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The Orange Box | 
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| From: Electronic Arts
Category: Video Games
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $33.94
You Save: $6.05 (15%)
New (150) Used (17) from $28.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  73 reviews
Sales Rank: 243
Platform: Xbox 360
ESRB: Mature
Media: Video Game
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 17 - 20 years
Operating System: Xbox 360
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 9849
Model: 9849
UPC: 014633098495
EAN: 0014633098495
ASIN: B000R0PLK2
Release Date: October 9, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | 5 Games, One Box - The Orange Box is the ultimate collection of innovative action games for console, and an amazing introduction to the Half Life series for console gamers | | • | Epic Storyline - Half Life 2 - Episode Two takes gamers deeper into one of the best-known stories in gaming, following the desperate struggle of Gordon Freeman against the mysterious Combine. In this episode, gamers will leave the confines of City 17 for the first time. | | • | Redefining Action - Portal delivers an innovative new action gaming experience. Arming players with a portal gun allowing them to create portals from one location to another with the press of a button, Portal will forever change the way that gamers interact with their environment. | | • | World-Class Multiplayer - Team Fortress 2 is the sequel to granddaddy of role-based multiplayer action games. Featuring nine distinct roles - Heavy, Spy, Scout, Demoman, Engineer, Medic, Sniper, Soldier and Pyro - Team Fortress 2 is one of this year's most anticipated multiplayer games for any platform. |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The Orange Box includes all the content of The Black Box for PC, plus the original Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One. Innovative games featured in The Orange Box include Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the second installment in Valve's episodic trilogy advances the award-winning story, leading the player to new locations outside of City 17, as well as the pioneering type of single-player action game Portal, which rewrites the rules for how players approach and manipulate their environment, and Team Fortress 2 -- an all-new version of the legendary title that spawned team based multiplayer action games with a daring new art style features the most advanced graphics of any Source-based game released to date.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 68 more reviews...
 Worth the Price for the Episodes Alone... July 18, 2008
What an amazing deal! This package includes Team Fortress, Portal, and the new Half Life 2 episodes, plus a remake of the original that fixes a LOT of problems. First off, the graphics are improved (the floors are a bit shinier, etc.) Secondly, the frame rate is AWESOME (it was horrible in the original version) and the save system is just as great as ever.
The best Sci-Fi FPS pack in history. Buy it now!
Best Valued XBOX 360 available July 12, 2008
When deciding whether to invest in a new game or rent one, this is the one buy. Multiple full length games on one disc make this game the best value on the market. And each game is fantastic.
The Orange Box: Making my Favorite Color Orange July 6, 2008
Pros: - 5 great games in one package -
Cons: - Graphics could use work on a few of the games -
The Bottom Line: With an addictive online multiplayer, an ingenious puzzle game, and one of the best single player FPS games ever made, The Orange Box is a terrific deal.
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Half Life 2 The Orange Box for Xbox 360
I recently paid $60 for Bomberman: Act Zero. The game is a degenerate mess, and is clearly not worth your money. Half Life 2: The Orange Box was also worth $60 on release day, and with 5 games in one box, you'll actually feel like you got the most for your money when you buy this incredible package. The Orange Box comes with 5 games in it- Half Life 2, Half-Life 2 episode 1, Half Life 2 episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2, and all of these games are winners.
The good people at Valve developed each of these games, and from a graphics and sound perspective, it's easy to tell (for the most part). The source engine is used on all three Half-Life 2 games, Team Fortress 2, and Portal, but Team Fortress 2 brings a whole new element to the presentation of The Orange Box.
Team Fortress 2 would have to be the most graphically significant of the games included in The Orange Box, as everything looks like something straight out of the movie, "The Incredibles". Everything looks very "cartoonish", and that fits the game's personality just fine. Fire and Water textures are the 2 biggest beneficiaries of this unique graphical style. One of the 9 classes you can choose from in the game is the "Pyro", which, surprisingly enough, runs around with a flame-thrower engulfing other players in fire. If you are set a blaze, you have to seek water if you don't wish to have a painful death. In my opinion, no other fire texture to date looks quite as good as what's to be found in Team Fortress 2. This game proves that graphics don't have to be photo-realistic to look great. Keeping with the cartoony feel, the sound effects seem like they could have also been a part of "The Incredibles". Every character has the ability to do taunts during the game. It seems the voice acting is pretty well done, considering the game for which it is written. It is cheesy, but then again, the whole game is cheesy and that is perfect for it.
Portal looks a lot like Half-Life 2 and its episodes. A lot of the textures look similar to one another, but that is to be expected as both were made by Valve as previously stated. You might expect a game that is based on the idea of walking through portals to get to areas previously unreachable to be plagued with screen-tearing problems, but that is not the case with Portal. I've run across absolutely NO screen tearing. The frame-rate is also steady throughout Portal. The graphics here won't "wow" you, but at least they don't take away from the overall experience of the game.
All three of the Half-Life 2 games that are included run on the same graphics engine. While there are minor improvements throughout the series, the games still aren't really much better looking from one to another. Half-Life 2 is about 4 years old now, so the graphics are finally beginning to look a little bit dated. There's nothing wrong with the graphics, but textures just don't seem as crisp as they once did. Load times are frequent in the game, as there is a very long load in the beginning of the game, then throughout the game as you transition into new environments.
Portal's sound effects have the same feel as the graphics in that they won't "wow" you, but they get the job done. No explosions are in the game, and for that matter, nothing of real sound importance is. The Portal gun feels right when you use it, and the sounds it makes seem very appropriate. The real fun in the sound department is in the robot GlaDoS. The voice actor for the robot does an outstanding job, and the hilarious bits of dialect that come from her are a welcome bit of humor. The end credits song "Still Alive" is one of the best original songs to come from a video game. I actually enjoyed the song so much I felt compelled to put it on my iPod. Nothing I can say can really describe how good the song actually is in the game, so you'll just have to beat Portal and find out yourself!
The sound used in all of the Half-Life 2 games is simply incredible. For everything the gravity gun can pick up, there is a unique sound effect to go with it. An electronic beat will kick in right when the action heats up, and it really adds a layer of "intenseness" to the game. The voice acting is also at the top of the class in Half-Life 2 and its episodes. Though Gordon will never actually talk, all of the supporting characters do an amazing job, especially the character Alyx Vance, who is obviously portrayed by one of the most talented voice actresses around.
What really makes Half Life 2's presentation stand out from the rest is the character models though. They are the epitome of what every game released should try to do with character models. They look as life-like as you'll ever see in a game, and for once, the facial animation is actually convincingly life-like. The character models are given the perfect stage to shine because the game has no real cut-scenes. Instead, you'll just watch the conversations unfold in real-time. I say watch the conversations as Gordon will never actually talk in the game, and because this is a FPS, and there aren't cut-scenes, you won't see Gordon either. It would be nice to see what Gordon looks like from more than just the box-art, but I suppose being so first-person based does add an extra sense of immersion in that you really feel like you are Gordon. Other games, like Call of Duty, pretend to have these "real-time cut-scenes", but if the story isn't good enough, it doesn't make the slightest difference. Thankfully, Half-Life's story is terrific.
If you're one of the rare few who hasn't played Half-Life 2 yet, here is a brief synopsis of what has gone on in Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2 episode 1. Building upon the original Half Life, a scientist from the Black Mesa top-secret lab (Gordon Freeman) finds himself in a futuristic world complete with aliens controlling the paramilitary society. You have been relocated or imprisoned along with others in city 17 a desolate futuristic environment where the police and government of City 17 have taken over. Episode 1 sees that Gordon makes it out of City 17, but the story is far from resolved. In Half-Life 2 episode 2, the lone new piece of Half-Life 2 content in The Orange Box, you'll be playing through the outskirts of City 17 still trying to get away from the combine into safety. Half-Life 2 episode 2 sees a lot more get resolved than Episode 1 does, as plans from Half-Life 2 finally get resolved in this new episode, but it still leaves room for another episode, which is exactly what Valve wanted to do.
It's not absolutely mandatory that you play the original Half-Life before you play Half-Life 2 and its episodes, but it really makes the story a lot easier to follow, at least for the beginning stages anyway. After playing Half-Life 2 for a few hours, things begin to make a little more sense, but it still is helpful to have the story of Half-Life 1 in mind when trying to make sense of the mysterious plot. It's a good thing that you will get so much satisfaction from the story of Half-Life 2, because the other 2 games in The Orange Box don't really have much of a story to offer.
Portal drops you in to a testing facility, with absolutely no explanation why, other than the people at the "Aperture Science Laboratories" felt like testing someone, and that someone is you. Honestly, it's very hard to tell if you are even playing as a boy or a girl in Portal. You'll only see glimpses of yourself through portals. This just goes to demonstrate how nondescript the story is. It's hard to knock the story of Portal, because if there were anything more of the story than what's to be had, the game would feel overdone, and ultimately, it would just make you dislike the game. Even though there isn't much of a story in Portal, that's not to say that it doesn't have a personality. You'll be guided through these puzzles by a female robot's voice, and you'll hear some of the funniest stuff you'll ever hear from her. The game feels just right in regards to the story, and I really wouldn't have changed a thing about it.
Team Fortress 2 is strictly an online FPS, so there is no story at all. We've seen this before in games like Warhawk, so we know it can work, but still it would have been nice to have a tutorial or something added on. However, like Portal, even though there isn't a story, the game still has a great personality to it. Each of the 9 classes has a taunt move that they can do, and it just adds to the fun loving nature of the game. A great example of the personality in the game is the "Meet the _____ (Heavy, Sniper, Scout etc..)" trailers. They are hilarious, and provide a little bit of the back-story behind most of the classes. If you're looking into Team Fortress 2, I strongly recommend watching these videos, as you'll have a greater understanding of what the game is all about after you have.
It would have been hard for Valve to come up with a story for Team Fortress 2, as there are 9 classes, and it's an FPS so all but one of the classes would have been left out. The game is very heavily focused on these classes. There's the Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper, and Spy, and all of these classes are good for certain situations depending on what your team needs to accomplish at the moment. If your team needs to take an offensive role by capturing a control point, or taking the enemies inelegance (flag), then you might want a few Soldiers on the front lines to do some damage with their rocket launchers. To prevent the enemy from taking a control point or your intelligence, you'll need players taking a defensive approach, like by being the engineer, who can set up turrets that attack enemies that get to close to your intelligence. What I'm trying to get at is that you'll need to have good class balance between your team in order to be successful. Personal favorites will appear based on your style of play, and it's fun once you've mastered a class. The thing that every reviewer has been griping about is the lack of maps and game options. There are only 6 maps, and the environments do get repetitive, but it's vital to know every nook and cranny of the map you are playing on, as to get better position on your enemy. The game modes are a bit more frustrating however. Each map was designed specifically for a game mode, so you have to play capture the flag on the same map, every single time you play it. This can get very annoying, and there is no real cure to the annoyance. You'll just have to grin and bear it. A new map pack or two would have quelled this annoyance temporarily, but no map pack has been released yet. Another disappointing thing about Team Fortress 2 is the lack of offline play. It would have been nice to see something included, for those of us who still enjoy split-screen play, but it's hard to stay mad about this issue, as all of the maps were clearly designed for big team games. The way I see it, Team Fortress 2 is the 3rd best online multiplayer game that money can buy. Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 still surpass this, but it sure is a welcome retreat from the seriousness of most other online FPS games today.
Team Fortress 2 is the only part of The Orange Box that doesn't live in the Half-Life 2 world. Even Portal gets a mention in Half-Life 2 episode 2, but even if Portal didn't have this connection with the Half-Life universe, it would still be one of the most talked about puzzle games in recent memory, because it feel so unique from everything else being put out right now. Portal is shown from a first-person perspective, but it isn't a FPS, because there isn't any shooting- other than the Portal gun. The object of Portal is simple- Use the Portal gun to reach places previously unreachable. The gun can shoot 2 Portals, one orange, and one blue, One of these being the entry point, and one being where you will exist. You shoot it at walls that the Portal gun can shoot through, you walk through the entry point, and you'll come out of the exit point you've pre-determined. It sounds like a very confusing concept, but in reality, it makes a lot of sense after you've played Portal for an hour or so. Physics are a big part of Portal, because you'll need to use momentum to get over walls, and get to higher places, and you'll also have to pick up boxes and such to use them to solve the puzzles you've been faced with. For the most part, I found the puzzles to be rather challenging. Maybe it's because I'm your typical console `tard and wasn't used to a game that required such a great amount of logic to figure out, but I thought I got my money's worth with Portal. Professional reviewers have clocked the game at around 2-3 hours, but it took me the better part of 4 to finish, and that's not counting how many times I plan on playing it again.
I've always found the driving missions in Half-Life 2 to be the worst part of the experience. The vehicles didn't control well on the consoles, it can be hard to see what you are up against from a first person perspective while trying to drive a car, and most of the driving missions feel way too long. If you are like me, you are in for a rude awakening, because driving takes a center stage in Half-Life 2 episode 2. That said, it seems like the developers recognized the fact that the driving missions just seemed to drag on and on, so they shortened them, but made them more frequent. This actually makes the pacing of the game feel much better that in previous Half-Life 2 games, in that you never really get tired of doing one thing, which solves the only real problem I'd had with the series. With this minor inconvenience fixed, Half-Life 2 is as perfect as Valve could have possibly made it, in terms of gameplay and story. As long as the gravity gun remains in Half-Life, the game will probably be fun to play. Even when you aren't fighting enemies, it's actually fun to just pick things up and shoot them. This is because of how ingenious the Havok physics are. Most everything is useable with the gravity gun, and you feel totally powerful slinging them around with this physics engine. Besides the gravity gun, the rest of the weapons in Half-Life 2 and its episodes are pretty standard. You get a sub-machine gun, a pistol, a wrench for close combat, and breaking wood to get past barriers, grenades, a shotgun, etcetera. The gravity gun is just so special and unique that the lack of other unique weapons doesn't really matter. Puzzles are also still frequent in Half-Life 2 episode 2, and that just adds another layer of depth to the Half-Life world. This isn't a game like Halo, you have to actually think if you intend to win the game, which is really a wonderful thing. The only FPS recently released that even comes close to how well thinking was integrated is BioShock. The comparisons don't just end there, though. BioShock and Half-Life 2 are the only games that I've played that make you feel like you're in a wide open City, while being a totally linear game. Because of this, the immersion of these games just set them apart from everything else on the market.
As IGN put it, The Orange Box is "The best deal in videogame history", and it's hard to argue against that. You get everything you could want out of a videogame purchase. If your looking for a great package that will keep you entertained for months, you can't go wrong with The Orange Box.
Portal- 9.0/10.
Team Fortress 2- 8.6/10.
Half-Life 2 episode 2- 9.7/10.
The Orange Box as a package- 10/10. Alone these games are great, together they are truly something special.
Recommended:
Yes
Worth it for Portal alone. June 27, 2008
In the words of GlaDOS: "This was a triumph." In my opinion, Portal alone makes this game worth buying. Everything else was just icing on the cake....so to speak.
 Not all that June 18, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was going to buy this game based on all the good reviews it's received. Fortunately, I rented it and was thoroughly unimpressed after about 4 hrs of play. Maybe I didn't give it a chance. I didn't play Half Life before so maybe that had something to do with it. The graphics are definitely dated. Portal was fun but I don't know why anyone would replay it. COD4 set the bar for FPS's so any shooter I play now is just so so.
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