Bang on target! Valve delivered an awesome package and a must buy for all gamers who appreciate value and solid games.
First game:Half Life 2. Played Half Life 1? No worries, it seems Half Life 2 has very little to do with it when you begin your journey battling against fascist supressive evil dudes called the "Combine". Protagonist Gordan Freeman (not Morgan Freeman by the way) is awoken by the Gman to do a 'job' for him. You battle through intense levels of supreme graphical quality, despite being a 3 year old game. Developers valve made all the characters you interact with seem real, real not in a corny gimmick way that you see demos of people with facial animations technology, you just get fooled into believing the characters are genuinely real at times and you really become attached to them. Its a great shooter also, with officially the coolest gun in gaming the "gravity gun" or "zero point energy field manipulator "if you must. Solid from start to finish, all i can say is you have to try this game you will not regret it.
2nd game:Half Life 2 Episode 1- HL2 ends on a cliffhanger, but you need not suffer this peril when you quickly swap to this additional episode in the saga innstatntly. A shorter affair than HL2 but infinately more rapid, thrilling and revealling than the first one. HL2 was good, but this one takes the biscuit.
3rd game:Half Life 2 Episode 2- unfortunately after these rollercoaster ride of a game you'll have to wait until Episode 3 comes out to see what happens after this brilliant ending. I said Episode 1 was better, i lied, it just gets better and better. Hours of fun and replay value just like the other two.
4th game:Portal- This game is wrong, how is it so fun? The kind of puzzles in this game are found in christmas crackers and newspapers, but the short attention span of a gamer manages to find this game... AWESOME. To start with you're given a portal gun that lets you shoot doorways, you go in one and out the other, that way you meeander across arena style obstacle courses with the power of your noggin. Sounds lame to some, but it works, you will not put this game down. Its brilliantly balanced to make you think, but also it doesn't isolated the puzzle-challenged majority. Also, somehow, the game is actually hilarious. The things the machinery around you say is utterly side-splitting, but i'll let you be the judge of that.
5th game: team fortress 2- sequel to a game that looks nothing like it, 9 years in the making it finally graces xbox live. Its a cell-shaded first person online only shooter that encourages team cooperation by the most perfectly balanced class system in a game to date. Its worth the money just for the hilarious moments this game creates.