Hello everyone,

So like probably half of the 360 owners I've just finished halo 3. Only finished it on normal, might try heroic one day, but I love halo because it's fast and action packed, so dying every ten minute kinda defeat the whole point of the experience I'm trying to get when playing a halo game. So yes finishing halo 3 on normal is easy and can be done pretty fast but still I have no regrets.

But it's not another blog entry about halo 3, at least not entirely.

The only thing I hated in this game, is a recurring one: no english langage on the French version !!!

I don't understand why we, as a society, can't come to understand that translating is wrong. I know that it's sadly necessary, because French gamers are before anything else French and therefor can't speak or understand English (I'm actually having college level English that can be resume to "hello my name is xxx, I like xxx"). But we are a growing few who decided to make the effort, to manage to understand the langage (I will not pretend I've mastered it) so that we can enjoy many forms of modern entertainment the way they were meant to, and should be rewarded by the ability to do so.

The problem of translation is also persistent in tv shows and movies, that can litteraly be ruined by translations. From simply bad translation to poor voice acting (during the last two seasons of friends some of the voices of the main characters actually changed), and bad lips synchronisation.

It seems like translators like to change stuff, probably because they believe they are better than the original writers; That's how C3PO became Z6PO in the original trilogy (becoming for some reason C3PO again in the new trilogy) or why the millenium falcon can actually bear like 3 names!

Video games are of course no strangers to the problem. And halo 3 is a great case of this. I've configured my 360 to English langage so that whenever a game gets more than only one langage it will choose English. But Halo doesn't fit into this category, if you bought it in France it's gonna speak French. Odly enough the subtitles and menu screen are gonna be in English. (and I've spoted at least one cortana intervention in English, go figure....). This allowed me to compare the translation to the original text. And well while it stick to the general idea, even though sometimes the choices were odd to say the least, there are sometimes, though they are rare, when the translation is not reflecting the truth. Biggest one of all: the chief became "major" (I've checked with the subtitles and everytime he is called major in the French version, Chief is used in the English one), you're right guys you are spending like a week translating this game you should get to decide how the main character is called.

Even worse, the voice acting is really inferior to what I've heard on the videos online, and that's the sadest part. Some games really gain from their voice acting (I think gamespot even has a review badge for this), and for regionalisation considerations we get screwed out of it. A studio is paying big bucks for a famous actor to speak as an in game character? Sorry this money is irrevelant in my country. At least when they translate and dubbed an animated movie they try to hire famous French actors to do it

I don't mind the general principle of dubbing, if people are to lazy to learn the most commonly spoken langage in the world fine by me that'll make is easier for me to find a job, but we should have a choice. I think that's why dvd worked that well, because we finally had a choice to watch a movie in it's original langage. And it's really sad that not all of games allow for this choice, that some games force your native langage on you, because considering how much smaller the French video game market is, (less people and a smaller proportion of gamers) dubbing a game will always go poorly, there's simply not enough money to do it well. What really makes me cry is that when a game doesn't have a translation, it will reflect poorly on his French review score !! Come on really? Madden is a lesser game because there's no French in the audio? Is there even someone here that would play US football and not be able to understand English?

I guess the problem also reflects with japanese games but probably to a lesser extend. Because when they translate those in English they can put much more money into it because the market for the English translation is much bigger. Even then I guess really hard core japanese rpg fans will enjoy them much more in the langage they were meant to be heard.

Hopefully this will follow the same path that movies followed with dvd, and that tv shows are starting to take, and we will all be allowed to play our games the way we choose to. But considering that video games already use the technologies that allowed for multilangage in other medias, I'm not too hopefull. Maybe it's just a space problems, like putting more than one langage on one disk take up too much space (but then why can some games allow it?). Maybe ps3 owners are less subjected to this problem, because it uses blueray. Still it's sad, and I really think that playing a game in it's original langage is better, and that even on an economical point it makes more sence to publish one copy of the game for all of Europe (because we do sometimes have multilangage manuals) but well I'm not a game publisher so I probably can't understand the secret reasons behind all this.

It's just one of the many reasons why being a French gamer sucks. Even though right now the biggest reason it sucks for me is that I only have one friends equipped with a 360 and he doesn't even have xbox live yet, won't be able to play the Halo with friends...

Summer break is almost over (well I guess it is over for the US sorry guys), in 3 weeks it's going to be going back to College time.

That has me worried, not because I'm affraid of College, but because I've just finished a little calendar with games going out in the next few month and well..... that does not look good!

How on earth are we supposed to play all those games? First in line is bioshock, just before the break is over (august 31st in France, for some reason it seems to be out in the UK aren't we supposed to have the same format???) ! I guess it's goodbye big "end of summer rager on the beach with friends...." Well guess I'll still be seeing water and booze, not much on the range of drunken College girls though... or there are things about this game that are really being kept secret....

Well a new year is going to start, and we (gamers) are gonna have to face those weird conversations with friends about how we've spend the summer. Here is an example, that I just had (well it was in French of course but I'll translate for you).

"What did you do this summer?"

"Oh I went to Miami that was wicked!! Tons of hot chicks there! And you?"

"I've stopped a mexican revolution won world war II, the usual you know..."

"Sorry you couldn't go anywhere dude."

"No, I wanted to spend my summer playing video games"

I think this conversation is going to be the first of a long list....

I don't know why people feel like it's a sad way to spend a holiday! I mean I could spend my summer on the beach if I wanted to, I freakin own a house there!!! But getting skin cancer is not a thing I enjoy! And let's face it summer is great to play games! Sadly nothing new comes out (almost) but still that makes it even better you can play great games that you can buy for 40e tops! (usual retail price is around 70e here); Of course this only works if you didn't manage to play all the games you wanted to play during the year, and let's face it with a year like the one coming, you probably won't have.

Thinking about this kinda makes me feel better about what I said about the number of great games coming out. And well I'm of course excited for the coming months, but I know that with College and trying to pretend like I have a social life, and working for my student union, I won't be able to play a lot and so I think that I'm even more excited for next summer. (even more considering that I might buy a ps3 for the occasion ...)

So I think the system works out, games comes out before chrismass, you buy some, or be given some for the holidays (grandma loves to have to ask for those evil disk!), and then when summer comes here you still have great games to play, for less money!

That does not mean that I'm not going to play games in the coming months, I've actually picked up MOTO GP 07 today, really enjoying it, it's a fresh change in racing! People are saying that it's not really a sim, probably true, wouldn't know since I've never drove a bike in my life. Still it's fun

I'll of course play bioshock, though for some reason I'm feeling like this game is not going to play well with me. I don't know why, I'm still excited about the whole concept but still feel like I won't be able to enjoy the experience as much as I should.

Also I've join the evil sect of people who have preordered Halo 3, we probably could take over the world if we wanted to by now, but it would have to be done by halo 3 release date. It's funny to see how many people have done the same, although as usual in France we probably are really late. I think I only saw like 10 names on the sheet.... sad. I've also checked that I only had one class this day (yeas french college is easy we don't do anything, but still we wonder why the world is moking us and we are no longer a superpower), it's in the morning starting at nine and it's only an hour and a half. So I'll either go to the store before class or go right afterward. Can't really skip it, it's an accounting class and it's not exactly my strong spot... If halo 3 suck there will probably be people rioting I think. Because we kinda take a big leap of faith when we preorder a game, we don't know if it's any good, haven't been able to read a single review, and still we comit to buying it.

Oh and by the way, if the subject of the blog wasn't hint enough, I've just finished call of duty 3, this game is awsome! Everyone should play it! I've always felt like WWII shooters were not for me, but I tried cod3 anyway, and wow how wrong was I...

So the break is almost over, and I'm already looking forward to the next one!

Now off to live coverage of PAX, gamespot plus penny arcade ? I'm having a good feeling about this, just wished it didn't start at 1 am here....

I've been thinking about starting my blog for well pretty much 6 months now.

I've been a gamespot suscriber for nearly 3 years I think, not sure though, and never really felt the need for the community aspect of the site.

But with time (and the purchase of my beloved 360) I've started to look more and more into it. And today I've decided to launch my blog.

It's really likely no one will ever read it but still, writting an English blog is still a good way to practice I guess.

So this first entry is going to be kinda short, just though I'll introduce my background.

I'm French, don't know how much of us there are on the site but yes there are some more I'm sure.

I'm not what I would call an hardcore gamer. I play, a lot, but yet I still kinda sucks at video games. Probably because I just wanna have fun with a game not totally master it (best example of this is guitar hero, I love this game, yet I can't find it in me to put the effort in finishing the hard mode).

First console I owned was a nes, but too young to really enjoy it, first real video gaming experience was the snes, and the genesis.

I've own a ps1 (bought it when it first released, I remember how shock I was to pay what would now convert to 300euros for a game system....) a saturn and N64. But for some reasons skipped the next gen (though I did bought an xbox for 50euros last year not havng enough money yet to experience next gen) and played on PC for a few years. But finally I've made my come back to gaming with the 360, and boy does that feel good!

Hoping to purchase a ps3 asap, really enjoying the new starter pack despite what everybody seems to think, selling a ps3 full price with motorstorm and resistance, plus an extra controller is a sweat deal (sweater than a temporary price drop or 20 extragigs). In fact it looks like this starter pack was designed for people with a 360. Because right now most of the ps3 games are cross platformed, and motorstorm and resistance were pretty much the two best exclusive on the ps3. But more great games are coming (something about swords I hear...) so more people are gonna want a ps3 to play those exclusives, and this pack is perfect for them.

But of course it's still 600euros and that's still a lot of money to find, especially looking to all the great 360 games coming, so is it best to play the best of both systems or all the good of one....



Well that's all for today, that wasn't quite a short entry in the end sorry about that!