The wait is over

The Orange Box is finally here.
In almost three hours of Episode Two game time I have progressed into the fourth of seven chapters. Surprisingly first impressions did not blow me away as a little too much 0f it involved trawling through disappointing caves, the bland and uninteresting tunnels of stone that they are. But upon exiting these environments things quickly took off and I was inundated with superbly designed building and outdoor sections, and thankfully from what I can tell things seem to continue more towards the latter theme throughout the remainder of the game.
Enemy design has been a bit hit and miss with the Antlions getting some new family members that it could have done without, adding even more heartache to the already depressing early sections. But opposing them are the Combine Hunters, brilliantly designed, extremely intimidating and all round fun to fight, these are an enemy type I will look forward to seeing more of.
I was delightfully unsurprised to see that the Source engine had been pushed forwards once again. The new blood spray is acceptable, but the fire effects are simply amazing, along with the scenery and buildings exploding and tearing apart into a ridiculous number of pieces along the way, it's all a very impressive visual treat.

Although as much as I love Half-Life, most of my day has been spent playing Portal. The immediate attraction of the institution being very much like the Dharma Initiative and the film Cube are exquisitely consistent throughout, providing a genuinely chilling experience not often found in videogames. Unfortunately the game is desperately short and almost painfully easy, but both of these detrimental points are utterly balanced out with the Bonus Maps.
The Bonus Maps are not actually any entirely original content, but instead takes six of the best test chambers from the main game and adds extenuating circumstances to increase the difficulty. Currently it consists of two game modes, first being the Advanced Chambers, which take the test chambers and simply modify them to make them as difficult as possible while still being achievable. I have completed four of the six chambers on this mode with relative ease, yet two have utterly confounded me with no clear method to progress. The second mode is the Challenge mode, in which most of the time will be spent wracking your brain to come up with the most ingenious methods to overcome the obstacles present. Each area has portal and footstep modes, in which you try to navigate the chamber using the least amount of portals or taking the last amount of steps, and time trail where you must reach the goal as fast as possible. Within each challenge you receive gold, silver and bronze achievements, and are in no way easy, with the first chamber alone requiring you to create no more than four portals to claim the gold medal.
Each area is very cleverly designed and leaves you with an immense sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when you clear them with the harder restrictions. Bragging rights would be earned like never before for any such person to collect three gold completions on every map, but it is a shame that undoubtedly walkthroughs and guide videos will be appearing all over the internet before you can clap your hands at a job well done.
Interestingly it seems the game has been designed to accept additional downloaded maps in a very trouble free manner, encouraging the modding community to start creating their own challenges and puzzles, which will lengthen the longevity, originality and diversity of the game to no measurable end.

Of course the Orange Box also includes Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One, the latter two being released a long time ago and my impressions of the foremost already having been recorded.
I can scarcely imagine the epic proportions of gaming the Orange Box will be providing to all of the lucky people intelligent enough to buy it while having never touched a Steam product in their lives. Truly and unquestionably this is the purchase of the year.