Well, I bought The Orange Box about 3 days ago. The only thing I have done so far is play Team Fortress 2, so I thought that is was time I finish the newest chapter in Gordon Freeman's crazy adventure.

Overall this was a good game. It definitely has replay value, for me at least, because I know I can sit down and beat it within 1 sitting. Now although I find the "episode" style of releasing games a unique one, Valve needs to learn that when doing that, you are expected to release the game faster. The point of episodic games is for them to be shorter, but come out faster. Valve totally missed that.

This game is very Linear, "Go here, go there, do this, do that." But, that is the style of Half Life and I personally don't mind a linear game when it is executed beautify, as it is in this game. This game will always have you wanting to get to the next chapter. I was always on the edge of my seat and the random patches of music that start up during certain scenes just pumped me up like no other, I have never felt more "Steven Seagull" than when the music starts up during the Ant Lion attack when protecting Alex.

I have heard that each episode will "show off" a certain aspect of what the Source Engine can do. Episode 1 was meant to be the facial animations and Episode 2 was meant to be how it could handle large environments. I clearly saw bigger areas in this episode verses Ep. 1 or the original Half Life 2. I don't have a super high end PC but I do have 3 gigs of ram and a decent video card and I never experienced any type of lag when the game automatically picked my settings (I didn't mess with them after it picked them). The game handles the environments very well and there are some breath taking shots of the world around you, I might have to do a short picture collection sometime to show off what I loved so much.

thoughts. This game is a great day waster if you have nothing to do, you will beat it in that sitting and feel as though you want the last episode but are not willing to kill people to get it. I think this episode was better than ep. 1 but I still would rather play the original Half Life 2 over this if I had the chance. I say for the $50 US Dollars, get The Orange Box. It is a deal that no other game has been able to match and Episode 2 was a great, beautiful, and needed episode in the Half Life series.