I've been coming back to this game, intending on reviewing it, and then I get cold feet and shy away. It is such an immense undertaking that the only way I can keep myself from going insane is by breaking it up into the respective games that make up Valve's Macaroni and Cheese Colored Cube. We'll start with my least favorite.

TEAM FORTRESS 2

Yes yes. How amazing must a game collection be if the least favorite is the best selling multiplayer FPS of all time, now the best selling hat-selling simulator disguising itself as a free-to-play FPS. This is the cream of the crop when it comes to class based shooters, partly because the classes are so well balanced, partly because each class is unique and fulfills its own niche in the game, but mostly because the classes are impossible to take seriously. Just watch the "Meet the Team" videos on Youtube, you'll see what I mean. Get this bunch of maniacs together, give them weapons, and you're bound to have a good time. That's not to mention the solidly built level design for the games levels, though there aren't many from the get go, the fast pace of the action. However, this game does earn its place at the end of the totem pole. First, the controls are quite sluggish, for an FPS. Perhaps it was my diet of Call of Duty and Battlefield upon which I had been gorging myself, but I found aiming and movement to be a bit slow. On top of that this game, strictly a multiplayer game, has very little following on XBox. Most of its players find their home on the PC, and it was tough to find full games when I was playing. That doesn't keep the game itself from being wonderful, but it definitely means it's harder to play or enjoy.

Half-Life, 2, Episodes 1 and 2

Yeah, it seems a bit silly. First there's Half-Life, then Half-Life 2, then Half-Life 2: Episode One and then Half-Life 2: Episode Two. This is just as bad as when Lucasarts went on their sequel naming rampage of Star wars: Dark Forces, then Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II finally followed by Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. Just stick with one way of increasing your sequels, otherwise we'll end up with Half-Life 2: Episode 3: Sequence 5.11 version 2. Alright I've had my fun. I've put it off long enough. Here we go: THIS GAME MUST BE PLAYED. These games. Whatever. They are just about the single most influential shooter series ever created. Taking the shooter and making it so much more. This game crafted a world outside your target reticule. You are never shown cutscenes, experiencing everything from the view of the main character Gordon Freeman, and you maintain control of him at all times as well. The game design is such that it restricts where you can go through clever character and environment placement, so you always know where you need to be going, but you are masterfully kept on track because this game is not, despite all appearances, a sandbox game. Valve has a story they want to tell you, and they are going to tell it to you. The action is tight, never reaching the sheer pandemonia of modern shooters, but keeping you always moving forward. There's a lot of running away in this game, which some people criticize, but if you view the games from what Valve was trying to accomplish, that is to create a first person shooter in which the story was the driving aspect, not the shooting, then it makes sense. If people are shooting at you, the first instinct would be the run away. The voice acting is top notch, again because of where the focus is, on story telling. And the game does not baby you either. My favorite example of this is a forest level where Gordon and his companion are certain they are being followed. Suddenly, the companion shouts "Did you see that?" I flailed the camera around wildly, looking for what she was pointing out, but could not see anything. Later (and this is hearing it from a friend, I did not go back and cheat this one) he told me that if you are looking where she is looking when she screams that, you can see the enemy following you. It's this lack of apology for its skin that makes Half Life so appealing. Call of Duty would have grabbed me by the ears and screamed "Look at that! Look at that! That is what you are about to fight!" Half-Life says, well, if you missed it, tough luck, I guess you'll see it when it kills you.

Portal

And now we get to this piece of cake. This delectable piece of cake. Did I mention it's cake? By cake I don't mean easy, I mean delicious. This game only ranks slightly higher above Half-Life for me, and by just slightly I mean smaller than Lindsay Lohan's acting paycheck lately. Bazinga! It is only because this title is such an original concept that I rank it above. This game is brilliant. Puzzley, platformey, comedy, brilliant. You are a lab rat given a gun that can shoot portals. Interconnected portals you can jump through. You are tasked with completing a myriad of physics puzzles utilizing portals all in the name of science. And then when you are done with these tests, you are congratulated. With cake. See? The game is a piece of cake. The puzzles are magnificently designed, not too hard but not easy either. Each one is perfectly designed to use what you just learned and add something extra. Tired of just shooting portals wherever you want? Good, because now we are introducing walls which you cannot shoot portals on. Tired of that? How about bouncing balls of death? Did I mention those can go through portals too? But the true star of the show is GLADOS, the robot in charge of the testing facility. Her robotic conversations with you during the tests are nothing short of brilliant, equal parts comedic and dark. Her superiority complex due to her robotic state is made crystal clear, and her regard for you is that which one would assume the less ethical scientists afford their guinea pigs or lab mice. With lines such as "Due to mandatory scheduled maintenance, the next test is currently
unavailable. It has been replaced with a live-fire course designed for
military androids. The Enrichment Center apologizes and wishes you the
best of luck" and "Cake, and grief counseling, will be available at the conclusion of the test" and "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" she contains more personality even though she is a robot than most characters in video games these days. Check this box out. There's cake inside. I promise.