Well, I just ended up picking up the Orange Box. I was planning on going a la carte since I didn't need HL2 and HL2:EP1, but after looking at the prices a la carte for Portal, EP2 and TF2, it would have ended up $35 more :p

I guess I'll give the TF2 beta a try until it blows up my computer.

Yeah, their bundles are usually pretty killer deals.

TF2 has been owning my soul since it went live. Some nights I make people cry and leave the server, other nights people do it to me, and make me wish I had a dog I could kick.

It looks cartoony from the video I've seen, that's cool.

Dare we share our steam ids?

I won't be playing much until I can diagnose my problems and figure out why my computer keeps rebooting when I put any sort of load on it.

Last time I had a rig do that, it was overheating. You could try running Motherboard Monitor to pick up the ambient and cpu temps (and gpu if the card supports it). You may just have a dead fan or mis-mounted heatsink.

Yeah, I'm almost certain its heat issues. I've just been too busy to crack open my case to figure out if its the CPU or the GPU.

I had that problem last year and it turned out to be the power supply. The graphics card would pull too much power from its voltage rail under any serious load and the machine would flick off.

Hmm, now there is an interesting thought I didn't think about. I picked up a 650W PSU earlier this year because my 350W wasn't cutting it anymore.

But, it is a cheap PSU, and I think its sharing a power cable with a couple of other things. Maybe I should put it on its own cable.

The PSU I had was rated high enough overall, but it still wouldn't cut it due to the internal design. I did a little research and picked up one with beefier voltage rails, and the problem disappeared.

Yeah, I think that's where I'll look next. I blew out chunks of dirt last night, and reapplied the thermal grease, but I haven't really had a chance to push it yet.

I can gift Half-Life 2 as well. TF2 Here I come.

I read IGN's review for Orange Box on xb360 last night. I got a great score and tons of praise for all the value in the pack.

The only thing that bugged me is that up until this point I had assumed that it would include HL2 deathmatch as part of HL2, and it doesn't. I'm really bummed, as I always preferred regular HL DM to Team Fortress.

I just played and finished Portal in one sitting.

Its short (prob. 3 hours) but it has got to be the best 3 hours of single player gaming for me this year. Beautiful.

I'm horrible at video games.

You all ruin my self esteem.

It's ok. You have a life.

I played about halfway through last night. Mind bending fun!

I got stuck in EP2 killing something I shouldn't have. Other than that I like it so far.

I finished it last night - I got about 4 hours out of it, because I like to mess around. And that last level was a lot longer than I expected it to be. . . :lol:

On to the advanced challenges, and then. . . cake!

On HL2:EP2,

Needz moar longar.

took about 8.5 hours.

There are $60 shooters out there with a main game that only lasts that long. . . I figure for an expansion 8 hours is pretty good. On the night Halo 3 released, I checked a few of my friends' xbl achievements and it seemed that they were able to make it through most of the single player campaign in only 8 hours. Most of them have the campaign completion achievement dated 9/25.

I'm playing through HL2 again before moving on to the episodes, and really enjoying it. The gameplay is good enough that it holds up against repeated playthroughs, and they have some really humorous achievements to track down. :)

I'm downloading the orange box as I type. I'm pretty excited.

PS: Tyson, holly shit, I laughed so hard while watching that "Hitler Gets Banned" video you linked.

Portal was a very pleasant suprise.
Played it through twice so I could check out the commentary.
Finished the advanced levels. Working on the challenges.

Challenges plus third party levels should keep this going for a long time.