The Orange Box gets 99 achievements, 1000 points

by Christopher Grant { Sep 12th 2007 at 4:03AM }

Normally we're not that interested in the litany of Xbox 360 achievements uncovered by that community's strange, gaming junkies, but every once in a while something shiny grabs our attention and we become fixated on it. And so it was when we spotted the list of achievements for Valve's The Orange Box, which answered some very obvious questions that (we're frankly embarassed to admit) we actually spent too much time wondrering ourselves. Questions like:

If the retail disc has five games on it, how many achievement points can they dole out? 5000?
Will the achievements be divided evenly amongst the offerings?
Does Gabe Newell read our fan mail?
(This one is more of a followup to that last one) Will he ever respond?

The list does answer two of those four questions with aplomb: The Orange Box has the standard 1000 gamerscore points available to you spread out across a whopping 99 achievements –the Half-Life titles get the lion's share of those achievements and, therefore, gamerscore points. As for the last two questions, we're guessing one of those eleven secret achievements contains a special message from Gabe just for us.

Tags: Half-Life-2, Orange-Box, OrangeBox, Valve

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Grey Fox @ Sep 12th 2007 4:14AM

I'm still pissed retailers gassed the Black Box.

ExMcloud @ Sep 12th 2007 4:20AM

Well this is officially the best price in gaming...60 bux for 5 games? Are teh serious?

Stamnes @ Oct 15th 2007 8:54AM

Well, you could get it at steam for 50 bux ;D

Zsavior @ Sep 12th 2007 4:23AM

Look Portals and Team Fortress alone makes this thing worth it, I hate shooters and this still looks good.

waynski1457 @ Sep 12th 2007 4:40AM

jeez thats gonna take forever! but it will be worth it!

Sir.sinho @ Sep 12th 2007 6:28AM

But what about entitlements? LOL

Chris @ Sep 12th 2007 9:03AM

i just want episode 2 for PC :(

OnimushaSoki @ Sep 12th 2007 9:37AM

For those who don't know, "the Engineer" video is up.

jynxycat @ Sep 12th 2007 10:00AM

ps. Pre-order it on Steam, beta test TF2 next week :O

Jonah Falcon @ Sep 12th 2007 10:38AM

Here's the way it is, Joystiq:

There's more than 60 achievements due to the fact there's 4 games.

HOWEVER, its still a $60 product, so they can't include more than 1000 Achievement points.

NATO_Duke @ Sep 12th 2007 11:07AM

Huh? There are 5 games not 4. I don't remember them ever saying the price of a game dictated its achievements. If thats the case, $29 games would get less.

Jonah Falcon @ Sep 12th 2007 11:30AM

A single retail product, then (rolling eyes). The rules are quite clear. You can only get the 250 additional on a seperate paid expansion.

blooh @ Sep 12th 2007 11:38AM

who gives a fuck about achievements? they don't do anything

Crazed Geek @ Sep 12th 2007 9:38PM

I give a fuck because achievements (or rather, gamerscore) is the closest way anyone's ever come up with for a system-wide high score list. High scores are one of the best remnants of the old arcade days, and MS is at least trying to retain some of that arcade goodness.

Does it do anything? No. Does it add some more replay value to games, and challenges you to beat your friends in stuff? Hell yeah it does.

wootman @ Sep 17th 2007 2:25AM

i care about gamerscores like i care about apple computers, or stocks, or analist opinions.
when i see a new one, i go huh. thats cool, and go on.
it also depends on how big of a pain in the ass it is.
i think it should just be things that you get, such as in stranglehold getting 5 ballshots in a row, or staying 10 minutes in the darkness (fps make out scene ftw!)

RotBot @ Sep 12th 2007 1:14PM

I don't think Episodes 1 and 2 would count as separate games. They're 5 to 10 hour-long expansion packs.

5000 achievement points is unlikely to happen. Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion, which has 30 hours of gameplay, offered only 250 achievement points.

Mike @ Sep 12th 2007 3:49PM

I'd count Ep.1 and 2 as games, but not full retail games. Keep in mind that some full games are only 7 hours long. I guess a better description is that you're getting 5 titles, 3 of which are full games and two are expansions. I'm actually looking forward to this more than Halo 3.

Noodleygoodness @ Sep 12th 2007 6:41PM

This is gonna sound like a very dumb question but here goes. I'm new to the whole xbox360 thing and I have no idea what the whole point of achievements are. Is it just so you can say, "Yep. I got them all" all proud like, strutting with your thumbs in your pits, or can you trade them in to get free stuff on XBOX Live or something(this I'm doubting)? And what the point of the "Gamerscore"? Yeah, I'm out of touch apparently. If someone could finally help me out with these I'll bow my head to the impending sarcasm surely to follow. Now excuse me while I put on my acid wash jeans and listen to some Journey.