The Orange Box

Half-Life by any other name

Valve calls its latest addition to the Half-Life series The Orange Box, but we call it freaking awesome. With the newly updated Source engine—now with better graphics, courtesy of increased system requirements at the shallow end of the pool—Gordon Freeman and Alyx have never looked better.

By ditching support for legacy DirectX 8 graphics cards, Valve opened the door for a much better looking Half-Life that is superior to both Episode 1 and Lost Coast.

Battling the pack AI of the new hunters is well and good, but we’re nearly as excited about the hot puzzle action that Portal promises, and certain editors are actively lusting over Team Fortress 2.

The Agency

Austin Powers: The Game

Sony Online’s crazy concept MMO, The Agency, puts you in charge of a top-secret spy agency dedicated to protecting the world from standard-issue megalomaniacs. The Agency is impressive for more than its clever game design and highly stylized art direction.

You see, the game progresses even when you’re not logged in. If you set your science branch to design a new type of weapon, gadget, or car, the research will happen whether you’re logged on or not. When the gizmo’s ready for you to test, you’ll get an email or text message with the good news.

The in-game combat is particularly interesting, with many varied missions. The one we saw was reminiscent of an old-fashioned dungeon crawl. First, you fight your way through the goons, then you rescue the person who needs rescuing, and then you track down the big boss.

Gears of War

Over-the-top action

Something not so subtle happens to our pleasure centers when we lovingly apply chain saw to skull in order to finish off a deathmatch foe. Gears of War on the PC adds a whole new chapter to the single-player campaign and a handful of multiplayer maps to the Xbox 360 version.

In addition to new content, the team at Epic ratcheted up the texture resolution and removed some of the more annoying features (like depth-of-field blurring) for the PC version of Gears. But more than anything else, we’re looking forward to the mission editor, which will let players create custom game types and play them with their pals using Games for Windows Live. That’s something to get excited about.

Unreal Tournament III

Deathmatch Fury

Sometimes games look good, sometimes they look great, and sometimes they look like Unreal Tournament III—un-freakin’-believable. Mega-high-poly models and glorious displacement-mapped surfaces deliver a shiny fascia over the raw deathmatch action that we all know and love, in full Unreal Engine III glory.

UT3 showcases what Epic’s third-gen Unreal Engine is capable of. It features an all-new renderer and supports high-dynamic range, per-pixel lighting; physics acceleration; and a whole lot more.

We can’t wait to register our first M-M-MONSTER KILL!

Next: Crysis, and an exclusive interview with Cevat Yerli, Crysis's executive producer!