A while ago, the teams at Valve and Electronic Arts announced with great pride that Half Life's Orange Box and Black box ( the new content packs for the game), would be shipping this summer. Nothing much has changed, except... well, its launch has been delayed and isn't going to be available until fall 2007. The reason is still unclear; neither Valve nor EA are saying what the reason is.

So, autumn this year, all gamers who rush to stores in order to get a copy of Half-Life 2: Episode Two, will have two options - Black Box and Orange Box editions of the game. Both will be made available for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in the following manner: The Black Box will ship for the PC, and includes Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2. The Orange Box will ship for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 and includes all the content of The Black Box, plus the original Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One.

For Half-Life 2, Valve Corporation developed a new game engine called the Source engine, which handles the game's visual, audio, and artificial intelligence elements. The Source engine comes packaged with a heavily modified version of the Havok physics engine that allows for an extra dimension of interactivity in both single player and online environments.

Each version (either for the PC, PS3 or Xbox 360) will be practically the same product, just slight differences here and there are to be found if they're compared. Basically, it's the same game for all platforms, so don't be afraid of not getting the most out of it. Whether you have a PC, a PS3 or an Xbox 360 to play it, you're a winner.

Following a protracted five-year development cycle during which the game's source code was leaked to the Internet, Half Life 2 garnered near unanimous positive reviews and received critical acclaim, winning over 35 Game of the Year awards for 2004. Originally available only for Windows-based personal computers, the game has since been ported onto the Xbox and PlayStation consoles. So, never mind what platform you intend to play it on, HL2 Ep.2 isn't due until fall.