I popped into Steam today to check out a few things and was shocked to see a special offer. Pre-order Half Life 2: The Orange Box on Steam and play Team Fortress 2 Beta on September 17th! I was stoked, cancelled my Amazon pre-order and picked up The Orange Box on Steam. About 6 GB later (and a few hours, seems that a lot of people saw the Pre-load option when they got home) I had a bunch of new files in my game folder. Looks like a lot of shared Half Life 2 assets, along with the Team Fortress 2 assets.

Quite a find, I’m glad I logged in to check it out. They also included a really fun peg game that’s great for wasting away idle time waiting for the beta to start. And if you already have Half Life 2 registered on your account, once released you’ll get gift passes to give to friends so they can play your extra copies of the game you got with the Orange Box. Very cool.

I can’t wait for Monday night, anybody want to work on a recreation of the original QW Canal Zone map?