Orange Box PS3 actually OK?

Written by Joe Martin

November 29, 2007 | 07:23

Tags: #arts #cake #electronic #episode #orange-box #portal #ps3 #team-fortress

Companies: #cube #ea #sony #valve

There's been a lot of things said about the PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box. That it's pointless to have a game like that released late on a console when everyone will already play it on the PC or Xbox 360, that the performance for the game is abhorrent - the list goes on.

Hell, even Gabe Newell came out and explicitly said that he thought the PS3 was a "waste of everybody’s time", both in general and in regards to a Orange Box port. That didn't stop EA though, who pressed on regardless and got it's own porting team to handle it because Valve wouldn't.

It turns out though that one of those concerns may have been a bit of an exaggeration, specifically the technical performance. 1-Up.com did a preview of the game just a few short days ago and said that there were major framerate problems with the game and that although Portal was good, Episode Two was just down right unplayable. Team Fortress 2 meanwhile wouldn't even play. Not good for code which was running late and was described as 'near final'.

Since then though, IGN and Gamespy have done their own previews of the game, provided you want to listen to them, and they have come to some rather different conclusions.

"Unless you require your games to never dip below 30fps, you should not strike The Orange Box off your PS3 holiday wish list." Writes IGN's Hilary Goldstein - something which is sure not to please Ghys.

Gamespy meanwhile says that although there are a few FPS dips, they only occur in Episode 2 and that they never make the game unplayable, though they are noticeable. I guess that makes it OK then?

Personally, I thought the main attraction of a console was to give dedicated hardware which developers could write for reliably without worrying about performance issues. What do you think? Let us know in the forums.
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