A collection of five total, the first two games in the Orange Box bundle include the original, award winning masterpiece Half-Life 2, first released on PC in late 2004 to great acclaim if not Game of the Year accolades. Half-Life 2 was also released a year later for the original Xbox to similar acclaim, though the game lost something in the translation to the relatively wimpy console. Regardless, it's now here again for Xbox 360, strutting its stuff anew and up to speed with the Xbox 360's processing mojo; a brilliant masterpiece of a shooter with lots of fantastic sci-fi shooter mayhem balanced with oft-unrequited tension -- and some frantic driving sequences -- all wrapped up in tantalizing cerebralisms... cerebralisticness... uh, brain stuff in the form of cool puzzles aplenty, mostly involving judicious use of the famed "gravity gun," which allows you to pick up and move nearly many objects of massive or minute proportions in the build-you-own escape route sort of way.

Almost worth the price of admission right there. However, there's more, of course.

The Orange Box also includes Half-Life 2: Episode One, originally released as a PC game last year and showing up on Xbox 360 for the first time in. The naming convention can be a little confusing, but Episode One is a sequel of sorts to the original Half-Life 2 (itself a sequel to the original Half-Life, naturally), but only part of a sequel, more of a chapter in the continuing Half-Life saga that equates to roughly one third of a game.

So it follows that Half-Life 2 Episode Two is also included in the Orange Box; the next next chapter in the sort-of-sequel to the Half-Life 2 master-saga; another third of a game never before seen on PC or Xbox 360. An boy howdy, is it good to see. Kind of reminds you of what compelling story telling and sharply acted dialog can do to the otherwise typical shooter/puzzle-solver genre; of why this franchise is the benchmark. Looks great, plays great (albeit short), explosively cathartic at times, frightfully harrowing at others, and ultimately leaves you yearning for Episode Three, which won't be released for another year or so.

Fortunately, there's more to keep you going until then. Much more.

Also brand new within the Orange Box bundle is Portal. Dubbed a "first-person puzzler," Portal has a similar look and feel to the Half-Life 2 games, yet doesn't involve shooting at all. Your weapon is, basically, a gun that rips holes in the fabric of space and time, creating portals, which are holes in the wall leading to new worlds or the next room, which usually need to be connected to the previous world/room so that puzzle elements, like boxes or ball lightening, can be used to help get you to the next world, room or properly place portal aperture to carry on. That may sound tedious on paper, but the difficulty level is on a constant upswing, culminating in an epic finale that's ornerier and more lengthy than all the levels before it combined. The comedic element provided by your computer guide, meanwhile, is consistently engaging if not downright hilarious.

Arguably, Portal could be a game unto itself, and probably an awarding-winning one at that. Indeed, it's available on PC as a lone download via Valve's Steam service for a scant $20 -- well worth it -- but including portal within The Orange Box bundle is yet another charge in the bang-for-you-buck value.

Speaking of bang, the final inclusion in The Orange Box is yet another masterpiece: the long (10 years!) awaited Team Fortress 2, which is something of a throwback to old school shooters, focused on multiplayer mayhem and the balancing of solider types (engineers, scouts, medics, snipers, etc.) in grand scale, excessively explosive battles within deceptively confining areas (or "maps"). Team Fortress 2 encompasses all that is good about online shooters today; addictive play, clever level design that rewards the sly and the studious as much as the players with mad mouse skills, and wildly varying skirmishes entirely dependant on the dynamic of the groups of real people playing it any given moment. Throw in a couple of unique elements and you've got a brand new instant classic (again?). That is, Team Fortress 2 has more artistic merit than most of its ilk, provided primarily through the slick, computer-generated cartoon visuals -- not to mention the slapstick humor that only cartoons and cartoon rocket launcher caricatures can provide.

Again, that's just one of five games offered in The Orange Box, a part of a sum total offering that breaks all sorts of game industry conventions. It might be a stretch to call each game in the Orange Box package "perfect," but they all come close in their own way. You can call it the perfect bundle, however, as there's nothing like it, no bigger a box of gaming greatness, smooth running, glitch free, polished, varied... all those good and often elusive elements that can make one game stand out in a crowd. The Orange Box is five such games for the price of one. Though two of them are "re-releases," The Orange Box simply shouldn't cost a scant fifty of sixty bucks, yet it does. Amazing. Buy it.

TIP: In the 360 version of Portal, press Down, B, A, B, Y, Down, B, A, B, Y during gameplay to create a box.