Ever since we laid our eyes on the Half-Life 2: Orange Box cover art we have been a little perplexed by its simplistic design. The cover art featured a mostly orange background with white text explaining the contents and that was about it. We accepted the cover though and never made a fuss. But now it looks like Valve has had a change of heart and design philosophy. TeamXbox is reporting that Valve decided to re-design the Orange Box cover and now it actually features artwork! Indeed, it shows off beautiful Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal artwork! We're glad to see Valve add more art to the cover art and spiffy up the Orange Box, because it really looks good. Check out TeamXbox's supplied Half-Life 2: Orange Box cover viewable after the break.
(Image supplied by TeamXbox)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
6-30-2007 @ 10:34AM
Leatherface said...
The first one was much cooler - nice, plain, simple and effective. That looks like a 12 year old messing around with Photoshop.
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6-30-2007 @ 10:48AM
ted.clark23 said...
Who the eff cares what the box looks like? Are you one of those kids who plays with the box and not the contents?
I think they should just have made it orange with NOTHING on it. Plain,simple, classic. You would ask yourself "How much orange could it be?" And the answer would be none; None more orange.
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6-30-2007 @ 11:04AM
a.j. said...
uh..go back to the first one please. that looks like shit.
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6-30-2007 @ 11:06AM
zourskittles said...
They should have had the HL2 guy jumping down a portal with one of Fortress' giant machine guns in his hands.
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6-30-2007 @ 11:07AM
spartan0333 said...
Why is there no xbox live logo in the heading? Are they not supporting live or did they make a mistake. But if they are not supporting live then why have team forrtress 2 ,a multiplayer only game.
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6-30-2007 @ 11:41AM
Bourega said...
@#2
Exactly. I was expecting nothing more than the HL2 logo on an orange background.
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6-30-2007 @ 11:42AM
Rick said...
Yeah, the first one was A LOT better. This is just plain BAD DESIGN. I'll qualify that assertion as I make my living as a designer.
**VALVE: PLEASE GO BACK TO THE ORIGINAL DESIGN. IT WAS AWESOME.
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6-30-2007 @ 11:57AM
aZTEKv2 said...
honestly, it doesn't matter either way as long as the game is great.
having said that... are you SERIOUSLY saying that the old one looked better? W T F ...
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/all/boxshots2/934384_77850.jpg
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6-30-2007 @ 12:08PM
Johnathon said...
Well, why not just have the HL-2 Logo and a orange background. thats all it needs..
needless to say this is going to be bloody awesomo! Sasha FTW
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6-30-2007 @ 1:09PM
ryan said...
yes, they both suck! Half Life 2 logo, Portal logo and Team Fortress logo on an orange background would look MUCH better.
or just a simple valve logo on an orange background. hell, they should change the whole box from green to orange, go all out.
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6-30-2007 @ 1:13PM
erivera3 said...
This should be a cool buy, but Halo 3 will own it easily.
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6-30-2007 @ 1:14PM
ted.clark23 said...
Come to think of it, this cover now looks like one of those lame PS2 Jampack covers...
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/jampackwinter2002/index.html
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6-30-2007 @ 1:20PM
Bourega said...
Now, if it had the logo, on an orange background, on a metal case, it would completely rock!
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6-30-2007 @ 2:10PM
Tim said...
Mentioned in the previous article, this is by far the best designed box art. Too bad they can't just use this.
http://www.vgboxart.com/view/6080/half-life.2.orange.box/
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6-30-2007 @ 3:55PM
ogvor said...
This cover art isn't really much better than the last, but that's probably becuase of how hard it is to make cover art for this game. It's also important so that Halo Fanboys or other semi casual gamer who've never heard of Half Life 2 understand what an insanley good deal this game is. I mean, they can't just put Half Life 2 on the front, because it also includes two extra episdoes. They also would be leaving out it's totally differnt than half life 2 multiplayer component, Team Fortress 2. And don't forget portal, the most inovative looking piece of this package.
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6-30-2007 @ 3:55PM
ogvor said...
This cover art isn't really much better than the last, but that's probably becuase of how hard it is to make cover art for this game. It's also important so that Halo Fanboys or other semi casual gamer who've never heard of Half Life 2 understand what an insanley good deal this game is. I mean, they can't just put Half Life 2 on the front, because it also includes two extra episdoes. They also would be leaving out it's totally differnt than half life 2 multiplayer component, Team Fortress 2. And don't forget portal, the most inovative looking piece of this package.
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6-30-2007 @ 3:57PM
ZombieAutopiIot said...
I think just an Orange box, with the HL2 logo on it in black, with MAYBE a picture of Gordon underneath it
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6-30-2007 @ 4:08PM
mcdeath ob said...
@ Leather face:
"1. The first one was much cooler - nice, plain, simple and effective. That looks like a 12 year old messing around with Photoshop."
Admittedly this one isn't great by any means but if you use the annalogy of a 12 year old messing around on photoshop for this new box then the old box was created by a 12 year old messing around on microsoft word, experimenting to see if he could create a picture without using his hands, the resulting image created from a combination of head banging against the keyboard and occasional nudges of the mouse with his torso.
@ Rick:
"7. Yeah, the first one was A LOT better. This is just plain BAD DESIGN. I'll qualify that assertion as I make my living as a designer."
Admittedly this IS a "BAD DESIGN" but it is by no means worse than the other one. And to say that "I'll qualify that assertion as I make my living as a designer" only leads me to think that your employers need to have a serious re-think about their team of designers....
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6-30-2007 @ 4:57PM
Triforceowner said...
The thing that is really in now is just a neat logo and a cool background design. Oblivion did that, Gears of War should have done that (the cover looked too much like Halo's) and basically every other ext-gen title should do that. It's the in thing to do with game box design.
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6-30-2007 @ 5:36PM
spook said...
The first one was perhaps a bit boring, but this one is just too ugly to be official - and why they would make Episode Two the headlining game is beyond me.
Also, if you look closely (I took it into photoshop and zoomed it) the anti-aliasing in the 'teamxbox' text at the bottom is identical to that of the the big game titles.
The jpeg artifacts around the text is also the same, which shouldn't be the case if valve sent them the cover and then they slapped their name on it.
FAKE!
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