I just don't see why you bring it up constantly. This thread has nothing to do with Halo.

I'm excited to get my hands on this thing though. Portal looks really cool. Dunno if I'll buy it or rent it though.

It's great but it's no 10 or even 9.8. I reject the premise that a bunch of very good games duct taped together is equivalent to a nearly perfect game. That said, all of the individual games deserve to score in the 90s. Maybe not the high 90s, but the 90s nevertheless.

Half Life 2 as well? Holy crap, this is definitely one of the first five games I'm buying when I finally get a 360. o_O

 I'm not really that familiar with Xbox franshises, so no, I don't know what Half-Life is. I've seen the game before.

@grandmaster192

It's a PC franchise.

Lol.

For those that don't know.....

Half Life is one of the most definitive PC FPS franchises, the most sold, and vastly eclipses virtually most every FPS made in the FPS genre.

The evolution of the PC FPS Genre has been:

Wolf 3d
Quake
Half Life
Everything else

It's basically the Halo of the PC FPS world..For starters.

The primary aspects of why it's such a great franchise is the attention to storyline. Unlike every FPS made up until that time, very few had major backstories, and if there were any, they were in the manuals, and not ingame. Half-Life did a great job of intergrating the storyline into gameplay, telling the twisted tale of one of the best sci-fi stories in the past 10 years.

Your basically at the epicentre of the end of mankind, and the plotline is interwoven around your actions ingame, and is just a great storyline (I spent about 2 nights reading the storyline, because I never really knew much about the HL series).

Also, the game focuses alot on puzzles, and platform-jumping as parts of skill, instead of just run-n-gun gaming (ie, Halo, Quake, Doom).

And finally, the biggest reason HL is the best PC FPS (and arguably the best ever): Counterstrike. CS is the reason we even have multiplayer for many games. CS paved the way for huge online server support, since so many people play it (and still do, nearly 10 years after it came out). Not only this, the source code is readily available, allowing players to heavily modify the Quake Engine gaming, allowing for millions of mods. CS has a Goldeneye mod, transforming Half Life into an online multi-play Goldeneye with 100% accuracy to the game (but much better graphics), as well as dozens of other huge mods.

So there you have it, Half Life is to PC FPS's as Final Fantasy is to RPGs, and Mario is to platformers.

Good info mrstickball. Though I am suprised anyone would not have at least heard of Half-Life.

Personally I love TFC far over CS. The class system, the great weaponry, and the fact that you didn't die after getting hit once through a box just makes my day. I was pretty...1337 back in the day (my name was PlagueOfLocust in the game too).

I'm really psyched about the Orange Box. Portals looks like a great little puzzler. A new episode of HL2 is always welcome. But TFC2 is the creme de la creme for me; just as I did for TFC, I'll be playing that for years and years to come.

I'd heard that there was an option to get these games without buying HL2 and E1... Heard it second-hand, though. I already have both of those, so I hope it's true.

Get it on PC if you can.  You won't get the mods on the 360 and the PC version will run smoother and have a much better framerate.  Every game in this package is amazing.  Portal is hilarious and brilliantly designed.  TF2 is one of the most incredible multiplayer games I've ever played.   Half-Life 2 is responsible for some of the most amazing innovations in the FPS genre and has the unbelievably awesome Gravity Gun.  It's also perhaps the deepest and best storyline in an FPS and easily one of the best stories of any game in history. 

Orange Box is a tremendous value. My friend picked it up last night and we spent 6 hours playing Team Fortress.

Metacritic score looks great -- hopefully, scores like this will inspire people on the fence to buy the game. I'm really curious about sales for this title, what with it being released so close to Halo.

And just a random factoid: if The Orange Box keeps up the pace and remains over 90 for Metacritic (it's at an astonishing 98 at the moment, so I'm not seeing this being a problem), the Xbox 360 will have more 90+ score Metacritic games than PS3, Wii, PSP, and Nintendo DS combined.