Because I had some birthday money to spare I decided to pick up The Orange Box, which in case you didn't know is Half Life 2, Episodes 1+2, Portal and Team Fortress 2 - 5 games in 1. I've never played any Half Life 2 game before then, and having recently completed the first game I found it to one of the most fun gaming experiences ever.

I read a few user reviews yesterday, and the only negative ones come from people who already owned at least one game from the series before buying The Orange Box. It's understandable that a slightly lower score should be given for that, but if you don't own any of the games this is a must-buy if you don't have it already.

I've had this game for a few days now and I'm about eight hours into it. I must admit, my feelings are somwhat mixed so far.

I enjoyed it very much at first, taking in the sights, talking to people and generally getting a feel for the game. I wasn't terribly impressed with the battle feature, but once the Gambit system is introduced it makes it a whole lot more fun. However, battles seem to be the downfall.

See, so far I've been coping pretty well with the enemies put in front of me, finding it challenging but not impossible. I had a little difficulty with a 'boss' or whatever you like to call them, but third time around I worked out a good strategy and won the battle. After this I literally got plunged into a whole new difficulty setting. Enemies went from challenging to insanely hard in a matter of moments, and I found my part being obliterated in seconds. With most Final Fantasy games battles get gradually harder. In FFXII battles saty relatively consistent in difficulty for the first 10 levels of your characters and then just get stupidly hard. And no, it's not because I haven't bothered levelling up, I've spent a good two hours doing that and I'm probably about three levels above where most people are at the point in the game.

The storyline itself is something I have a lot of difficulty understanding. I read some guys post on the FFXII board and he essentially said "I want a game that sucks me in with it's story, something simple like saving the world/universe is fine for me. I don't want a world full of politics and difficult names to remember." He basically got abused by a lot of other members for saying that, but I completely agree with him. Guys like me and him don't have a level of intelligence to cope with this game (those are his words, I'm not insulting him), which makes the storyline on the whole difficult to understand and thus spoiling the game overall.

I'll give it a little longer before I make an overall verdict (I've rated it 9.2, but that was at the beginning of the game, it's more like an 8.0 now), but so far I am not enjoying Final Fantasy XII as much as I should be. I think the storyline should be easier to understand and the learning curve a little more gentle.

Yes indeed, after spending the past two hours working this out I have finally uploaded a gameplay video of Guild Wars. Feel free to check it out here and let me know what you think.