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!
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