I recently noticed a c-blog post by a fellow who goes by the name mcbennet. he observed the phenomenon of horrible video game box art. I would like to expand on that, starting with my comment on his entry:

"if you take a look at DVD covers you'll notice the same thing. covers are always plastered with pictures of the main characters. they want to say, "hey, look! it's a famous person!" i think game covers just copy off that. if you look at the promotional posters for movies, they often have awesome semi-minimalist designs, like those RE4 covers. then the actual box is just FACES OH BOY."

Take the Orange box, for instance. HL2 has the lambda symbol. Portal has the falling-into-portal figure. I'm not sure what TF2 has, but i'm sure they could think of something. Do they use those? Yes to Portal. But TF2 and HL2 have Freeman and Heavy Weapons Guy, two glaringly differently styled characters.