The Orange Box

The Orange Box is an unbeatable offer for 2007 – a single bundle containing Half-Life 2, both episodes Episode One and Episode Two, the puzzle newcomer Portal, and the team shooter Team Fortress 2, essentially the entirety of Valve's lineup at the time built on the Source engine. It was created as a way to offer customers a complete experience for the price of a single game, and thanks to it, Portal and Team Fortress 2 became globally known brands practically overnight, even though within the bundle they originally acted more as a bonus add-on to the Half-Life 2 sequels – the wisecracking robotic system GLaDOS and the line about the cake being a lie became part of gaming pop culture for years to come. Both Half-Life 2 episodes were also a demonstration of the episodic release model Valve was experimenting with at the time, an approach it later abandoned after cancelling the planned Episode Three.

The PC version came out first, in October 2007, simultaneously on physical disc and digitally via Steam, and is still considered the reference version of the bundle to this day. It runs more smoothly than later console ports, offers higher resolution and more detailed textures, and above all supports mouse and keyboard, which the Source engine was designed for from the start – this showed especially in the team shooter Team Fortress 2, where precise aiming plays a key role and the competitive scene still takes place almost exclusively on computers to this day. The bundle also earned a number of Game of the Year awards from gaming media for 2007.

The PC version was also the only one that automatically received all later Team Fortress 2 updates and expansions in real time via Steam, including new weapons, maps, and game modes added over the following decade. While the console versions on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 released later and had to work around the technical limitations of their platform, the PC version had no such limitations and became the only variant of the bundle to grow from a closed, compiled title into a living, evolving platform for two separate, long-term popular games.

Why play it: For players who want Team Fortress 2 in its living form – only the PC version automatically received the later updates, weapons, maps, and modes added via Steam over the following decade.