7 February 2007
Ferry

Half-Life 2: Episode Two delayed to end 2007, now comes with ugly boxart

EA and Valve, the award-winning studio behind the blockbuster franchises Half-Life and Counter-Strike, today announced the naming and product configurations The Black Box and The Orange Box, two of the most anticipated action game offerings shipping worldwide this Winter 2007.

The Black Box will ship for the PC, and includes Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2. The Orange Box will ship for the PC, PS3 & Xbox 360, and includes all the content of The Black Box, plus the original Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One.

Games included in The Black & Orange Box are:

* Half-Life 2: Episode Two — the second installment in Valve’s episodic trilogy advances the award-winning story, leading the player to new locations outside of City 17.
* Portal — a pioneering type of single player action game that rewrites the rules for how players approach and manipulate their environment – much like how Half-Life 2’s Gravity Gun reinvented the way gamers interact with objects in the game.
* Team Fortress 2 — an all-new version of the legendary title that spawned team based multiplayer action games. The game’s daring new art style features the most advanced graphics of any Source-based game released to date.

Half-Life 2 and its expansions are amazing games, so they will sell well regardless of how their boxes look. But this bland yet bright orange boxart seems more like a marketing trick to get people to notice it in stores, because everyone who likes the games will be buying them anyway. This is only the European boxart, so there’s hope for the rest of the world to get some artwork on theirs. — Via EA UK & GTR.

7 February 2007 15:58
Chris Redfield

ITS A BLACK BOX DON’T YOU SEE HOW CREATIVE VALVE IS GET IT A BLACK BOX I MEAN LOOK AT THE AMAZING ATTENTION TO DETAIL ITS CALLED BLACK BOX AND THE BOX IS BLACK AMAZING.

8 February 2007 11:07
Reeteshinator

What??? whats up with them? Maybe the delay is for the boxart remake or something

8 February 2007 11:09
Nate

That game was going to be how I was going to “constructively” use my time during the summer. S.O.B.

8 February 2007 11:52
Andy

There is absolutely no way that box art is going into production. That’s absolutely foolish. Some goon spent 30 seconds with photoshop because they’re POed at the release delay. Talk about gullible…

8 February 2007 12:01
Rick

Who cares about the box art? IF I were to buy it…I’d pull out the CD and throw the box away. What’s the big deal?

8 February 2007 13:43
Chris

Because some gamers still buy games based on the box and not the content.

When you are a serious gamer you dont care since you already know your going to buy the game anyways but for people who dont surf the web and are not eagerly awaiting a specific game then the art work is there to, at least, stimulate the buyer into picking up the box and checking it out.

It’s called MARKETING

8 February 2007 14:35
Jeremy

HAHAAH nice box art, but you know what? I use steam anyway. I never get a box. WHO CARES?

8 February 2007 16:06
Anonymous

OH NO THERE ISN’T A RENDERED GUY HOLDING A GUN ON THE COVER

Those new covers are actually a whole lot more stylish than the old ones. It’s too bad they’re obviously never going to be used.

8 February 2007 20:55
Taulin

Ultima7 had a black box, and it was pretty cool. Of course it stood for the black gate.

9 February 2007 07:54
Michael

Oh joy! Another 30 minute expansion.