Rampancy

As soon as possible being, in this case, already. Francesca Reyes, Editor-in-Chief of Official Xbox Magazine, has already played through the entire Halo 3 single-player campaign, and her ten page review will hit the streets in the next edition of OXM, day and date with the game.

Technically nobody's supposed to say a word about the game, but GamesRadar managed to get her to say a few words about how she felt after she finished playing:

I think I was kind of in a state of shock for most of it, especially after I finished the campaign. I was happy, yes - but it didn't really hit me until I was back in San Francisco and eating a big bowl of ramen at some neighborhood joint. I sat there at the table with my bowl of ramen and a copy of Wired (the one with Master Chief on the cover which I bought for the flight home) - and I thought to myself: Wow. I can't believe I just did something that hundreds of thousands of people have been waiting years to do.

Thanks Major Silva for the heads-up in the HBO forum.

Tex went to pay off the last installment of her Halo 3 Legendary Edition preorder and got a couple of unexpected surprises: the early arrival of the new Halo 3-themed wireless controllers, and a special Halo 3 bracelet given out to GameStop employees. Check the Queen of the Hill blog for photos.

This week's Bungie Weekly Update-- only two more to go now before the game's out-- is supposedly the biggest ever, at least in terms of kilobytes. Most of the content consists of pictures of Kotubukiya Halo 3 statues and McFarlane Halo 3 figures. The last image is interesting, though, as it seems to show the upcoming revisions to Bungie.net, including the windowed screenshot and recent games interfaces. All the toy images are in our new Halo 3 Toy gallery.

HBO is announcing the winners of their latest Seven on Seven contest. This last competition was to put the Master Chief into an older Bungie game. The seven winners get free downloads of Freeverse's Marathon:Durandal from Xbox Live Arcade.