Mini-Rant: The Orange Box

I try to keep this blog positive, but the issue of The Orange Box has been nagging at me -- especially post awards season, when so many gave the The Orange Box honors for being such a great value. But I'd like to argue that The Orange Box isn't a game. It's marketing. Calling The Orange Box the best game of 2007 is like calling the #1 Combo at In 'N Out the best hamburger. The correct answer is The Double Double. The fact that it comes with fries and Coke should be of no concern to connoisseurs of hamburgers. Something similar happened in cinemas this year when the Weinsteins bundled two movies together and called it Grindhouse. Thing is, the Grindhouse package was meant to be consumed in one sitting. Death Proof and Planet Terror were shortened and cut together with trailers and all kinds of other stuff. I think Grindhouse really can be taken as one experimental movie, while it's really hard to argue that The Orange Box is a single game. Now, just like Grindhouse The Orange Box is being split up into individual parts, but unlike the Grindhouse (which had their missing reels replaced and trailers, sadly, ditched) they'll likely be no different from the games early adopters played. Is Portal, now, only a fraction of a game?