It's Halo 2 Night!

No self-respecting Xbox gamer would have missed that tonight's the night!

Aussies - by virtue of our timezone being 17 hours ahead of Redmond - and Kiwis (2 more hours ahead of us) get their first crack at Halo 2 tonight.

Expectations aren't so much high as stratospheric - nay, lunar!  Can it live up to the hype?

So far:

• Gamespy liked it a lot.
• Gamespot liked it a lot.
• The Metacritic scores show that most people seem to like it a lot too (as much as "they" can be said to like anything).

So, in just under one short hour, the folk queueing outside EB will be walking away with a little piece of gaming history in their hands.

I'll be firing up the Xbox for a game of Live sometime after midnight, to see how it plays. It had better be good!

Back On The PC - In The Land Of The High Res Monitor, there are also some treats just arrived or coming:

• Half-Life 2 is almost here (with a metacritic score only slightly lower than Halo 2 at the moment), Steam subscribers get it the instant the clock ticks over* (don't know how the time zone stuff shakes out though...)
• the Joint Operations expansion pack Escalation is due at about the same time (plus going to the store to buy it)
• Tribes:Vengeance is already out there (and I'm really tempted to go get it)...

It looks like it's shaking out to be a really good year's end for games!

Happy sigh.