Most people will know about Valve's latest release but for the usual 'under-a-rock-livers' amongst us I will have to explain why you have to get it.. Right now! The Orange Box is probably one of those few things I have bought which give actually a huge amount of value for their money. Valve's box includes: and last but not least .
So, is it the price of 5 games? Nope. Although its worth even more than that in my opinion, but Valve has priced this attractive collection at the rate of a single game! So, what exactly do you get for 50 euros? An awesome entertainment experience that outdoes any other game!! (currently) /fanboy out.


I find Half Life 2 being one of the best single player adventures ever made, regardless of it being quite old now. The story line is of a deep level you would never expect of a shooter, let alone one released in end 2004.
Your field of play is City 17, a city held and terrorised by the evil Combine. Everywhere you go people are getting arrested and the further you advance in the story, the more people start to turn into rebels and form groups and settlements all over the city. This all brilliantly designed ofcourse. Half Life 2 has its moments of brilliance, my personal favourites are the fights where the (excellently composed) music starts to play, you know its gonna be big when you hear it. Those fights are epic to me.
Half Life 2 Episode One and Episode Two continue the story and the gameplay. Its more of the same, with new locations, but that doesnt matter a single piece to me. When you have finished Half Life 2, all you want is more of it. Episode One offers you the same with both graphics and gameplay, Episode Two demands a stronger machine to play maxed out. It features wide forests and new techniques like motion blur and HDR. The Source engine is very scalable so you will be able to play it on an older machine, you'll just have to look at a slightly less detailed Alyx ;)
Speaking of Alyx, she is Gordons (main person) female companion, and will follow you throughout some missions in both Half Life 2 and Ep1 and 2. As the adventure continues it seems more and more likely Alyx has a crush on you (Gordon.. not you in person lol), and she is really well put as a character. The jokes she makes and the emotion and facial expressions she has (no im not in love with her geez), this is really well done for a computer game. The other characters are well detailed too, but Alyx steals the show.
What the hell am I talking about? Get that game!!





The original Team Fortress was a huge succes multiplayer game, so plans for a succesor were made. Valve has taken really long developing Team Fortress 2, mainly because they made multiple games actually. After the original game they started on several projects, which were all being found not good enough, till they started on this one. The graphics have gone from realistic to cartoony, yet the original classes remain. Team Fortress is all about teamwork and the really good balancement of all different roles, they are divided in three categories. Defense, Offense and Support.
The classes are to be known as:

A very fast runner and handy for stealing enemy intelligence, can double-jump too avoid enemy fire but has low hitpoints.

The soldier has a rocket launcher and can use it to 'rocket-jump' high in the air, sacrificing some health.

This class has a flamethrower which is absolutely deadly at clos range, but also a shotgun for mid range. The Pyro is not really fast so avoid open fields.

The demoman has sticky grenades and instant exploding nades, and is equipped with two nade launchers. It is a good class for setting traps to ambush enemies.

The heavy is a Russian guy, who likes to fire his minigun and kill as many people as possible. He calls his minigun Sacha and loves it with his whole heart.

Can deploy stationary turrets and health and ammo dispensers. Equipped with a shotgun, pistol and wrench.

The Medic can heal other teammates aswell as kill enemies with his needle gun. He can activate ubercharge if he has enough points for a short time to make him and his partner invulnerable.

The Sniper speaks for itself, and has a Snipergun, pistol and machette.

The Spy is a deadly class, he can disguise as enemy classes and cloack himself to backstab people easily. He smokes ciggarettes all the time ;)

Team Fortress offers great multiplayer fun in 6 official maps, mostly control zone maps and a few capture the flag. Valve has ofcourse its map making tool Hammer ready and its even released the Orange Box SDK lately, so custom maps are already possible and lots are on the way. The entire game is cartoony, and the facial expressions and differences in the characters are so detailed you couldnt even dream of. I dont know if youve seen them yet, but check Steam for some introduction movies on the different classes, after you checked em go and play Team Fortress 2 and you will be amazed. Every detail seen in the movies comes back in the game, meaning for example the Heavy will talk with a Russian accent on the battlefield and he will laugh maniacally (is that a correct word?) when he hits/kills people. When he gets hit his face will get more and more disappointed until he gets healed by a medic. All characters have about 3 different animations for all their guns, 9 in total. If you press the default 'G' key you will make a funny animation (The Heavy will kiss its minigun ) and say something. Fun to do if you kill someone and let him know it was easy for you. This is actually one of the few games that make me laugh, its like a good cartoon on television, except you can control it yourself now and with a bit more violence. A definite multiplayer fun title this is.
Onto the last game of the box (yes there is even more can you imagine o.O): . A game developed by a few Dutch students and shown as a tech demo at first, Valve hired them and now its actually on my desktop. Portal is all about you waking up as an experiment for some science lab, and you have to get through 19 challenges using your Portal generation device. Its a bit like Half Life 2's gravity gun, except this one is totally white and creates portals. You can create orange and blue portals, which you have to use to get through the challenges. A portal shows the view of the other portal you created and you can walk through it. The challenges are varying and quite hard to solve sometimes but after all its great fun.


My final thoughts on the Orange Box.. Well, do I even need to say some more? Like I stated before this is great value for money, one of the best things I ever bought. 5 Games for the prize of one, and if you have Half Life 2 and Episode 1 yet, you can give them away as a gift to someone.
Valve being Valve, its not just gonna end with this release. They constantly keep supporting their games, and so do they with this one. Tons of updates are being released and new maps will ofcourse come. This is a recommendation to everyone, just buy this and you will NOT be dissapointed. If you now want to excuse me, I have to finish Episode 2 and listen to the Heavy speaking about Sacha.

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