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'Half-Life 2: The Orange Box (PC DVD)'. (EAN 5030930058937)

Team Fortress 2 has so far proven to be stable, fast, explosive fun. It's a shooter. It's online. It's an online shooter!
What do you expect? It's not hugely innovative but it sure is pretty and fun.
I'm writing a review, here, of a game I have played (TF2) and two I haven't (Episode 2 and Portal) and part of me feels bad. But the reason I'm letting myself go like this is that I honestly believe that TF2 ALONE is worth the asking price.
So, I feel happy to say, 4 stars 4 stars: Great value for money!

I downloaded the BETA version from Steam

I have a laptop nrunning 945GM Chipset which is Direct X compatable but was unable to run any of the games successfully. The games hung or the frame rate was so bad they were unplayable.

Be very very careful to ensure your graphics card is up to the job before purchasing this game.

I am reviewing TF2 and HL2 only in this review.
First, Half Life 2 is one of the best single player FPS ever. Not the best in my opinion but worth the £25 price tag alone compared to some of the rubbish out there.
Team Fortress 2. I am playing the beta at the moment and I tell you this game alone is worth the 5 stars regardless of whatever else comes with the box. I have been multiplayer gaming for many years now and this is without doubt the finest team based multiplayer FPS to grace our monitors! This game is a game pure and simple. You will have so much fun playing this and if you can manage to get together with some of your online buddies and organise yourselves into some sort of coherent team you will get the most out of this. I have been on this for far too many hours over the last few days I get the feeling my wife hates me now. But that doesn't matter I've hated her for years!
Sum up: TF2 is worth more than the £25 price tag on its own!!!

This package contains:

Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 Episode 1
Half-Life 2 Episode 2
Team Fortress 2
Portal

Half Life 2

Anyone who has played and enjoyed first-person shooters on the PC platform knows, and reveres, Half-Life 2. The (at the time) revolutionary physics and graphics set a knew standard that still looks great three years later (and can now be enjoyed by most PC owners on its highest and most impressive detail settings). Fantastic lighting, texture and character design combine with brilliant and varied maps to create a flawless gameworld.
Equally impressive, however, was the story and its implementation - carrying on from the events of Half-Life 1, an alien race known as the Combine have enslaved humanity, and you are Gordon Freeman; hero of the resistance. The major breakthrough for storytelling made by this game was that rather than lose control of your character during scripted or prerendered cutscenes, or mindlessly bashing the 'talk' button to interact with NPCs, the dialogue is all seamlessly and spontaneously interspersed with the action. Enter a friendly area and the other resistance fighters tell you a little more about the events going on around you, re-arm and heal you; then send you on your way, for you are a man on a mission, the Freeman.

HL2 Eps 1+2

Continue the story of Gordon Freeman and Alyx in two new episodes of the story complete with new enemies, vehicles and updated graphics.

Team Fortress 2

A tongue in cheek, team-based, online shooting game with larger than life characters and fast, class based combat with a multitude of strategies available to different team configurations. Very cheeky cartoon-like graphics and general humorous bent throughout.

Portal

Long awaited 3d physics puzzler, where ones only method of negotiating a series of increasingly hostile environments is by means of a gun that fires a pair of "portals", one an entrance, one an exit, that are interconnected and provide the players means of crossing, for example, pits of spikes, acid lakes, and, apparently, far more devilish imaginings as the games progresses. The portals also change the "direction" of gravity (ie which way is "down") for the player, so one imagines the later levels being pretty fiendish. Imagine a strictly puzzle-based Prey and you get the idea.

Conclusion

Any one of the games in the orange box is worth £25 pounds, even (perhaps especially) the three year old Half-Life 2. Getting all 5 of these titles, three of which are being released for the first time, for the equivalent of just over £5 is a bargain that is simply too good to be missed. Buy it now, before Valve realise their mistake and double the price!