I bought the Orange Box for my 360 the other day (birthday money), and if you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a package of five games from Valve – three Half-Life games, and a couple other games, one of them called Portal.

If you haven’t heard of Portal, it has an interesting game mechanic in that you have a gun that can make a portal to another place. A portal is made when you place both sides. Imagine a piece of paper that you cut a hole through. From one side, you see a hole – one side of the hole. Turn it over, and you see the opposite hole. The gun will allow you to create one side of a hole, then go to some other place and create the other side of the hole, and it doesn’t have to be in the same surface. This is a portal.

The game is fun. It’s not terribly violent. There are some interesting puzzles and tricks that are possible because of the portal gun. I like the game a lot.

One of the complaints about it that I’ve heard from other people is that it is quite short. And, really, it is quite short, compared to other retail games you see. I played through it in about seven or eight hours. I wasn’t really counting, so I’m not quite sure. Part of the reason I wasn’t counting is because I was never ever bored. And the best part of it being short is that I was able to finish it, and discovered the really cool end credit song that I really like and never would have heard if the game was forty hours long.

So, at $50, or $10 a game (well, $12.50 since I’ll likely never play team fortress 2 since you have to have a gold account to play, or more 360’s around to link with, and my wife won’t let me buy another one), I’d have to say that, at least, Portal was worth it’s share of the price.

And even if it’s the only game you play in the collection, where eight hours of entertainment at the movies would cost you at least $40, it’s very close to being worth buying the Orange Box for Portal alone, as long as you don’t mind short games.

One other thing about The Orange Box. I’ve heard Half-Life 2 is supposed to be a pretty good game, too 🙂