Valve has announced that the Orange Box has moved to the top of the Metacritic list for both PC and Xbox 360 games, as glowing reviews from across North America continue to pile up.
“By all accounts the Orange Box is exceeding everyone’s expectations,” said Valve Director of Marketing Doug Lombardi. “The North American launch continues this week as retailers who experienced temporary outages over the weekend are being replenished each day. Meanwhile, the first retail units are appearing in stores this week across Europe.”
The Orange Box combines Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the most recent entry in the Half-Life saga, as well as the innovative puzzle game Portal and the long-awaited multiplayer game Team Fortress 2. Also included in the package for anyone who may have missed it the first time around are the original Half-Life 2 as well as Half-Life 2: Episode 1.
The Orange Box currently holds a Metacritic score of 97 for the PC, moving it ahead of the previous top title holder, Half-Life 2; on the Xbox 360 list, the Orange Box is also scored at 97, one point ahead of BioShock. Metacritic assigns scores to games, as well as movies, books and music, by generating a weighted average of review scores for each game on its list, achieving broad-based opinions from a wide range of sources.
Released on October 9, the Orange Box is currently available for the PC and Xbox 360. A PlayStation 3 version is planned for release later in the year.
