That's why we use gamerankings. They filter out innacurate reviews better, wheras Metacritic counts any review submitted to them. Gamerankings makes note of those reviews, but only counts ones that meet their criteria. On gamerankings the 360 currently has 7 games rated above a 9 if we don't count Castlevania: SotN. Which trust me you don't want to count because that would require we count Virtual Console titles...

The Wii has 3
The DS has 4
The PS3 has 1
The PSP has 1
The 360 has 7

So yeah, it's an impressive list, but it doesn't surpass them all combined.

 Yes, you can buy each game seperately.

HL2: Ep 2 costs $30...not bad for such a great game.
Portal costs $20...decent value for the amount of puzzles PLUS user created puzzles to come of course.
TF2 costs $30...worth it...TRUST ME...the amount of time you'll waste on this game...totally worth it.
HL2 costs $20, and HL2: Ep 1 costs $20.

The new games alone cost $80 all added up.  Well...what's a good way to save money...buy the Orange Box!  It's only 50 dollars!  And wait, they throw in HL2 and HL2: Ep 1 for FREE!

That's the best way to think about it...it really is a great value.  You'll be getting HL2 and HL2: Ep 1 again, but you can give them for free to any friend over Steam, Dolla Dolla's got dibs on mine...I'll give those to you tonight Dolla Dolla.

naz - it should be stated you'd have to have a decent ($1k+) PC rig to run HL2 in a comparable state to the X360 version....If not more of an investment.

I don't think so stickball. System recommendations:

Recommended:
Pentium 4 processor (3.0 GHz or better), 1 GB RAM, DirectX 9 compatible video card, Windows 2000/XP/Vista

You can get a PC with all that in it for $500. It's likely that most people here already have a PC with all that in it. If you have those recommendations it will run much smoother with a much better framerate than it does on a 360. Again, you will also have all the awesome mods available.

 Ah, ok. I was under the impression that a single boxed collection - just like the Orange Box, but minus HL2 and E1 - was being sold as well. But if that's not the case, clearly the Orange Box is a bargain. I'll want all 3 games, but like I said, TFC2 is the main draw for me (I definitely trust you on the time wasting thing... I played TFC1 for a ridiculous percentage of many years, haha.)

We'll have to play TFC2 together sometime.

The score for the game on Gameranking has actually now went up (very surprising at least to me). It used to be 98% (rounded down from 98.2%) but now it's 99% (rounded up from 98.6%). This has a very good chance of being the 360's top rated game this year, who would have thought?

Hmm... This game sounds pretty badass. I think I'm going to give it a shoy when it comes out for PS3 (If I wasn't stupid I'd just get it for my 360).

 You don't need to spend a whole $1,000. Still, the best thing about what Valve has done with the Source engine is that they've made it scaleable and that it will still look decent on lower settings compared to most games that lose their luster once you turn their graphics down. 

So 7 to 9 using Gamerankings, until you count Orange Box and then it's 8 to 9. So it doesn't surpass them all combined, it's one game short (with Castlevania SOTN removed), if you want to quibble.

And Gamerankings is hardly that different from Metacritic:

Metacritic currently lists 9 360 games at 90+, Gamerankings also has 9 (counting the Orange Box). The only differences: Castlevania SOTN (90.0 on Gamerankings, 89 on Metacritic) and Forza Motorsport 2 (89.8 on Gamerankings, 90 on Metacritic). The similarities continue after that, the next two games on Metacritic are RSV (89) and Burnout (89), same with Gamerankings (89.0 and 88.7 respectively). I'm not sure why you see some big fundamental difference between the two sites when mostly the difference seems to be rounding, and quite inconsequential.

$1000?? HL2 is very UNdemanding. I am not joking when I say you can buy a $400-$500 custom computer and be able to max out the settings on HL2.