. There are three classes: light, medium, and heavy. With each able to choose from a bank of abilities, you will fight the war on two fronts, cyberspace and the "meat world." The gameplay is much like Unreal Tournament; almost every game requires you to capture or destroy certain objectives. It's a fun game, and good enough to keep you distracted from the pre-pubescent infested Team Fortress 2 (I'm not bashing TF2's gameplay, but please refrain from using voice chat if you sound like a 10 year old).

Zombie Master
Mod number two is Zombie Master. One player controls hordes of zombies in an RTS scheme, and the other players exist as survivors. They have to complete chalenging objectives, such as repairing a truck to drive away from an infested city. The game mechanics are great; you have to take advantage of the Source Engine's physics to succeed. Survival gear includes a crowbar a la Gordon Freeman, a sledge hammer, a pistol, a shotgun, a winchester rifle (some see it as a tribue to Shaun of the Dead), and an uzi with Something Awful's signature awesome face grafted onto it. Have fun surviving!

Eternal Silence
Eternal Silence can be seen as a hard-futuristic port of the space battles seen in Battlefront II. However, I have very little to say about this game as there are never any playable servers.

Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
Half Life 2: Deathmatch is a mod you have to purchace from the Valve store. However, the $9.95 is well worth it. The game pits the Combine police and army against the terrorists and freedom fighters, the Rebels. Arm yourself with weapons from all three Half Life 2 games, including the gravity gun. Nothing is more satisfying than throwing an enemy's grenade back at them. Maybe throwing a buz saw at their neck, or crushing them with a car. Oh well, be creative.

Zombie Master
Half Life 2: Deathmatch is a mod you have to purchace from the Valve store. However, the $9.95 is well worth it. The game pits the Combine police and army against the terrorists and freedom fighters, the Rebels. Arm yourself with weapons from all three Half Life 2 games, including the gravity gun. Nothing is more satisfying than throwing an enemy's grenade back at them. Maybe throwing a buz saw at their neck, or crushing them with a car. Oh well, be creative.

Battle Grounds 2
Our final game is called The Battle Grounds 2 (requires Deathmatch). It is the sequel to the hit game of the same title. The mod takes you back in time to the revolutionary war, where you fight as either a royal infantry man, an officer, or German Jaeger mercenary for the British or as a soldier, officer, or frontiersman for the Americans. The soldier classes are armed with standard-issue muskets with average accuracy and relatively fast load times. They are also armed with bayonettes which could be used to stab the enemy during a charge. Officers start out with pistols, which have poor accuracy but are more acurate than a musket when moving. They are also endowed swords for hand-to hand combat. Jaegers and Frontiersmen are sniper classes; their muskets have excelent accuracy yet have longer reload times, and their lack of bayonette force them to rely on either a hunting knife or a a sword.

A brief conversation with the lead developer of TBG2 revealed that with the new release of Steam and Source, new features will be avaliable in game. Such features include unlockable equipment, such as better bullets, rifled barrels, a scope for the sniper classes, and a ridable horse vehicle. They will also make it possible for players to destroy said scopes with an acurate shot, dislodge bayonettes, and kill the horses. There will also be at least two new classes: a mercenary class for the British (possibly Swiss or Dutch) who is armed with only a sword, yet has the ability to sprint. The American double of this class is the pirate, armed with a sabre. The developer also claims that they attempted to make grenadier classes for both factions, yet the modeling and coding is proving quite dificult, and they have decided to delay the class. Additionally, they are looking into a way of creating musket-bayonette battles in other eras such as the Napoleanic battles and the Civil War.

Each of these mods are not my work, and credit should be given to their creators. The interview with the creator of BG2 took place during an in-game battle so not all information may be 100% accurate. After all, we were busy trying to defend our last capture point and push forward before the British could respawn.

Portal:
Portal can possibly only be described as a first-person-puzzle. Again, you have to solve all your puzzles by taking advantage of your ability to deny the laws of physics. The map designs, although simplistic, really set the mood for the game and go parallel with the strangely deep storyline of the game. Although it seems confusing at first, GLaDOS will ease you into the world of Portal. My suggestion is to pick this game up first, as it teaches you the fundamentals of solving problems in 3D without having to worry about fighting an army.
(Note on Portal Plot: Visit www.aperturescience.com for more of the storyline. Login as portal with password portal to apply for a job at Aperture, or as cjohnson with password tier3 then use the notes app to read more)

Team Fortress 2:
Team Fortress 2 has everything anyone can ask for in an FPS fighter. Multiple classes with different fighting styles, several gametypes, and downloadable content all make this game worthwhile. Following the same visual style Disney's "The Incredibles," it feels not as if you are killing other men, but rather that you are in a jam-packed comic book. Cheating is impossible in this version of Team Fortress, making it a fair fight. But be warned, this game is not for noobs on the FPS circuit; run-and-gun and pray-and-spray tactics won't work.

Final Analysis of the Orange Box:
Get it. It is a great deal for 5 excellent games, but you have to have a middle-strength PC to run it comfortably. Buy this if you are a fan of the Half Life series, puzzle games, FPS games, or if you just like to screw around. Don't get this if you want an easy game to play for five minutes at a time.

Gameplay:		2.0		Overall: (3.5 stars)
Graphics/Sound:		3.0
Design/Story:		3.5
Lasting Appeal:		3.5