Ok, so the Orange Box was released at the end of last year on
consoles, but we think it’s worth a mention for anybody who has
recently bought an PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

The Orange Box isn’t a game, it’s five games boxed as one — Half-Life
2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and the
multiplayer Team Fortress 2. If you’re not a PC gamer, you might have played Half-Life when it got
off to a poor console start on PlayStation 2, the game was just about
playable compared to the award-winning PC version, but things have
changed since then.

Half-Life has been a standard setter since its first PC release in
1998. Half-Life 2 was long delayed but well worth the wait, again
getting critical acclaimed. Then, since its launch, games developer
Valve switched to a ‘episode’ based releases using their Steam
download
system — the Orange Box partly acts as catch up for console users.

Half-Life 2, Episode One, and Episode Two are your standard-setting
first person shooters. Think highly developed storyline, impressive
graphics, and never-ending action mixed in with a range of weapons and
enemies, and you’re just about there. 

Portal is puzzle game like you never. As with the original Half-Life,
you’re our stuck in a weapons research and development. But there’s a
twist. It looks like a first person shooter, but the game does not have
any guns you can pick up.

Instead you have a portal shooter, getting place-to-place or
disabling
automatic guns requires a bit of thinking. Did we mention the computer
which controls the compound has gone crazy and is trying to kill you?
If you could call Orange Box a game it would be game of the year 2007,
but, since it’s not a game, it is the best every value the games
industry has ever seen.

Out on PS3, Xbox 360, & PC