Orange Box and more keep the Xbox hits coming

Wii might be scooping up all the sales, but the game lineup for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is just as strong as for Nintendo’s fun little console. And not just because of Halo 3: Games for every kind of player surface this month. Here’s what we’ve been playing.

The Orange Box
Valve’s The Orange Box, for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, is crammed to the gills with value. There’s so much content that I couldn’t devote more than a few hours to each of the three games in the box.

Storytelling is the strength of Half-Life 2, a critically acclaimed shooter originally released in 2004 and making its debut on Xbox and PS3 in this collection.

From the opening moments, when you step off a train into the grip of a prison city controlled by an Orwellian dictator, Half-Life 2 builds its world and characters in a realistic, subtle fashion that makes most other game narratives seem ham-fisted. It doesn’t hurt that the shooting action is also excellent, or that the package is completed with physics-based puzzles (stacking up bricks on a seesaw so the other half supports your weight, for example).

I sank even more time into Portal, a brilliant experiment in game design included in The Orange Box. In this first-person puzzle game, you get from place to place by creating portals that warp the fabric of space and time.

Retraining your brain to think outside the boundaries of physical space is a fascinating and often challenging concept, supported by a hilarious comedic story line.

If it’s multiplayer action you’re after, Team Fortress 2 is where you’ll spend the most time. Like most squad-based online games, your team has to take over the enemy’s base or capture their flag. But here, you can choose from nine totally different character types every time you respawn.

Do you want to lug around a massive gun and blow away the opposition? Fine. But you can also be a battlefield medic, healing your friends. Or (my personal favorite) become a spy, don the enemy’s colors and infiltrate their base without them even knowing.