Name: The Orange Box
Genre: First-Person
Platform: PC, Xbox360 (Reviewed on PC)

The Orange Box is easily the greatest deal of the holiday season, bar none. In the box for the Xbox360, PC, and soon PS3, Valve packed in five games. This isn't some deal where you get one cool game, one mediocre game, and three crap ones. Every single game in The Orange Box is an amazing experience and on their own they are worth a purchase. But what's in the box? Firstly there is Half-Life 2, an amazing first-person-shooter that won several game of the year nominations across the board when it came out. Also packaged in are the two expansions to Half-Life 2, Episodes One and Two. Also inside this amazing package is Team Fortress 2 and Portal . Below are excerpts of the reviews I have done for the three new games in the box.

Full Episode Two Review

"The level design is also wonderful and varied just as the rest of the series. Driving through forests in a decked out muscle car and crawling through Antlion caves looking for their queen. It continues to impress throughout and there is never a dull moment. The idea of having a sidekick has also become a staple in the Half-Life 2 trilogy and it has continued in Episode 2. Alyn feels like a true partner due to not only being truly helpful (unlike the Arbiter) but also the amazing voice acting and character animation. The faces show true emotion and brings them to life. All in all it is a good middle for the Half-Life 2 trilogy. This isn’t some small addition to the game, it is as much a part of it as any moment in Half-Life 2. The plot moves on, the characters evolve, and we find out more information about what exactly is going on in this world."

Full Team Fortress 2 Review 

"It has been eleven years since Team Fortress was released as a fan made modification for Quake. A sequel was planned for Valve’s Half-Life engine and was eventually released as Team Fortress Classic, a heavily upgraded version of the original version. Ever since that time, fans have eagerly awaited a sequel. Since then the game has gone through several phases including a near finished build that had Team Fortress 2 as an extremely realistic modern war game. Delays, delays, and more delays caused the sequel, which was shown at E3 2000 with a planned release soon after, to be pushed back to 2007 with the style seen today. Usually when a game goes through such a gauntlet of delays it ends up coming out and becoming a huge failure. The graphics take a hit, the game play takes a hit, and the entire thing ends up as a disaster. Team Fortress 2 chose a different fate for itself, it seems. Coming bundled in the Orange Box it appears there is a new king of multiplayer first-person shooters. Complete with nine playable classes, Team Fortress 2 is one of the best multiplayer games to date. In a year seemingly filled with FPS games it had a large hill to climb. Halo 3 comes out in less then a week and Call of Duty 4 only a month or two after that. TF2 takes both of them and blows them into little gibs to be splattered on the wall."
 

Full Portal Review

"The crowning achievement of the Orange Box is the game Portal. Portal is a puzzle/first-person-shooter hybrid that believes that people want something different. The concept is a simple one: you are in a training facility testing a portal gun. The portal gun is something the world has never seen before. Unlike the similar feature in the earlier 360 title Prey, Portal puts the portal into your hands. There are two different features of the portal gun: orange and blue. Each shoots a hole in the wall that opens the door to the other. If you shoot a hole in the ground and the ceiling you step into the ground and fall out of the ceiling. If you shoot two holes next to each other, going into one portal brings you out of the other and you catch a glimpse of yourself entering it as you do. It’s crazy and takes some getting used to but it is also one of the most ingenious things to ever come into a video game."
 

The Orange Box games did not all earn a 10/10, but that is as a stand alone game. As a package this is the best gaming deal since the beginning and it is going to be a hard exercise to make one as good ever again.