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Half Life 2: The Orange Box - Team Fortress 2 and Portal

Another title that has been getting a fair bit of attention, mainly based on the hilarious videos, is Team Fortress 2. After nine years in development, including a complete redesign, a lot of people are expecting a lot from this game. While the multiplayer wasn't enabled on the console (who would I play against?), I've been playing the PC beta recently, so can offer a good objective comparison between the two.

Firstly, as with the controls of HL2, TF2 works fine with a game pad and, dare I say it, the layout of the buttons actually makes the interface a bit more intuitive. Of course in a deathmatch situation, I'd pick my PC every time, but I would be more than happy to play the console game on a regular basis.

The graphics are every bit as good as the PC as well, the cel shaded world looking every bit as stunning as one would hope, framerates are smooth which is important in a multiplayer game and I fully expect TF2 to become stalwart of Xbox Live gaming, along side Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4.

Portal

The last game in the bundle, Portal, is perhaps the most interesting though. While all the other titles are great improvements upon the previous versions of their respective series, Portal is something else entirely and brings a radically different, yet equally brilliant, style of gameplay to the Half Life universe.

Based in the Aperture Science Laboratories, your play an unknown female protagonist, testing the latest Aperture Science Hand-held Portal Device. The portal gun bring with it a whole new innovative raft of puzzle solving and logical thinking challenges, whereby you are placed in ever more complicated situations requiring increasingly complicated and elaborate use of portals in order to progress, manipulating either oneself or other objects to achieve the desired outcome.

The whole experience is delivered with a lashing of humour, with warnings telling us that 'failure in this challenge could result in unfortunate disabilities, such as disintegration' which only adds to the confusion you have as to why you are here and just what you are ultimately doing.

Of course even if I had been able to decipher any plot details, I couldn't divulge them, but after 20 minutes of pure, unadulterated fun, I was as in the dark as ever, not to mention convinced that I could get to the next floor much more efficiently by throwing a portal onto the ground while opening the exit in the ceiling of the room above through the open window.

The Xbox 360 version will be available on the 19th of October and you have no excuse whatsoever for not buying it .

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