half-life-orange-box_1 games features Virgin Media
Prepare yourself for possibly the best-value video game bargain of all time: the Half-Life universe has got even greater with the release of The Orange Box compilation pack, which crams in the blockbusting Half-Life 2, bonus Episodes One and Two and hi-tech spin-off The Lost Coast.
On top of that you get the frenetic multiplayer bash Team Fortress 2 and puzzler epic Portal. If you’ve yet to uncover the joys of the Half-Life universe, now is the perfect time to get stuck in. Here’s everything you need to know – and five reasons why Half-Life remains the greatest gaming saga of them all...
Getting started
The Orange Box is available for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, but gaming purists should veer towards the PC version – the format that works best for first-person-shooter games like this – and should also use this as an excuse to update their computer. The Half-Life games need, and deserve, a top-notch graphics card and fast processor. Best of all, convince yourself to go out and buy a whole new machine. Make sure it’s one designed to do justice to games, like the Alienware M9750, an all-conquering new gaming laptop that runs even Half-Life’s most chaotic moments with stunning graphical clarity and is the sort of computer gamers should be looking towards; settle for something less than this calibre and you’ll be missing out.
The story so far...
Gordon Freeman is the goatee-bearing hero you play in Half-Life, a young scientist who gets posted to a creepy research facility in the New Mexico desert. Things get ugly when a major experiment goes wrong, dragging aliens from another dimension into the picture. Naturally, they run riot and kill just about everyone, leaving Gordon needing to escape from the bowels of the lab with his life as all hell breaks loose around him.
Half-Life 2 is set 20 years after the first game and sees Gordon on the road, travelling around the sinister totalitarian citadel of City 17, tearing around the countryside in a jeep, enduring a night-time seige in the terrifying town of Ravenholm, and finally battling enemies in a giant tower.
Episodes One and Two pick up straight after this, throwing the spotlight on Gordon’s freedom-fighting friend Alyx, who accompanies him through much of the action.
