Team Fortress 2

Just as on PlayStation 3, Team Fortress 2 also arrived on Xbox 360 in October 2007, again as part of The Orange Box bundle alongside Half-Life 2: Episode Two and the puzzle game Portal. The nine classes with distinct tactical roles, from the fast Scout to the slow but tough Heavy, along with the stylized comic-book visuals, remained the same as in the PC version.

The Xbox 360 version was technically somewhat more stable than the simultaneous PS3 release in the same collection - it had shorter loading times between matches and a smoother frame rate in action, though it still noticeably lagged behind the more powerful PC of the time. Multiplayer ran through Xbox Live instead of Steam and the PC version's servers, which meant the console player community was completely separate from PC players and could never face them together in the same match. The set of maps, classes, and game modes available at launch matched what the PC and PS3 versions offered in October 2007, including the Capture the Flag and Control Points modes, and just as on PS3, players learned the role of each of the nine classes individually through menus and a simple tutorial.

As with the PS3 version, Valve stopped actively developing the Xbox 360 version after release - all the later free updates, dozens of new weapons, hats, maps, and repeated class balance changes that over the years turned Team Fortress 2 on PC into a completely different, much more extensive game, never appeared on the console. The Xbox 360 release thus remained forever frozen in its 2007 state, while the PC version became one of the longest and most generously supported online games ever. Players who got to know Team Fortress 2 specifically on Xbox 360 through The Orange Box therefore experienced only the original, considerably barer form of the game, without hats, the item marketplace, and the countless later weapons that made the PC version famous worldwide over the years.

Why play it: For players curious what Team Fortress 2 looked like in 2007, the console version offers a frozen, barer form of the game without hats and the hundreds of later weapons that never appeared on the console.