The Orange Box

[Kuranes]

Originally Posted by Jodou

It's not about the money, it's that my hand is being forced. I'm not interested in the multiplayer crap, I just want Episode Two like the way I got Episode One. Besides, for the first week or so it was advertised for $9.99 at some retailers making it a great buy considering it was an expansion. Now if I want a boxed version I'm forced to buy Episode One again? Uh-uh. Bad move Valve, but then again I guess I shouldn't be surprised since you ruined CS for the rest of the world by making source.

If get the Orange Box at a retailer you can give away or sell your old copies of HL2 and HL2:EP1 to a friend?

I'm definately going to get the Orange box when it is released for retail sale on Amazon and then pass on the "surplus" games to my bro, either through STEAMs "gift" program or just hand him my discs.

I see what you are getting at though, and I agree that HL2:EP2 should be up as a solo retail product for those who aren't interested in buying the Orange box, or purchasing the product over STEAM (STEAM works great for me though. I don't mind the download time, seeing my computer gets blasted with some 250kb/s when downloading ).

[SavageX]

I'm having fun with it. It actually has knocked UT2k4 off as my Favorite FPS.

Course I'm also playing an engineer most of the time and we are all screwheads.

[Jodou]

For those of you who will be picking up the Orange Box in the US, Circuit City will have it for $37.99 this week. I'd be hard pressed to find a better deal than this online, what with shipping and handling fees.

[Dem]

Originally Posted by Jodou

For those of you who will be picking up the Orange Box in the US, Circuit City will have it for $37.99 this week. I'd be hard pressed to find a better deal than this online, what with shipping and handling fees.

Fking hell. We have to pay 70 euros for it ;(

Tho some shops might go down to around 55ish... still nowhere near 38 USD tho...

[Vorbis]

Originally Posted by Jodou

I'm sorry, but if you're going to charge me for a product and then expect me to 1) wait on a DL and 2) not have a hard copy unless I burn it myself, that isn't going to fly lol.

If you pre-order online you can pre-load all the files on to your computer and there is no waiting involved. I dont see what peoples fascination is with discs, you could easily scratch a disc and lose your copy forever but with digital download from Steam even if your house burns down you can still play the game on another pc . Anyway CD's cost almost nothing and Steam allows you to make backups if you really want.

Originally Posted by Jodou

If Valve truly thinks that I'm going to pay for Episode One and all the BS I don't want just to have a soft copy of Episode Two, they're wrong; dead-in-the-wallet wrong.

Or you could just consider Episode 2 to be a full game and all the other stuff to be a free bonus (it will be longer than EP1 so should compare well to other $50 FPS games like CoD/Q4/etc).

Originally Posted by Jodou

It's not about the money .... for the first week or so it was advertised for $9.99 at some retailers making it a great buy considering it was an expansion.

How can it not be about the money if you want it at $9.99 lol? I'm from the UK so I'm not 100% sure but $37.99 for a game sounds good and even the $50 rrp seems ok. You could also give HL2+EP1 Gifts to a friend for xmas and then you can consider Orange Box to be $30 less than it really is .

Originally Posted by Kuranes

If get the Orange Box at a retailer you can give away or sell your old copies of HL2 and HL2:EP1 to a friend?

I've already given a friend HL2+EP1 for free over Steam, that's one xmas gift sorted for free! It should work fine if you buy the Orange Box at a retailer however I do know that you must have linked your HL2+EP1 cd keys to the same Steam Account that you install Orange Box to and that the gift is sent via email then the recipient must download the game via Steam.

[Vorbis]

Originally Posted by Dem.

Fking hell. We have to pay 70 euros for it ;(

Tho some shops might go down to around 55ish... still nowhere near 38 USD tho...

If you buy via Steam you pay in US$ although I'm not sure if it uses your local tax rate or if it's possible in all countries. I pre-ordered at $45 but with tax it worked out about $53 which was about £27 via PayPal's poor conversion rate and that was comparable with online stores in the UK while being slighter better than high street stores.

$50 is about 35.5 euros (1 EUR = 1.41 USD atm) so it might be possible for you to get it a bit cheaper via Steam although certainly not half price . Remember tax will be added (Steam wil tell you how much) and make sure you check how much your credit card company/PayPal charges for converting from EUR to USD, you'll most likely get less than 1 EUR = 1.41 USD.

[hahnsoo]

In case you haven't been keeping up with the TF2 movies, here's Meet the Demoman.

Also, someone has already made a machinima called Ignis Solus

[tekhedd]

Originally Posted by Vorbis

...with digital download from Steam even if your house burns down you can still play the game on another pc . Anyway CD's cost almost nothing and Steam allows you to make backups if you really want.

When I first encountered it, I thought Steam was the worst thing ever. But they've gone out of their way to establish trust, and actually provide some value besides just licensing. The two big selling points for me are:

1) Steam games don't require a CD in the drive, keeps track of what games you've bought, and will download the latest version and install it in the background after a drive failure. After my last reinstall of windows, I appreciated this. It's just too convenient.

2) You automatically get updates direct from the distributor, and not from some third party view-these-ads-to-enable-your-throttled-download site. (What's with publishers being too cheap to even host their own game patches, anyway? Lame!)

I've done a complete 180 on the service since HL2 came out. Sure, it's not as good as just having software unencumbered by licensing BS, but it's not bad like, say, Bioshock. (Raise your hand if you've ever used a cracked version of a game you own, just so you wouldn't have to put the CD in the drive.)

[Jodou]

Originally Posted by tekhedd

(Raise your hand if you've ever used a cracked version of a game you own, just so you wouldn't have to put the CD in the drive.)

Alchohol 120% (and even that was cracked lol) for all my virtual drive/ISO needs.

[Vorbis]

Originally Posted by tekhedd

...Sure, it's not as good as just having software unencumbered by licensing BS, but it's not bad like, say, Bioshock. (Raise your hand if you've ever used a cracked version of a game you own, just so you wouldn't have to put the CD in the drive.)

Bioshock is a kinda funny example...

One of the downfalls of Steam used to be that you needed an internet connection for any game (this has since been mostly resolved with the "Offline" mode for Steam). Despite purchasing Bioshock, a singleplayer only game, from a store it still needs an online verification just like Steam. I personally found this a great problem since I tried installing it while my internet connection was unavailable ... so I went and played Psychonauts on Steam instead!

Perhaps I'm just lazy but I alternate between games a lot and I find it annoying having to swap CDs just to go from one game to another when I actually own them while pirates aren't hindered by it at all .