As some of you know, I’ve been waiting and drooling for the release of Halo 2 for the X-Box here for ages and ages.

Well, finally, it’s out . . . and, finally . . . I got a copy. Lorraine picked up a copy of the local edition and an X-Box Live kit. As soon as she got it home, the ol’ package was ripped open and I thew the beasties into the machine.

Lo and behold, it looks like a pretty damned good game.

Unfortunately, the “bilingual” edition sold in Taiwan is a bit less than bilingual. It’s supposed to be both a Chinese and English game all on one disk so your system will automatically detect the proper mode.

Well, the subtitles for the game are in English as are all the menus. Unfortunately, some dumbass in programming decided to save space and only have one audio track available . . . Chinese. So, even though it’s supposed to have the English stuff so folks like me can play it . . . those of us in the Asian market who don’t actually speak or read Chinese . . . but, the soundtrack is all in Chinese with NO English!

This would be fine if the audio were all atmosphere or if there were subtitles available for all the dialog. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. So, when the computer voice in the background is telling folks to watch out or go to this place and get the bomb, I don’t have a clue. I don’t know what the mission is.

Grrrrrrrrrr.

Multi-player is okay as there’s no mission-sensitive data to be had, just run out and kill everyone. However, I can’t play the single-player campaign mode. It’s pretty much just a coffee coaster if that’s what you’re really looking forward to.

I have been looking forward to this game big time . . . oh, woe is me and sadness and all that stuff.

Lorraine called the local X-Box support line for the game and the service folks didn’t even realize they had done this. It took forever for Lorraine to get through to them what the actual problem was. She ended up scolding the person about doing future bilingual editions and doing them right.

No, I can’t just get the US version of the game as my machine was bought here in Taiwan where I live. So, it’s tough shit for me.

Grrrrrr, again.

Hopefully, this is NOT a sign of things to come. I have been doing really well with the bilingual games released for X Box in the past . . . or, maybe I have just had good luck. Of course, in the past, all the bilingual games released here have been out of Singapore where evidently bilingual actually means bilingual instead of monolingual pretend. Things don’t bode well as the Taiwan folks are gearing up to release many more games this way, cutting off the Singapore supply.

This is a hugely anticipated game too.

I love the game . . . I love running around blowing shit up . . . but, if this is an indicator of the future, I may not be buying too many games in the future (I pay full price, no modbox for our X-Box).

Grrrrrr!