SWAT Global Strike Team - Xbox Game (Retro Fam)

Wanted to purchase a new game, not used as it was a gift. Shipping was quick and the kid is very happy

This is basically 5 games in one! Half-Life 2 is a really good first person shooter with pretty good story line. Team Fortress is OK, for and online multi-player game. Portal has become one of my new favorite games. Over all, a must buy!

I had played Half Life and Half Life 2 before, the latter on a PC in 2006. Most of the bugs associated with the Steam content delivery system had been eliminated by then but it was still a chore to get things up & running. The desire to play HL2 on a stand-alone console system is what eventually motivated me to buy a refurbished XBox 360 (reviews seemed to indicate that HL2 on the Play Station 3 is buggier).Well, great experience so far. HL2 plays exactly as I remembered from the PC days, no bugs whatsoever & the use of a console controller makes for effective gameplay. HL2 won a bunch of awards in part because of its atmosphere - the attention to detail is astounding & the player becomes immersed in the environment of the East European flavored City 17. You can play the game with a developer's commentary track (accessed via clicking on icons floating around in the game environment) - it's interesting to learn about some of the game design considerations & decisions. I've played the Episode 1 game as well; it seems to play longer than a one-third part of HL3. Episode 2 is on deck for me. The only kvetch I might have with HL2 is that the gameplay is very linear - it's obvious which door you should take because there's only one door, etc. The original Half Life seemed to have more situations in which you had to rationally figure out a course of action. Or perhaps I was just inexperienced in those early days of gaming...I thought the wife might like Portal, what with its physics.