A few years ago I played Half-Life 2 on my PC. To this day it is one of the best 1st person shooters I have ever played. It features excellent graphics, elaborate level designs, a good story and so much more. Winning this game requires both fast reflexes and clever tactics.
Over the next few years two extra episodes which continue the story of Half-Life 2 were released on Steam. But my initial experience with Steam was very bad. I spent hours to find out why I got a network error when I tried to login. A few days later I learned that Steam suffered from a massive outage and there hadn’t been anything wrong with my setup in the first place. I never bothered to try Steam again after that incident and therefore missed out on the extra Half-Life 2 episodes and Portal, another popular video game released by the same company. When the release of Portal 2 reminded me of this loss I bought The Orange Box for my PlayStation 3.
The Orange Box turned out to be really good value for money. You don’t only get the original Half-Life 2 (which I played through once again) but also its two sequels. They feature more excellent levels from a dark underground labyrinth full of zombies to urban warfare and finally peak it the fulminant Half-Live 2 homage to the Battle of Hoth.
But let’s not forget about Portal. It is a first person puzzle game where you have to teleport your character via portals that you create with a portal gun. The levels are simple at the beginning but get more and more difficult as the game progresses. You e.g. have to use portals to gain velocity or to dispose of your enemies. Who would have thought that bending the laws of physics could be so much fun?
Overall The Orange Box is hours and hours of excellent game play for not much money and I can highly recommend it.