The Orange Box Final DVD Case Art, Half-Life 2: Episode Two Preview

Last February, we reported the image of what was sadly believed to be the final box art for Valve's upcoming compilation title, The Orange Box. Needless to say, that box art sucked, and even though I don't rightly care much about Valve's lackluster products these days (sorry fan boys, but Valve isn't overly impressive anymore), I'm happy to say that the box art has been redesigned.

Pictured here, taken from TeamXbox, is the final Xbox 360 box art for The Orange Box. Now this, at least, looks like a proper game case.

TeamXbox also has a preview up of Half-Life 2: Episode Two, which you can check out here, and there are also several nice new screenshots in their gallery here.

The preview assumes that most of it's readers are console gamers and have not been able to experience Half-Life 2: Episode One, so they quickly sum that up (Spoiler Alert) and then discuss what's been revealed about the story for Half-Life 2: Episode Two as well as what we can expect from several gameplay scenarios.

They also discuss the upcoming Half-Life 2: Episode Three with Valve, and how that'll be released to the Xbox 360. Basically, Valve is in talks with Microsoft to have it released over Xbox Live (which is what I always figured they'd do), and they may also release another The Orange Box-styled compilation to retail containing all the Half-Life 2 episodes.

For me, Half-Life 2 was a good game, I own the Xbox version and have played the PC version, but it was not the second coming of Christ everyone in PC-Land said it was, and in almost all respects its Single Player Campaign sorely paled in comparison to Halo 2's.

At the very least, I will be renting The Orange Box, as I want to see where the story goes and if Valve's learned how to actually story-tell now (again, sorry Fan Boys, but Half-Life 2 didn't have much of a story; it was an immersive experience of a bunch of stuff that happened), but I don't expect I'll rush out and buy it, especially because there'll be so many superior Single Player games being released around the same time frame (Halo 3, and possibly Mass Effect).