I wasn't sold on Orange box a month ago.  Even once the stellar reviews came out on it, I still wasn't sold. 

 

I had a buddy bring over a copy of The Orange Box to my house a few nights back.  We started on Portal at about 10pm or so.  It wasn't until 2:30 in the morning until we stopped, having completely melted our brains into an unrecognizable pile of mush bringing the game onto it's defeated knees.  I still wasn't sold on Orange Box.  While Portal was fun, intuitive, and revolutionary, I found the experience to be a bit short. 

 

I played Half-Life 2 on the original Xbox from start to finish and loved that experience.  The story was gripping, the action was fun, and the puzzles set before the player were always rewarding to finish.  I expected the same out of Episode One and Episode Two.  Unfortunately, my friend Nicon22 was being a self-centered "if I can't play this then I'll just take my game home so you can't play it" crybaby about the whole thing and wanted to go home at 3am.  Jerk.  Gamers play all night sir, sleep is for babies.

 

Before he left for the evening I did see him play about 5 minutes of Team Fortress 2.  Even by the end of the 5 minutes I was befuddled.  I had no idea what class did what, and what each class of character was capable of.  I wasn't too uppity on the graphics either.  I know, the graphics don't make the game.  But at the time I felt as if they weren't really helping anything.

 

I was wrong.  I couldn't have been more wrong about the entire game.  Long story short, I ended up purchasing the game for myself.  Happy 3 month early Birthday gift for me!  I sat down and forced myself to learn Team Fortress 2.  I joined a game with Nicon22 and Knuckles Dawson and loved every minute of it.  It's one of those rare games that even if you lose, it's still fun to play.  I've had my share of wins thus far, but I've had nearly the same amount of losses.  Team Fortress 2 has proved to be an extremely valuable game.  It's depth is far reaching, and the visual style applied to the game fits exactly how a class-based game should.  Listen to the developer commentary in TF2 before you make a judgement call on its graphical style.  It made me look at things just a little diffrently, and made me realize how wrong I was in judging it.  TF2 is a must buy. 

 

I just think it's one hell of a bonus that you get 4 extra games included.  I could rant and rave about those other 4 parts, but I know that if you go out and buy it, you won't need my opinion.  I'm curious as to what you thought of Orange Box.

Over the last few months I've been putting nearly all of my writing work into Xboxaddict.com.   I've been writing a monthly column entitled "Month in Review" which summarizes each month's happenings in the Xbox world, and carefully putting them all together in an easy-to-read format.  Head over to Xboxaddict.com and check it out.  Come November, I'll have a busy October to write about.