Half Life 2 question.

I want to get Half Life 2 for the PC, but two questions:

 1)  Do you have to play the first to understand it?

2)  What are all these episodes and versions?  I want Half Life 2, but what's this episode one and orange...?

1. It would really essentially help you to understand the storyline of Half-Life 2 better if you have played Half-Life (1). However, if you pay attention to what's going on in the "corrupt" world around you, and by listening to the characters, you will certainly enjoy the game.

2. You can buy Half-Life 2 bundled as a package; which can contain things like Half-Life (1), it's expansions, Half-Life 2: Episode One etc. But 'Episode One' is considered Half-Life 2's first expansion (there will be 3 in total). Oh and the 'orange box' is just the bundle for X360 and PS3 (containing HL2, Episode One, Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, and Portal).

Hope that helped.

HL1s story is kind of cool because you don't really know its going on.

In HL1 a science expirement wrong. your job is to kill the aliens and try to get help for the people in the base. ppl tell you pieces of story as you play the game but the overall story pretty much needs to be read to understand. for instance a seven hour war (i think its 7 hours) is mentioned in hl2 but never witnessed in hl1.

In short read the wiki for HL1 and you'll be fine but your missing a great game

You can definitely play Half Life 2 first. Although the experience will be better if you played Half Life as well. But seeing how outdated the graphics of the original seem, you are better off playing Half Life Source.

Mind you, I have played the original Half Life and I didn't mind the outdated graphics.

You can read the Half Life story HERE