Game title: "The Orange Box"

Platform: PC and Xbox 360

Studio: Valve

Rated: T-M, Teen to Mature for blood and gore, intense violence, language

Score: 10 out of 10

THE REVIEW:

"The Orange Box" title can be a bit confusing to the uninitiated, but this collection of five games is a legitimate contender for the game (games?) of the year. Depending on your perspective, it can be viewed as a rerelease of mostly old material for maximum price or a wealth of great material for the price of a single game.

The new material here are three games, "Half-Life 2: Episode Two," "Team Fortress 2" and "Portal." For some, the recycled material will be "Half-Life 2" and "Half-Life 2: Episode One."

The PC games in the "Half-Life" family were all uniformly excellent. Protagonist Gordon Freeman's world of post-invasion battles against aliens and greedy corporations in the game series are strong on plot while maintaining nail-biting action in a first-person shooter with strong and scary horror elements thrown in.

The games were produced by Valve, a small studio with a handful of releases under its belt. "Half-Life 2" found its way to the Xbox and was a mild commercial success and a first-rate port. Later Valve released an enthusiastically embraced update on the PC, "Half-Life 2: Episode One." With the computing power of the Xbox 360 and its comparability to the PC allowed Valve to release "Half-Life 2: Episode Two" on both formats.

In a marketing stroke that is looking rather brilliant, the smallish developer released all three installments of "Half-Life 2" and threw in two other games that alone would be short on content but together present a strong five-game collection for the price of a regular game.

PC Half-lifers who have paid for each installment might feel a little ripped to pay full price for limited content, while those console gamers who haven't experienced the series before and are diving in on the 360 will have more games than they can shake a wireless controller at.

The good news for the PC crowd is that the inclusion of "Team Fortress 2" and "Portal" more than make up for the retread here.

GAME PLAY:

"Half-Life 2" "Half-Life 2: Episode One" "Half-Life 2: Episode Two": All three "Half-Life" installments are uniformly excellent first-person shooters. Gordon Freeman and his cast are trying to survive a bleak future with the help of innovative game-play guns. Included are puzzles and a variety of survival situations. One of the three parts is new material, but all are smart, emotionally engaging shooting games. The only criticism can be that sometimes it isn't obvious where a player should go next.