Half-Life 2: The Orange Box (PC DVD) (Video Game)

For God's sake - just buy it! I made the naive mistake of not buying this, thinking "Half-Life 2 might not be so great and I may not want the episode packs; Team Fortress 2 looks silly and Portal looks weird. I'll just buy HL2 and save money." Well, two months on and I'm sorely regretting not buying this because I have since bought EVERY game individually, and regard each one as one of my all-time favourites. Half-Life 2 (and particularly the episodes) are beyond explosive and it's very playable despite the age. I never once felt the game was 'dated', due in part to Steam still updating their older games - I was impressed to see HL2 making use of my 64-bit processor, which is more than many brand new games do. Oh, and Team Fortress 2 is the *only* multiplayer game most of you will ever need. It's as fun as it is addictive. Do not knock Steam: as well as allowing you to play your games without inserting the DVD, Steam automatically patches and updates your games. It is an absolute lifesaver and I now buy all my games over it. If you're a big online gamer and don't already have Counterstrike, and feel that TF2 may not be enough to satisfy you, consider buying the Source Premier Pack over Steam instead. It includes the Orange Box in the price, but throws in a bunch of Source games too.

A MUST BUY GAME you get 3 games. team fortress 2 is a brillaint FPS game. the best i have played. portal a first person puzzle game like nothing else i have played. very absorbing. Half Life was O.K, not as good a previous games, but enjoyable. brilliant value for money.

Total and utter waste of time. Is Half Life 2 any good? Who knows. If you're as unfortunate as me you'll never get to the stage where you can actually -play- the game. I brought Half Life 2 by itself, and it took three hours to get it installed - not because my PC is slow or anything like that - but because the installer hadn't been tested properly, and doesn't work very well; saying files don't exist when they blatantly do. Once you're past that, you need to register on steam before you can even play offline. After that, you need to unlock your game before you can play it. At this point, if you're like me you'll be wondering what the hell the point of all this nonsense is. While you're pondering, the unlocking procedure will sieze up at around 33%. You can stare at it as long as you like, it won't move. Eventually I uninstall the game, re-install it, oh look. Back to square-sodding-one. Do yourself a favour and don't waste your money.

Great Deal! Your getting a great deal if your buying from here rather than on Steam! Cost on Steam = $46.99 = £26.79 Amazon = £24.98 (and you get a lovely Dvd case too, isn't that nice?) (written on 09 SEP 2008)

Orange Box of Doom!! OK. I admit that the title is a little over the top, but I hope you can appreciate my frustration. I bought "Orange Box" for the PC, at Tesco for £15. Now I read on the back that you would have to go online to certify the game, and whilst the machine I use isn't online, it wouldn't be an issue. I installed the "Steam" software, and expected to install the game from the DVDs supplied. I entered my license number and waited for the installation to begin from the DVDs. Instead I'm told that the games will be downloaded from the internet, and this will take 2 days. Aside from the fact that I don't want or need this machine to be online, I can't even install the games directly off the disks supplied. I checked on the internet and found quite a few people with the same problem. The reply from everyone was the same: Not how to install off the disks, but you should get faster broadband. Why? When I have the media already? Whilst a few people seem to have positive things to say about "Steam", and whilst I do appreciate the need for security and copy protection, this seems an incredibly heavy-handed approach and has successfully alienated a lot of people. I will endevour to return this, but hold no hopes as it has been registered.