The Orange Box

The Orange Box is a collaboration of Valve games featuring Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress Classic 2 to name a few and for what it's worth it's a bundle worth it's price. Now as far as I can say where the replay value stands is determined by the user but to me once I finish a Half-Life single player campaign there isn't much anticipation to go back and do it again, same back in the Half-Life 1 days, same now. Episode 2 was enjoyable, though very short. There were some surprises but the typical surprises stayed the same. The surprises like once you get into a salvaged car, that runs, the driving from point A to point B is interrupted constantly. The Hunters proved a challenging foe and in mass are devastating, the last level. The story moves on as Alex whispers into the black screen after a certain incident occurs.

It lasted me about a good three to four hours to play through Episode 2. You can imagine going through a 20 hour game like Bioshock that four was nothing AND surprising none-the-less. In all it worked well on the Xbox 360, uhm no glitches really and it offered a great physic's engine. The only thing that really caught me off guard was that sometimes Alex would be explaining a situation only to be cut off by the loading screen and when the next area loaded she would've skipped ahead in her dialoge rather than starting off back at what she was in the middle of saying in her previously interrupted dialogue. 

Portal is very interesting and I only tasted a bit of it so far but from what I have experienced Valve has something mischeviously planned in their future with this "Portal" engine. It is a very intriguing experiment.

Team Fortress Classic 2 looks great, I love how artsy it is. It gives off a cartoonish atmosphere with a grunge feel. So far I only played as the Heavy Gunner in one match and ripped people to shreds with the minigun. I don't know if heavy gunner's don't carry grenades or what but I couldn't figure out how to throw them. Overall it was a fun 'king of the hill' map I played. I will delve more into this topic the more I play this. I mostly focused on Episode 2.