The Orange Box

It's the most obvious 10/10 release all year.

	Version Xbox 360, PS3, PC	Developer Valve	Publisher Valve / EA	Genre FPS

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The style and humour in Portal is a contrast the Half-Life 2 world (despite it being set in the same universe, and in fact, being connected to Half-Life 2 more than you expected as you progress through Episode Two and Portal itself). The sarcastic wit of the female computer voice, GLADOS, that you hear throughout the game provides personality in abundance in what otherwise could have felt like quite a lonely game. It also single-handedly makes Portal into a mini-story-driven affair, because you don't quite know what's going on, and as you discover sneaky clues and ominous evidence of what's going on through the game, you really want to find out why, in story terms, you are solving all these tasks aside from the sheer fun of it.

It must also be noted for the record that once you complete Portal, it has the best ending/credits sequence of all time.

So that's Portal. It takes about four or more hours to complete, depending on how smart you are I guess. Moving on to Team Fortress 2, then. After some initial problems (I had no control at all in a match, a system crash, games taking too long to find players - even today on launch day), getting into Team Fortress 2 is eventually a total blast.

Since Team Fortress 2 essentially invented team based multiplayer action games, you would expect this vibrant remake that has taken nine years to make to be something special, and as the only online component of The Orange Box, it doesn't disappoint.

Team Fortress 2

Grounded in a unique cartoony art style, this multiplayer game ticks all the right boxes and is one of the best games of its kind. The graphics make a really refreshing change from all the bland WW2 grey colours or generic space marine stuff that have often kept me away from this sort of multiplayer experience, and it doesn't stop getting hilarious seeing these cartoon soldiers get blown to bits in a bloody mess of limbs. But the art style also serves a purpose, so that players can easily see their team and identify which class of player is which.

The different characters have some awesome abilities that mean matches always have a good mix of players, and while some combinations of players work better than others, working out which combinations work best - and on which of the six extremely well balanced maps - is really half the fun. The other half, naturally, is shooting the crap out of everyone. And since everything is so finely tuned, perfectly balanced and with all the ranked settings you could wish for, it could be said that the longevity of Orange Box rests almost exclusively with Team Fortress 2, as much fun as it is to play through Half-Life 2 and Portal again and again.

On Xbox 360, the version we have been reviewing, the control is also excellent; it feels a little more responsive that Valve's last console effort with Half-Life 2 on Xbox 1, with weapons still easily selectable via the d-pad cross menu thing, but also now the analogue control just feels very smooth and targeting always feels accurate.

So, any complaints? Not really. Those issues with getting TF2 started irked me a bit. It would also have been nice to pad HL2 out a tiny bit more with a special level called Lost Coast available to PC players for ages now, but really, it doesn't matter all that much. Very occasionally, Alyx or your other comrades in the few squad sections of Half-Life 2 still sort of get in your way a bit. And in Portal, there are a couple of levels that I predict will just drive some players to despair and possibly mean they don't finish the game without some real persistence, because mercilessly it doesn't offer much in the way of help. Oh, and I really don't like the box art with its fluorescent orange bit. You know you're scraping the complaints barrel when you mention the box art. So overall, there are really no major complaints.

It's a shame really that because people may view this as a re-release of Half-Life 2 with some new games, Orange Box may not win any Game of the Year awards, but I would suggest that despite only taking about four hours to complete, Portal should definitely be up for it for its sheer originality and ingenious design. However, as an overall release, taking into account the inclusion of HL2 (which won every GOTY award going back in 2004) plus its episodic updates and the two awesome new games, it certainly gets GOTY status from us.

I can't wait to see what Valve does for Episode Three - I hope it comes with some more Portal.

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