The Orange Box (Xbox 360, 2007)

This is possibly the best deal ever. Five games in one!

Portal

These Brain Teasers start out fairly easy, but it doesn't stay that way for long. Soon, you're using transferred momentum and carrying blocks as impromptu shields from the turrents. All the while, both your sanity and your funnybone are tested by some of the most hilarious robot voice work ever. If you find your battle juice a little sapped after an intense battle on one of the other games on this disc, it's a great way to charge your mental batteries and hone your problem solving skills.

Team Fortress 2

Intense bone crusing action, outrageous weapons, and hiarious voice work. The character models have a cartoony twist which may put off some fans of the original, but only until they join or serve a game. They'll find themslves right on board with the change. The action is furious, bloody, and often hilarious.

HALF LIFE 2

I saved the best for last!

Gamers new to the title as well as those who have been immersed in the epic saga of Gordon Freeman from the very beginning will not be disappointed with this sequel to it's Game of the Year predecessors. The aliens are more terrifying, the weapons are more intense (esecially the Gravity Gun), and the story line is deeper and more emotional than ever.

You will find yourself traveling with Alyx, the cute and scrappy daughter of professor Vance and she is INCREDIBLE. In addition to having seemingly infinite ammo, she uses it to impressive effect, emptying entire clips into zombies, then executing brutal martial arts moves to knock the head crabs right off of their host bodies. What makes her most engaging is her sweet nature and incredible battle skills. She also has a pet robot named Dog who comes through with solutions to things like impassible chasms and doors. He's also pretty cute. Throughout the odyssey, you'll notice she follows more and more emotionally attached to you as Gordon Freeman. In fact, she falls in love. How she finds the time for romance between furious gun battles and harrowing chases I'll never understand, but damn is it sexy.

As with all previous installments, the visuals, control scheme, and physics of every title on this disc are nothing short of amazing.

This is my favorite shooter ever. I am absolutely addicted.

Thank you, Valve. I think I'm falling in love with you.

I know there are really five games, but Half-Life Episodes 1 & 2 are short and really are just add-ons to the main game. You COULD play them out of order or by themselves, but then you would really miss out on the phenomenal story that HL2 offers in full.

Half-Life 2, Episodes 1 & 2: Excellent. AWESOME!!

Fun factor: 10/10 if your a FPS fan, 6/10 if your not so much. This game is a shooter through and through. It really pulls away from the pack with it's innovative level design, gameplay and variety of light puzzles and enemies to engage with.

Visuals: 9/10 The graphics on the Xbox 360 are sharp and hi-rez. Everything from backgrounds to textures to faces are rendered in photographic or near photographic quality, which gives this 4-year old game a very new feel. Things break apart nicely when you hit or shoot them, even your weight can smash somethings. Particle effects, which are plentiful in this Sci-Fi shooter, are a delight to witness.

Audio: 9/10 This would have gotten a 10/10 if there was a little more dialogue. All of the plot advancing takes place within real-time game scenes, and there is enough of it during those times, but other than that there is hardly any talking. You will occasionally hear radio chatter or some kind of PSA, which do add to the overall ambiance. Physical sounds of things colliding or being destroyed, weapon sounds and character/enemy voices or sound FX are all top notch.

Tech: 9/10 Everything works here. Controls, precision, movement, collision detection (except getting stuck in an Antlion Pit), physics, frame-rate, draw distance. Load times are quick but you may find they are numerous. The way Valve built this game allows for a "seamless" flow, there ARE different levels marked by their labels popping up every so often, but there is no stopping of gameplay between them.

Difficulty: 7/10 if your good with FPS, 9/10 if your new to the genre.

Overall: 8.8/10
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Portal: Very cool. Uber-unique and very fun to play.

Portal is somewhat based off of the HL world. There are similarities or parallels between them and they serve to tie into the overall theme, even if they are subtle like the turrets or the gravity gun. This is a puzzle game with a twist. First, you play it in first-person mode, second, it does have it's brief action sequences and third, the story is a little deeper than other puzzle games. This game is a challenge but starts out easy. The idea is that you have a "gun" that shoots two different portals, walk through one and come out the other. Easy right? Riiight ...

Fun Factor: 10/10 if you like HL, puzzles or "breakaway" games. 5/10 if otherwise.

Visuals: 8/10. Even though you may not encounter much that is visually stunning, everything is pristine. The first time you see your self through the portal is amazing.

Audio: 8/10 Again, not a whole lot but everything sounds good. I love the GLaDOS voice that is essentially the backbone of the game.

Tech: 10/10 The physics are OUTSTANDING and are an integral part of how you play the game. Everything else is top-notch.

Difficulty: 7/10 if you play the story only. 10/10 if you try the advanced levels.

Overall: 8.6/10

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Team Fortress 2: Fun to play. I haven't played this game a whole lot.

Fun Factor: 8/10 Fun with people you know.

Visuals: 8/10 Cartoony.

Audio: 6/10 Eh.

Tech: 7/10 Good.

Difficulty: 7/10 Medium learning curve.

Overall: 7.2/10

Everyone (old enough to play it) should own this game. For anyone who used to play Team Fortress Classic on the PC - This game picks up right where it left off! It even has some familiar maps like 2Fort. The gameplay is flawless and the animation is awesome. I was skeptical at first of the new graphics, but after 10 seconds of gameplay, I was convinced that Valve knew what they were doing all along. The sound effects are familiar as well as the fun factor we all remember!! I forgot how much fun Team Fortress is!!

Anyone who didn't get to play Half-Life 2 on the PC that utilized an awesome graphics card will finally get to see what the graphics are supposed to look like. I played Half-Life 2 on the xbox and, while fun, it suffered in the graphics arena. I haven't even started playing Episode 1 or 2 yet, simply because I want to fully appreciate Half-Life 2 all over again even though I completed it on xbox.

Portal looks amazing and will keep you coming back, it is super challenging and innovative as well. I can already imagine the clones that will attempt to copy it.

If you love first person shooters, then you probably already have this one on your list, but if you've never been into them, then this is the title for you.

For the money, this box set is a steal. Do yourself a favor and get this game! It is an instant classic and people will be playing this one online for years to come!! Enjoy !!!

Just to inform you there is 5 total games packed into The Orange Box. There is only one disk so no switching out disks for different games.

Games on The Orange Box:

1. Half-Life 2
2. Half-Life 2: Episode One
3. Half-Life 2: Episode Two
4. Portal
5. Team Fortress 2

I'll start with all of the Half-Life games since they are all related to each other.
The basic gameplay of Half-Life 2 to me is more of an RPFPS which is (Role Playing First Person Shooter). The storyline itself is just dumb and really has no grand plan to it except run around and get to the next checkpoint. The time between checkpoints is very long unless you save it manually. I can't really even make a judgment on how good of a game it really is because it just has no point. You can sit there for hours killing zombies and then find a safe house with people in it, then walk out the other side and be on a beach with spiders and big as cars that fly. WTF? From a standpoint of realism, I can make no connection. This goes for all of the Half-Life Episodes.

Next, Portal. I have actually never played a game that made me think, and I'm talking about actually critically thinking about how to solve the level. See the entire game is made up of 19 levels of Test Chambers and you have to figure out how to get out of them with a Warp Gun that allows you to shoot a blue hole on one side of the wall, shoot an orange hole on the other side of the wall, then walk through the blue hole and come out of the orange hole, or vise-versa. Now that is a simple way of explaining it but it is more complicated than that. If you are in for action, you are in the wrong place. This is a challenge of how smart you are and how you fast, or with least portals shot, you can solve a 3D puzzle that you are in. The last level they trick you into thinking they will burn you since you have completed the game but instead you escape the facility and kill the computer that talks to you the whole game. (I can barely understand the computer) There are achievements incorporated into it.

Now for Team Fortress 2. If you've ever played Battlefield Heroes then you know what this game will be like only TF 2 is a First Person Shooter instead of 3rd person like BF Heroes. It is only online, there is no campaign but there is still achievements incorporated into it. Its hard to get the hang of and it is no COD for sure but it passes time and gets fun at times.

Overview:

If you are looking for a game with easy and quick achievements you are in the wrong place because a very good majority of the achievements are only worth 5 or 10 Gamerscore and are very hard to get or take a long time to get such as story related achievements in Half-Life 2. There are not very many Portal achievements but a few are worth 20, 30, and 40 Gamerscore but are very hard to get. The Team Fortress achievements are ridiculously hard to get. The people that do get them, most of them boost and use their friends to help them get the achievements such as running in front of your Turret 10 times in a row. And that is only possible of course, if your friend has The Orange Box, and Xbox Live. I myself have boosted no achievements and never will.

I hope the information I have presented to you will help you make a decision on whether or not to buy this game.

My rating: 2/5


If you have any questions send me an email at ice49man@gmail.com or just message me on ebay.


AJ
Ice Man
Ice Inc.
CSE

Valve, how I love their creative ways of dragging people to buying their products.
The Orange Box is a must have among Half-life loving fans. I was given Half-life 2 (Xbox version) for my birthday from one of my friends. I heard that Half-life 2 was a great game, and being that the xbox 360 is supposedly backwards compatible with xbox games, Half-life 2 being one of them. I was rudely awakened that it was not, but would run really slow lag in places and just be a straight out pain to play. When I was looking for a solution I stumbled upon The Orange Box. I bought my copy, started play amazed at the shadowing and great texture of this improved version of Half-life 2. The game never lagged once or even stuttered. I've played the game countless times, enjoying every drop of it. The Orange Box is not just Half-life 2 though, it's a whole pack of Valve gifts starting with Half-life 2, Half-life 2 episode 1, Half-life 2 episode 2, Team fortress, and Valves recent arcade game Portal.
This huge selection is remarkably one of the best deals you can ever get, a brand new copy of The Orange Box is only $19.99 at retail stores.

List Of Games:

Half-life 2: Gordan Freeman a scientist who graduated from MIT has to fight himself out of countless trials from headcrabs, Zombies, Combines, and other very thrilling and incredibly exciting events. I don't want to spoil the story.

Half-life 2 Ep. 1: A continuation of Half-life 2, not much to say without ruining the story.

Half-life 2 Ep. 2: A continuation of Half life 2 Ep. 1, not much to say without ruining the story.

Team Fortress 2: This is a multiplayer only game that has various game modes. I don't know very much about it, I've only played 1-2 matches, I've been busy playing other games.

Portal: Valve has really done a good job on this game, it has a slight learning curve and requires some thinking to complete. I played through all the way and was very satisfied at the end. The basic story is your a test subject and you complete various mission and you use a device called a portal gun which makes portals to other parts of the room. The game can get rather tricky on the other hand some people will find it extremely easy but at the same time satisfying.

RATING SYSTEM:

Graphics: 9.5/10
There are some great visual effects in this Box, the array of games have different styles but taking from Half-life 2 mainly, I'd say Valve didn't skip any steps.

Sound: 9.5/10
The sound is great, and adds great clarity to the selection of games. You can make out what everyone is saying in all games and other fainter details like the sound of a bullet shell hitting the ground.

Story: 10/10 Through all the games I'd say personally that all of them were great, except for Team Fortress since it has no story.

Character Development: 7.5/10
Half-life 2, HL 2 Ep. 1, HL 2 Ep. 2, and Portal all had pretty decent character development, but since it's a video game there's more action then character development.

Controls: 9.5/10
All the controls throughout the games where great except for Half-life 2, when your driving any the buggy, or water craft, you use the left stick to accelerate and steer. I personally like having the right trigger to accelerate, but Valve didn't include anyway of changing this control setting.

Total: 9.5/10

The Orange Box is a great box to get, it has a total of 3 different games.
Valve has really put what they wanted for their fans, they've really out done themselves!

-XxmastermushxX