The Orange Box gets a much needed makeover

The first one was much cooler - nice, plain, simple and effective. That looks like a 12 year old messing around with Photoshop.

Who the eff cares what the box looks like? Are you one of those kids who plays with the box and not the contents?

I think they should just have made it orange with NOTHING on it. Plain,simple, classic. You would ask yourself "How much orange could it be?" And the answer would be none; None more orange.

Why is there no xbox live logo in the heading? Are they not supporting live or did they make a mistake. But if they are not supporting live then why have team forrtress 2 ,a multiplayer only game.

uh..go back to the first one please. that looks like shit.

They should have had the HL2 guy jumping down a portal with one of Fortress' giant machine guns in his hands.

@#2

Exactly. I was expecting nothing more than the HL2 logo on an orange background.

Yeah, the first one was A LOT better. This is just plain BAD DESIGN. I'll qualify that assertion as I make my living as a designer.

**VALVE: PLEASE GO BACK TO THE ORIGINAL DESIGN. IT WAS AWESOME.

honestly, it doesn't matter either way as long as the game is great.

having said that... are you SERIOUSLY saying that the old one looked better? W T F ...

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/all/boxshots2/934384_77850.jpg

Well, why not just have the HL-2 Logo and a orange background. thats all it needs..

needless to say this is going to be bloody awesomo! Sasha FTW

Now, if it had the logo, on an orange background, on a metal case, it would completely rock!

yes, they both suck! Half Life 2 logo, Portal logo and Team Fortress logo on an orange background would look MUCH better.

or just a simple valve logo on an orange background. hell, they should change the whole box from green to orange, go all out.

This should be a cool buy, but Halo 3 will own it easily.

Come to think of it, this cover now looks like one of those lame PS2 Jampack covers...
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/jampackwinter2002/index.html

Mentioned in the previous article, this is by far the best designed box art. Too bad they can't just use this.

http://www.vgboxart.com/view/6080/half-life.2.orange.box/

Why are they still calling this "The Orange Box" if "The Black Box" was canceled?

I think just an Orange box, with the HL2 logo on it in black, with MAYBE a picture of Gordon underneath it

This cover art isn't really much better than the last, but that's probably becuase of how hard it is to make cover art for this game. It's also important so that Halo Fanboys or other semi casual gamer who've never heard of Half Life 2 understand what an insanley good deal this game is. I mean, they can't just put Half Life 2 on the front, because it also includes two extra episdoes. They also would be leaving out it's totally differnt than half life 2 multiplayer component, Team Fortress 2. And don't forget portal, the most inovative looking piece of this package.

This cover art isn't really much better than the last, but that's probably becuase of how hard it is to make cover art for this game. It's also important so that Halo Fanboys or other semi casual gamer who've never heard of Half Life 2 understand what an insanley good deal this game is. I mean, they can't just put Half Life 2 on the front, because it also includes two extra episdoes. They also would be leaving out it's totally differnt than half life 2 multiplayer component, Team Fortress 2. And don't forget portal, the most inovative looking piece of this package.

@ Leather face:

"1. The first one was much cooler - nice, plain, simple and effective. That looks like a 12 year old messing around with Photoshop."

Admittedly this one isn't great by any means but if you use the annalogy of a 12 year old messing around on photoshop for this new box then the old box was created by a 12 year old messing around on microsoft word, experimenting to see if he could create a picture without using his hands, the resulting image created from a combination of head banging against the keyboard and occasional nudges of the mouse with his torso.

@ Rick:

"7. Yeah, the first one was A LOT better. This is just plain BAD DESIGN. I'll qualify that assertion as I make my living as a designer."

Admittedly this IS a "BAD DESIGN" but it is by no means worse than the other one. And to say that "I'll qualify that assertion as I make my living as a designer" only leads me to think that your employers need to have a serious re-think about their team of designers....

The thing that is really in now is just a neat logo and a cool background design. Oblivion did that, Gears of War should have done that (the cover looked too much like Halo's) and basically every other ext-gen title should do that. It's the in thing to do with game box design.

The first one was perhaps a bit boring, but this one is just too ugly to be official - and why they would make Episode Two the headlining game is beyond me.

Also, if you look closely (I took it into photoshop and zoomed it) the anti-aliasing in the 'teamxbox' text at the bottom is identical to that of the the big game titles.

The jpeg artifacts around the text is also the same, which shouldn't be the case if valve sent them the cover and then they slapped their name on it.

FAKE!

agreed: this looks really amateur, almost 'fake' as someone mentioned. The original had a cool, almost eerie "City 17 sinage" feel to it. Much better.

If they're compelled to use 'artwork' it should just be the lambda with no text whatsoever - why does it HAVE to list all the games on the front?!?!

they should have a black background, orange text. no picture. TEH EXTREMEZ0RZ

I liked the first design better.

Way to make sucky box art, Valve.

mcdeath ob, just for the record, the only version of the box art I had seen until now was a simple orange face with a texture on it, with no text. That's what I'd prefer to see over this new version. No reason to be a dick about it, but knock yourself out if you need to.

That's some really bad artwork/design. It's a shame too, because Valve is usually pretty good with that kind of stuff. An orange box with three logos on it in black, that's all it should be.