[5] Through the Steam platform for the Windows version, the games can collect and report in-depth data such as where the player's character died, completion time, and total victories in multiplayer modes.

[7] These Achievements include killing a certain number of monsters, finding hidden weapon caches, or other tasks specific to each game.

While remaining similar in style to the original, Half-Life 2 introduces new concepts to the series such as physics-based puzzles and vehicle sections.

Freeman is thrust into a dystopian environment in which the aftermath of the events of Half-Life have come to bear fully upon human society, and he is forced to fight against increasingly unfavorable odds in order to survive.

In his struggle, he is joined by various acquaintances, including former Black Mesa colleagues, oppressed citizens of City 17, and the Vortigaunts, all of whom later prove to be valuable allies.

[15] Half-Life 2: Episode Two was first of three original new games included as a part of The Orange Box and focuses on expansive environments, travel, and less linear play.

In the game, Gordon Freeman and the series' other major characters move away from City 17 to the surrounding wilderness following the closing events of Episode One.

The game consists primarily of a series of puzzles, solved by creating portals which the player and simple objects can pass through in order to reach an exit point, under the supervision of an AI-programmed robot named GLaDOS.

[20][21] Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer team-based first-person shooter that was first available as part of The Orange Box as one of its three original new games.

[37] While Valve never expressed its reasons for this decision, industry writers speculated that it might have been to increase profits on retail copies or to avoid customer confusion between similar game packages and their availability across the platforms.

"[41] IGN's Hilary Goldstein disagreed, writing that although EA "is one of the worst offenders when it comes to porting games to the PS3," the frame rate issues were not bad enough "to make me throw my controller in disgust.

"[42] On January 3, 2008, IGN reported that Valve employees had created a thread on Valve's website forums for players to list the problems they had encountered and to suggest fixes,[43] which caused speculation that a patch was being planned to address the issues in the PlayStation 3 version, such as the frame rate issues, the connection problems in Team Fortress 2, and the slow loading times in Portal.

A patch for the PlayStation 3 version was later released in North America on March 19, 2008, and in Europe a short while after that; however, it made no mention of fixing frame rate issues or slow loading times.

[44] Valve deactivated accounts with CD keys that were purchased outside of the consumer's territory in order to maintain the integrity of region-specific licensing.

This generated complaints from North American customers who had circumvented their Steam end-user license agreement by purchasing The Orange Box through cheaper, Asian retailers.

[47] Doug Lombardi of Valve stated, "Some of these users have subsequently purchased a legal copy after realizing the issue and were having difficulty removing the illegitimate keys from their Steam accounts.

Additionally in Team Fortress 2, instead of body parts being scattered after a player's character is blown apart, various items such as hamburgers, coils, rubber ducks, and Chattery Teeth appear (known as "sillygibs" by the community).

It was released on December 21, 2007, and is sold by the official Valve Store, Amazon.com, and digital music services such as iTunes, Napster, and eMusic.

AllGame editor Mark Hoogland called The Orange Box "the gold standard for bundled (video) games".

[80] The Escapist's Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw stated in his Zero Punctuation review that he could not think of any criticism for Portal, saying that it had "some of the funniest pitch-black humor [he had] ever heard in a game" and concluded that it is "absolutely sublime from start to finish.

While discussing the retail version on a podcast, 1UP.com staff members agreed that a significant number of the frame rate problems had been resolved, but not all of them.

[88] While frame rate issues were the main complaint, the PlayStation 3 version was also criticized for unreliable voice chat and excessive network delay or lag in Team Fortress 2,[68][77][79] as well as long load times generally.

[99] The Orange Box was placed as the 22nd most influential video game in history by the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition, 2009.