Which system? Thinking of Xbox

[Savor Dam]

No, you may have been right about GTA. My sister was incensed that we allowed Herbie to get GTA, and I admit to not being comfortable with some of the content I've seen...but I am a Luddite about video games to begin with.

[CovenantJr]

So...
...just what is The Orange Box?
And is it available for the Wii or PS3?

The Orange Box is a collection of three games (plus some pseudo-sequel bits for one of them) that were all made by the same company, Valve. It's available for PS3, PC and Xbox 360. The games are: Half Life 2 (shooty fighty thing), Portal (solving movement puzzles using a device that creates portals), and Team Fortress 2 (an online-only team shooty thing). It also contains Half Life 2 Episodes 1 & 2, both of which follow on from the main Half Life 2 game, though they're shorter than a full game.

Personally I'm indifferent to Team Fortress 2 (though it has a fairly dedicated following), I think Half Life 2 is good but quite difficult (loads of people really love this game), and Portal is brilliant but a little short. As I said before, I think Portal alone is worth the price of the whole package.

You can read a more detailed and semi-professional review here, though really the one-sentence summary at the top of that page says it all.

[Menolly]

Thanks Cj.
Is it available new?
Or would it be found mostly as a used game?

[CovenantJr]

It should be fairly readily available new. To get an idea of price I checked Amazon US, but they seem to be selling it for a stupidly high price. Amazon UK sells it for about £15 (around $22). Mysterious.

I seldom buy games new anyway. It makes very little difference to the quality of the product most of the time, and they can cost as little as a quarter of the new price.

[Avatar]

GTA rocks. One of my favourite series. In fact, GTAIV will be my next game purchase.

But I'm a confirmed PC gamer...I did play through Assassin's Creed on my cousin's Xbox though, and it was a great game. I'd rather have the PC version myself.

--A

[The Dreaming]

I wouldn't buy GTA for a child, but this is a 19-year-old we are talking about, I think she can handle it.

The Xbox 360 isn't what I would consider a "girl's" system, most of the best games are pretty much of the classic oily basement troll fist pumping variety (Halo, Gears of War, Blue Dragon) And a lot of the best games I have on PC or PS3. (Like Bioshock, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Oblivion)

Don't listen to the "controversy", there is nothing in GTA really much worse than a Tarentino film.

Portal might be the single greatest puzzle game ever made (part of the Orange Box). Team Fortress 2 is one of the most fun Multiplayer shooters I have ever played. Half Life two is a modern Classic, redefining 1st person storytelling forever.

Here's a list of Gamespot's reviews of X360 games organized by score.

www.gamespot.com/reviews.html?type=revi ... ficial=all

You probably cant go wrong with any of the first 30 or so entries on this list. (Though I would avoid fighting games, they are kind of for the hardcore only)

[JazFusion]

It really depends upon what she wants out of a console. Is it just to play games? Does she care about graphics? Gaming online? The next-gen consoles (360 and PS3) are really so much more than just gaming machines.

You'll find a lot of PS3 vs. 360 debates out there. I found this article to be helpful: www.hardcoreware.net/playstation-3-vs-x ... ars-later/

If you want my honest opinion, I'd say get a 360. But I'm a Microsoft girl.

P.S. GTA 4 was an amazing game. It had so much more soul than the previous titles, IMHO.

[CovenantJr]

I never really took to any of the GTAs after GTA2. I didn't play 3, but I thought Vice City was mediocre and San Andreas was awful (I'm not sure I could explain why; I just didn't enjoy playing it). I might try GTA4 at some point. Hmm.

[matrixman]

Personally, as far as the virtual drug dealers etc stuff goes, I think that the negative influences or whatever one might find in the world of gaming are ubiquitous enough in the real world that blocking someone off from games isn't really the issue. You'd have to isolate your kid from other kids to do that, or pray that all other parents are also isolating their kids from most forms of modern media. It's more about games "pulling you in" and spending too much time on them while spending not enough time on anything else.

At least to me, the situations in which games play a major part in encouraging non-virtual harmful behavior are pretty rare, and there usually seem to be a number of surrounding circumstances that are far more important than the presence of violent games.

Well said. It's easy to lay blame on video games as the blanket cause of every kind of anti-social behavior in kids today - just as comic books were made the scapegoat back in the Fifties.

I Have a PS2 still.. I rarely use it... my best gaming experience is by using a mouse and keyboard on my Imac/PC

Same here. A couple of years ago I bought a PS2 from a colleague when he upgraded. But after the initial thrill, the unit has just sat in storage. (However, it was a good CD/DVD player - indeed, in some ways better than my old DVD deck. So the PS2 remains a good standby machine for those purposes.)

[Rigel]

I never really took to any of the GTAs after GTA2. I didn't play 3, but I thought Vice City was mediocre and San Andreas was awful (I'm not sure I could explain why; I just didn't enjoy playing it). I might try GTA4 at some point. Hmm.

I'm extremely difficult to please when it comes to storytelling and writing in games (I thought HL2 was at best mediocre, and Mass Effect made me gag), but GTA4 was exceptionally good on both counts.

I don't like the previous titles in the series, though.