This second update for the Box primarily includes enhancements for Team Fortress 2.

Here's a list of what's included:

• Reduced network bandwidth usage in multiplayer.
• Improved overall game performance.
• Arranged search results to favor preferred host conditions.
• Improved searching for ranked games.
• Addressed a possible false report of too little storage space on larger hard drives.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two is the second in a trilogy of new games created by Valve that extends the award-winning and best-selling Half-Life adventure.

As Dr. Gordon Freeman, you were last seen exiting City 17 with Alyx Vance as the Citadel erupted amidst a storm of unknown proportions. In Episode Two, you must battle and race against Combine forces as you traverse the White Forest to deliver a crucial information packet stolen from the Citadel to an enclave of fellow resistance scientists.

Episode Two extends the award-winning Half-Life gameplay with unique weapons, vehicles, and newly-spawned creatures.

Portal is a new single player game from Valve. Set in the mysterious Aperture Science Laboratories, Portal has been called one of the most innovative new games on the horizon and will offer gamers hours of unique gameplay.

The game is designed to change the way players approach, manipulate, and surmise the possibilities in a given environment; similar to how Half-Life 2’s Gravity Gun innovated new ways to leverage an object in any given situation.

Players must solve physical puzzles and challenges by opening portals to maneuvering objects, and themselves, through space.

Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is the sequel to the game that put class-based, multiplayer team warfare on the map. This year’s most anticipated online action game, TF2 delivers new gametypes, a signature art style powered by Valve’s next generation animation technology, persistent player statistics, and more.

Unlike other “class-based” games that offer a variety of combat classes only, Team Fortress 2 packs a wild variety of classes which provide a broad range of tactical abilities and personalities, and lend themselves to a variety of player skills.

Play as the flame-throwing Pyro, the room clearing Heavy, or the Spy, a master of disguises. Other classes include: Scout, Sniper, Medic, Engineer, Demoman, or Soldier.

TF2 features the most advanced graphics of any Source-based game released to date – and the most exciting class-based action ever created.

Half-Life 2: The Orange Box will be released on October 9, 2007, at $49.99 for the PC version and $59.99 for the X360 and PS3 editions.